Cats not kids

 

Bast

Our first cat, Bast, was born February 1994, as near as we can make out. My apartment manager showed up at my door a few weeks after I moved in to my first solo apartment with a young cat in his arms and said he remembered I had wanted to adopt a cat. This one had been adopted from the Humane Society and then abandoned when the (scumbag) human in question moved. Of course I agreed to take him. His name when I first adopted him was Domino, for his white patches on a black coat. When I acquired the kitten he insisted on a more dignified name. He had a very Egyptian profile, so we settled on Bast.

That wasn't for a couple years, though. Bast was an adolescent when I got him, but he had his share of kittenish moments. For a while we played break-for-the-door every day when I got home from work. I know this was a game because Bast never really liked being outside for long--he got very nervous when the door closed behind us. One of my favorite memories involves coming home and being surprised when Bast did not butt into my strategically placed shin. Looking around at the faint rustle and jingle, I espied a little black cat face peering out at me from the middle of my Christmas tree.

Climing the Christmas tree was only one manifestation of Bast's love of green things. He bore the informal subtitle Death of Plants until he learned to nibble the leaves without pulling the pot onto the floor. Only the hardiness of my spiderplants saved them from death due to multiple de-pottings, and my first jade plant had to get its own enclosue to protect it.

Bast was also a very sensetive cat. When I had to get Norplant removed and tried out an IUD instead (big mistake), Bast snuggled up as my unusually un-squirmmy hot water bottle during the twenty-four hours of agony before I could get the bloody thing removed again.

For the first handful of months we were together, Bast had every reason to think he was the only SigOt in my life, since Ken was in remote locations. He wasn't best pleased when Ken showed up. They didn't really reconcile until Cu came along, at which point Bast decided that Ken was the lesser of two evils.

Bast grew up to be a very dignified cat. Large too; he eventually weighed in at eighteen pounds, and the vet assured us that he was not overweight. He liked his sleep and lounged with distinction. He rarely hurried anywhere, except for cover when visitors showed up and he needed to observe the interlopers from hiding to determine whether or not they were a threat. Eventually, if they were suitably quiet, he emerged to rub against their legs and let them pet him. Of course, they had to have removed their shoes; Bast disliked shoes intensely.

He tolerated Cu, though Cu's idea of playing was often a bit too energetic for Bast. Bast did like to play Bite-Your-Toes, and often settled on the back of the couch with his back turned to Cu and flicked his tail in the kitten's face until Cu tried to catch it. Bast wore an expression of great solemnity the entire time, of course. They played High-Speed-Chase up and down stairs, when we had them, and Low-Speed-Chase on flat surfaces. Bast learned to swear from a visiting cat, and exercised his vocabulary vigorously on any strange cat lurking outside the windows. Despite this, he was quicker to make friends than Cu. At our Columbus apartment and our first house, both places where the cats could go outside, he was the one to sniff noses with visiting lady cats and lounge in the sun with them, commenting with their tails on passers-by.

Bast liked to cuddle. His morning routine when I first got him was to come in when he heard me start to wake and stretch, jump up beside me, then across me to snuggle in on the far side for morning pets. This was derailed the first time that he jumped only to discover Ken on the far side; he landed in an unfortunate location and everyone involved got a big surprise. After that, he jumped up at the foot of the bed and waited there for me to open my eyes. At that point he plumped down beside me and poked me in the arm with his toes until I petted him, but if I kept my eyes closed he usually waited. He especially liked it when I lay down on the couch, because then he could squish in between me and the back.

Bast was killed May 2003. Five months after we moved to our first house, he was hit by a car just in front. I found him as I was heading up for bed. It looked like he died immediately. We buried him in the back yard the next morning. The irony of it is that Bast didn't range outside nearly as far or often as Cu, and rarely went near the street. The car in question must have been going very fast, and obviously didn't stop, since Bast's tag had our address on it. I was going to target speeders down our street with a rocket launcher, in hopes of nailing the bastard responsible, but Marnie and Mike convinced me that caltrops would be less traceable.

We don't have many pictures of Bast, since he reacted to cameras a lot the same way he reacted to shoes. The sequences below are fairly typical.