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A couple of weeks ago Indiana Mimi commented to me that I have never blogged about my cat Baxter. While that's not entirely true (I've mentioned him or posted pictures of him here and here at least), he has not garnered as much attention as my Boxer Bridget or as the publicity hound...umm...well, cat...Ripley. This is not surprising because Baxter, as a rule, is not very bloggable. Baxter is about 17 years old and weighs around 23 pounds, which means he's not very active....at all. He does not eat our Nile model, color with crayons, play the congas, wear banana stickers on his face, or go to species reconciliation classes. He mostly just does this...
and this...
and a little more of this....
As a matter of fact, if he didn't meow loudly when he needed fed or accidentally gets stepped on, we would soundly forget about him. Sad, but true. However, as I gave the subject some thought, this has not always been the case. Baxter came to us under some very dramatic circumstances.... Baxter lived next door to Indiana Mimi, my grandma and Debbles when I was still in college and newly married to Big D. He belonged to a girl, about 14 years of age, named Michelle and her single mom. Actually Baxter's name at the time was Beaver, which in my opinion is a dumb name for a cat, which is why I changed it later, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Baxter at the time I "met" him was a full-grown cat, but obviously still very young. I think he was around a year or less, which is why I'm always a little vague with his age. I just go by Big D and I's anniversary and add about a year to it. Michelle really loved Beaver/Baxter. She carried him around everywhere and dressed him up in little bandannas. Yet I'm not sure if she had ever actually owned a pet before because she really didn't seem to know what she was doing. They would leave for the weekend, and he'd have nothing to eat. They'd leave him outside in the rain and bring him in when it was pleasant. I'm sure that Beaver/Baxter had not been to the vet. My grandma did a lot of looking out for Beaver/Baxter. Well, Michelle, who was a little on the wild side and not chaperoned very well by her mother, one night had a bunch of friends over. Apparently they were playing around with a loaded gun, and Michelle was accidentally shot in the head. Miraculously, she survived. In the interim of about 2-3 days from when she was shot and the police investigation was going on, we hadn't seen Beaver/Baxter anywhere. My grandma finally told one of the officers about their cat. They found him hiding inside the house somewhere, unharmed but hungry and freaked out. Grandma told them that they would feed him until Michelle's mom came home, so they let him outside. Well, Michelle's mom never really came home. She did only long enough to pack up their things and move to Winston Salem, since Michelle was being transferred to the hospital there and was going to need years of therapy. So Baxter became a permanent fixture around my mom's house. I liked him so much that I promised if they would continue to look after him that Big D and I would take him after graduation, which we did. Here's what he looked like at about 3 years old, in the first week after being neutered and declawed, at home in our apartment:
That was in June of 1994. He weighed 20 pounds by October. I guess he had a lot of catching up to do. Baxter then went through a dark period where he kept trying to kill himself in the clothes dryer. I can't tell you how many times I had to drag him out of there. Fortunately, I only turned it on with him in it twice, and fortunately, he sounded like a large bag of potatoes churning around in there, and I was able to open the door before he was cooked and pummeled to death.
Some very good cat therapy pulled him out of his slump. His therapist suggested that he try to "find" himself and forget his troubled past. So, next came Baxter's "who am I?" phase....
Obviously, that last photo denotes a bit of confusion brought on by being neutered at a young age. After he came off the road of self-discovery, the mid-life crisis hit when we got a dog. He hit the bottle pretty badly, probably remembering the wild days of his youth. We had a first birthday party for Bridget....
and obviously someone spiked the water dish....
Finally....FINALLY!...we got it all worked out after many, many AA meetings, and he decided to just be our pet and leave his problems behind him and grow old gracefully.
As you can see, he's adjusted nicely to having a second cat in our home...
....just as long as Ripley doesn't get in his way. And here he is just a few days ago....settled, wise, and trying his best to make it to 20 years old by maintaining his 23 hours of sleep a day and eating as much food as we'll give him.
DID YOU SEE THE WREATH? E-mail me at kellieann@adelgren.com for your points! I now have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for this entry. Don't forget....the contest ends this Friday, November 30!!! |
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