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--> --> Nov. 1: A bad golf shot, a house sitter, and a cat By Larry Berteau In that balmy idiom known as the English language (that is, as it's spoken in Soho Square, Liverpool and in a few long ago abandoned colonies), Foozle translates as a "bad golf shot." Foozle died last week. She was a smoke-colored Persian cat with penetrating eyes, fly-away fur and a disposition that hovered somewhere on the demeanor scale between Attila and Charlemagne. She was born in the house of my wife, the woman of endless good humor, 18 years ago today. She almost made her 18th birthday. In human years that made her something like 200 years old. (I'm math-impaired.) Put her down gently She quit eating about a week ago, and was diagnosed with kidney failure (by a highly reputable vet), and had to be "put down" as it is so delicately put. But I know better. Foozle may have had a renal condition, but she popped her clogs because she was no longer able to hate me in the manner she had become accustomed. She never forgave me for coming into her life. For 17 years, 11 months and 28 days, she lived every day of her life with the unremitting dream of me abandoning her and going off to live somewhere else. See, she was there first. I came along a couple years later. I took up space on the couch. I slept in the bed. I ate chicken at the dinner table, and packed tuna fish sandwich lunches and headed off to work with them. I watched TV. I liked the dog. I closed doors. I didn't use the litter box. I breathed. I was an intolereable ass. She doesn't like (this) male I was, to Foozle, an unbearable presence. And she knew how to loathe. If there was an Olympic event for hating, this ball of Persian disgust would have made Mark Spitz look like an octogenerian at the community swimming pool. Her rancor was mostly transmitted through her eyes. She had these big, round, dreamy periscopes with which she would endear herself to every human on the planet, save one. For me, they turned to appalling slits that could bore a hole through a 500-pound safe. When I told people about this cat's enmity, they would reassure me that it was just a cat thing. "Because she has always been with your wife, it's probably as simple a thing as: she doesn't like males." HAH! We've had some house sitters over the years. Most of them were males. I'd come back from a holiday, set my key in the latch, peer through the window in the door, and see the miserable feline snuggled into the lap of the chap who happened to be staying there - a chap, I might remind you, who had never once coughed up a nickel to purchase 17 years, 11 months and 28 days of 9-Lives. That house sitter, me But as her days wore down, she got a little touched in the head. I'd catch her looking at me without the slits. Toward the end, she crawled up into my lap. Despite her state, I never thought it was an attempt at making up. No. Not Foozle. She was either no longer capable of discerning who I was; or, in a final, desperate attempt to stay warm, she was simply pretending - out of personal, cat convenience - that I was house sitting. I left her to her reasons. She was, after 17 years, 11 months and 28 days, quite warm. I'll have more bad golf shots, but only one Foozle. And I miss her. Larry Berteau is editor of The Tidings. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing