This day marks ten years that I have had custody of Lennie, and his
twelfth birthday.

I have written here (rec.pets.cats.*) quite a bit about him, not
recently, but in the early days. Not too much has changed - he's still
the little gentleman brat he always was, living in blissful ignorance of
his several medical problems, except he gets 14 pills a week!

I don't really know he is twelve, or that today is his birthday, but it
was the day we finalized his adoption at the Massachusetts Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in Boston. At his first
examination he was deemed to be about two years old. Add the ten we've
been together to get twelve.

When my other cat Scsi died it hit me very hard, and though I knew I
would once again have a cat it took me several years to get around to
it. There was always a good reason to wait, then one day I figured out
that, well, there would always be a good reason to wait, which might
mean I never get a new cat. So I fixed a date a good distance in the
future and vowed to get a cat on or before that date: 14 February 1995.

It took three or four visits to adopt Lennie. I walked over to the
shelter (about 4 miles I guess) and on the way reviewed my criteria for
selection. I had quite the laundry list. But the more I thought about
it, the more I came to believe that aside from avoiding obviously wrong
cats, there was going to be an awful lot of just plain luck involved.
When I got to the shelter I walked up to the very first cage and pointed
to the very first cat and asked myself "what would be wrong with *that*
cat?".

That was Lennie. But I hesitated to go with such a hit-or-miss approach,
so I carefully interviewed every cat there. It is very sad to see how
many cats are up for adoption and the stupid reasons that people list
for abandoning them. There were a few that would take more love and
compassion and care than I thought I could muster. There were some
orange cats, and although I've known some fine orange cats I just didn't
want one. There was a pair of beautiful females, Mom and daughter - they
were the kind you see resting on the couch on the cover of Architectural
Digest.

I spent some time with all of them. The mom/daughter pair weren't
especially friendly to me or to each other, but they were gorgeous and I
thought I could make something of a family with them. Lennie was very
bold and friendly - he charged right up to the front of the cage and
tolerated some handling well, then bit me gently when he'd had enough.

I went home to think about it.

The next day I went back having decided to get the girls if I could.
They were gone! Someone adopted my cats. I learned my lesson, or almost-
the cat you decide on mightn't be there another day. But Lennie was
still there so I talked to him awhile. He was an adult cat and
unneutered (didn't take a vet to tell me that!) and I had read that
unneutered cats can be a problem even if neutered later on, there was (I
was told) a 50-50 chance that he'd always be "male". This caused me to
hesitate. I left once again without a cat, but I was leaning towards Lennie.

Saturday I went again to the shelter. Whereas on my prior visits I had
had the place (and the cats) mostly to myself, on this day the place was
a zoo. Everyone and his grandmother was there to get a cat. Lennie was
getting quite a bit of attention - he was (and is) a magnificent
specimen, a real cat's cat, so to speak.

I remember watching a family helping their grandmother pick out a cat.
They had zeroed in on an ideal cat, I thought it was a done deal. But
then a crate o' kittens came in and suddenly all attention was diverted
to these new arrivals. It was really sad, as I am a firm believer that
older cats make fine adoptees and are really better for first-time
owners and older caretakers. Kittens are a whole other world. But they
are undeniably cute and I admit I look forward to raising a couple of
cats from ground up one day myself.

There were a young man and woman paying a lot of attention to Lennie and
remembering the disappearance of the girls a few days before I decided I
better act fast or "my" cat would get adopted out from under me. I got a
shelter attendant and told her I had picked a cat out and had just a few
questions. I had decided to risk whatever it was I was risking by
getting an intact male cat. But he had a strange skin condition and I
just wanted to be sure it was nothing serious. The attendant yanked him
out of his cage, actually she yanked him right off his litter box while
he was "in process", which sorta pissed him off big time, and she took
him back to consult the vet. She brought him back and plopped him back
on his litter box, where he picked up where he had left off, and told me
the skin thing was no large deal. I forget what it was, but what it
wasn't was fleas.

She marked the slip on the cage to let everyone know that he was spoken
for and took me to fill out the paperwork and have a chat with an
adoption specialist who mostly wanted to be sure that my landlady was
cool with cats and that I had at least a vague idea of the commitment I
was about to make. Since I had taken my old cat Scsi to the vet and
hospital at the MSPCA, and I also came prepared with a letter I wrote
and had my landlady sign in advance of the quest for a new cat, which
letter actually authorized me to get two cats, I was accepted almost
immediately. I paid the fee which included money to cover the obligatory
neutering. I had Lennie transferred directly to hospital for the big
snip, figuring that would be the best and he might never associate me
with this arguably life-changing event.

Just a few days later I went to collect him. I treated us to a cab ride
home. He cried piteously the whole way. I figured it was from the bumpy
Boston roadways and some residual discomfort from his operation and felt
every bump myself. Turns out he just hates to ride in the car - I think
he may have been remembering that his last car ride, when he was
delivered to the shelter, didn't turn out so well... at least not until
I adopted him! One lucky cat, I like to think.

The stupid people who abandoned him did so because they claimed he was
an uncontrollable nuisance. But they failed to take into account that a
two year old intact male has every right to be so. It is a sad story,
but it is to my good fortune that it happened this way.

I have posted some recent photos on alt.binaries.pictures.animals.