It was sometime in 1994. There, sitting on a chair on my patio was scrawny little black and white cat. You know the story - he seemed happy to have some food. I wasn't able to get close to him, but for some reason my wife was able to give him a little bit of affection. I didn't know if he was lost or abandoned, or just one of the many neighborhood cats who wander by every so often.
Cut back a few years. About two blocks away was a couple who always had several cats. Walking Neptune, my pit bull, I would often stop and play with them. The owner said that they tended to live in the garage, and really did not particularly care to be inside that much. I wandered by quite often to visit the cats, and there would always be two or three who would come down the driveway and receive some affection.
Eventually I started baby-sitting those cats once or twice a year when the owners were away. This would be for a week or even two, and they'd simply leave a large bag of dry cat food, usually Purina, in a clean covered trashcan next to their garage. Apparently these guys never got canned food.
It turned out that one of the cats, named Langley, had vanished a few months prior to the event of the first paragraph. The owners thought they'd seen him once or twice, but he never really returned to their household.
Eventually my wife brought the new cat inside, and we named him Phunny Face because of his weird, Holstein-like markings. He decided I was OK, and was a very pleasant kitty. The fur was unusual, in that what appeared to be a black and white cat really wasn't. Rubbing the fur backwards gave a weird grey color; to this day I call him a "blotchy black and white".
My house is at the "far end" of a small four-house cul-de-sac, and one day I was out on the actual sidewalk by the street, with Phunny out there receiving some affection. (He rarely goes that far any more). The owner I've been talking about coincidentally drove by, and screeched to a halt. He got out of the car and exclaimed, "That's Langley!". He examined the cat closely, and was absolutely sure it was his missing cat. I mentioned that the cat had been part of the household for a few weeks, and that I certainly hadn't intended to steal his cat. He was simply amazed to see the cat after all those months, but didn't show the slightest interest in retrieving him, merely expressing happiness that he knew what had happened to Langley. Off he drove, and I kept Phunny.
So I knew Langley's history, unlike all my other cats. He was one of a family of cats - a mother and several kittens - who had been given away in front of a grocery store a couple miles away. This was January of 1987, and these people had taken the mother and two of the kittens, including mine.
Phunny, with adequate food, grew into a rather good-sized cat. Just last Autumn (fall of 2002 as I write this) I took him over to his old home, and handed him to the owner, who hadn't seen him in a good eight years. Seeing Phunny dwarfing the two other cats, coincidentally the only two these folks still have, was quite humorous. The owner was genuinely pleased to see how well Phunny had developed.
So what can I tell you about Phunny, certainly one of the odder cats I've ever had. He loves to sleep on his back; the former owner said he'd do that between the screen door and the sliding patio door. Phunny does not like other cats, and absolutely detests Milo and Watermelon. If someone gets near him, he'll start loudly growling and raising a rather healthy ruckus. It really can be exasperating. On the other hand, he's possibly the only cat I've had who gives as much as he receives. He'll often stay up after I've gone to bed, grooming my head and beard for, without exaggeration, over an hour. He tends to stay inside, and if outdoors never leaves the property. He can be very affectionate and is always happy to have his head rubbed. Interestingly, if one starts rubbing his back he starts whining and carrying on loudly; he only likes the head rubbed. Often he'll sleep on my pillow, or directly next to my head, and he tends to be quite still and not much of a problem at night. And he's not especially picky about his food compared to the others, at least most of the time. One irritating quirk: he really prefers to go outside through the garage, even if one of the other doors is either being held open or propped open. That means opening the interior door to the garage, lifting the garage door a bit, letting him leave, closing the garage door, and closing the interior door. All this while the front door is wide open.
He had one interesting trait until his later years. He loved sitting up on the beams over one of my patios. When it came time to get down, he'd squeeze between the laths covering the beams, and drop down to an outside counter with a huge plop, and then jump down to the ground. We would hear the loud thud and know it was time to open the door for him to come back into the house.
Phunny might be the most intelligent cat I've had. He knows exactly where to stand for each door, sliding, left-hinged, right-hinged, inside, and outside. If he wants in, he'll figure out where people are likely to be and will scratch at that door. If nobody gets up to let him in, he'll keep scratching until, out of utter exasperation, someone lets him in to stop the noise.
At over 16 years as this is written, he appears to be in magnificent condition. I can't imagine anyone first seeing him would imagine he's that old. I suppose his days are realistically numbered, but I hope time doesn't catch up with him for quite a while. He has always been in superb health, and in all these years he's only had one vet visit for other than his yearly shots - an abscess doubtlessly due to fighting with one of the others. It's a pleasure to have a low-maintenance cat.
So that's Phunny. A rather low-key creature, genuinely friendly and pleasant to me, and disdainful or hostile toward the other cats. I'd rate him #2 in the household, behind Calico.
Time Catches Up With Phunny
Phunny had his yearly checkup in November, 2003; naturally I expected it to be the usual "wow, what a healthy cat" in-and-out routine. It wasn't. He had lost some weight, a significant heart murmur was detected, and X-rays showed a substantially enlarged heart. Other initial tests showed the start of kidney problems. We had additional more-sophisticated testing done over the coming months, which confirmed the initial findings along with adding high blood pressure to the list. It really wasn't that Phunny was getting sick for the first time; he had just begun to wear out from old age. Even the familiar hostility to the others turned to apathy.
As I write these sentences in February, 2005, he's slowly going downhill, but really shows no indication of being sick or in distress. We've had him on a human blood pressure medicine which has easily kept the pressure down to the high side of normal, quite acceptable. The very modest kidney issues seem to have cleared without treatment. The pharmacist loves seeing the prescription and renewals for Phunny Face - a bit different than their normal patient. He's now lost almost half his weight, being in the sevens rather than a husky 14 pounder. He stays inside most of the time now, and has actually started to develop claw problems from being a little too inactive. But there's absolutely no indication of distress. I have a gut feeling that he probably won't live out 2005 and see his 19th birthday, but until he shows any signs of suffering or just turns casters-up, we'll let things work themselves out.
Coda
Phunny lived a lot longer than anyone expected. He dropped below 7 pounds, half his former weight, in early 2006 and gradually lost weight over that year. We started him on subcutaneous water treatments several times a week to help with the failing kidneys. There was a daily regimen of pills for his extremely high blood pressure (over 200), thyroid problems, and apparent stomach discomfort, but his quality of life seemed acceptable to good. He was rather inactive, rarely left the house, but usually ate willingly and was still quick to purr, although somewhat weakly. The last few months he seemed to strongly prefer tuna or people food - turkey or roast beef. As 2006 drew to an end, he was generally down to the very low six pound range, and I had long had the intuitive hunch that six pounds would be The point at which his health became a crisis. I was right. In December, he suddenly stopped eating. Tests showed severe kidney deterioration, and when we rushed him in for treatment he had dropped below six pounds. They got him "jump started" with vitamins and antibiotics to treat a mouth abcess. Normally that would have necessitated dental treatment, but the anesthetic and surgery would have killed him. This got him back on track for one day, and then he again stopped eating. Back he went to on December 9th, and his weight had plummeted in less than two days down to five pounds, seven ounces. Three vets assessed his condition, and agreed that it was time. We knew it, ourselves - it wasn't a hard decision although obviously painful. We came to the hospital to spend our last few minutes, and took the picture below of the skin-and-bones Phunny Face, although it isn't terribly obvious in this shot. And he was still purring, ambling about, and delighted with the affection.
We sadly said goodbye to a very beloved cat, who had lived about three weeks short of twenty years.
