Pre-Deaner Friends

Long before Dean... I had different cats. Like, growing up. The two that are most prominent in my life are Claude and Tula, my sweethearts, who I miss every day.

Claude

Claude was a cinnamon point Siamese/American shorthair mix (we think) who my family bought from a Jack's Pets when I was in second or third grade. He was notable for being extremely loud and very cuddly and sweet. He would vaguely meow the word "mom" and enjoyed being held so his head and front paws would rest on your left shoulder. He was my best friend for many years where I had very few human friends, and I like to think that he loved me the most. This photo was taken in a window box in my parent's old kitchen, and yes, it is a photo of a photo. I don't have a scanner at my disposal, so my Claude pictures are very limited.

He was named for the Looney Tunes character, Claude the cat, whom he did not resemble at all. He would walk laps around the second floor between everyone's bedrooms late at night, yowling, crying for attention until someone (me) let him into their room for the night. He would then proceed to hang out for only a little while before going to sleep downstairs or something. I would let him outside during the summertime and brush all the extra fluffy hair off of his coat until the driveway was littered with snowballs of cat fur. Really good animal overall.

Claude was sent over the rainbow bridge when I was in high school after an ongoing, losing battle with some kind of bowel disease. He was quarantined for a long time before my parents made the difficult decision to see him off. I didn't get to be there with him when he died, as I was volunteering at the hospital at the time. I remember coming home and asking my mother where he was, getting a tearful look in reply, and before I could get angry that she didn't call me so I could say goodbye, my father yelled from the kitchen that I didn't have time to cry because "Star Trek is on, and it's a good one!" Emotional regulation wasn't a strong suit of my household growing up, but it makes a funny story now. It was, in fact, a good episode.

Tula

Named for the main character of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Tula was neither Greek nor particularly large... Go figure. She was allegedly half Siamese half Russian blue, and she was mouthy enough to be a Siamese cat, but my mother bought her out of the back of some guy's truck so that's pretty hard to confirm. We were also told she was a male cat, and, she was not. She was, however, a mean little princess who I loved very much.

Tula was small in size and large in personality, as many cats are. She could be bitey at times, but was also very sweet and loved to sit on your lap or curl up on the small of your back while you laid on your stomach. She came into our lives when I was in fifth grade, and got along fine with Claude, though they fought a good amount for a little while. She outlived Claude by a number of years, their shared time also overlapping with our first dog, Dot, who neither of the cats liked very much at all. She also lived with our second dog, Dash, and didn't like him either. Hard to please, that one! Tula did like watching birds, running around the house at top speeds, and licking people clean, which was really gross but much appreciated. She kept the house in line.

She had to be put down after her kidneys began failing and she started having painful bladder symptoms. In late March of 2020 (uh-oh) I went on a trip to St. Louis for a work conference, and on my train trip back, my father sent me a suspicious text asking if I could call when I had a second. Knowing what was to come, I called home and when my dad answered I asked what they did to my cat, and returned to my seat on the Amtrak with puffy red eyes and a hot dog for my troubles. Going home during the first wave of Covid was hard enough, but knowing there wasn't going to be a sleeping cat denting the middle-back cushion of the couch with her miniscule weight... That made things all the worse.

They were very good cats, and I miss them dearly. Make sure to love your pets extra hard and take more pictures than I did so you can go back and appreciate them later!!!