A long, boring, and sad post.

My dad called me tonight and told me he wanted me to see his new car, and he needed to talk about something with me. I had no idea what it was he wanted to talk to me about, but it's never a good thing to begin a conversation in that way. Luckily my dad is really frank about things... no beating around the bush. He just comes right out and tells me whatever horrible thing he needs to tell me. He sat me down and said "Tim, I have some bad news. Spazz was hit by a car. She's dead." I was shocked.

Now, let me explain something. Spazz was my cat. And by 'my cat', I mean she was mine and no one elses. I found her during my first few months in Chicago, all curled in a ball in the gutter, avoiding cars and shaking. She was a dark grey, and I took her up to my apartment, illegally. She hit behind my counter and cleaned herself out. She was actually white, with brown spots. She was the prettiest cat ever. I had to sneak in cat food and kitty litter for her, since she was illegal in my apartment building.

I kept her there for about 3 months. She was some of my only company. It took her a while to come out of her shell and wander the apartment, but after she got going she was completely nuts. She'd run and jump and climb and claw on things, which is why I started calling her Spazz. She was also the nicest cat I'd ever seen, and would lay on my lap and lick my hands.

Eventually I got caught with the cat and had to get rid of it, so I sent her home to my parents, with the understanding that when I got my own place I would get her back.

Well, she grew accustomed to running and playing outside, and climbing trees and playing with our other cats during my next year and a half in Chicago. When I graduated and came home, she'd sleep with me in my bed and run up to my car when I got home from work. When I moved out, I thought it would be kind of cruel to take her into an apartment and never let her outside when she had grown so used to being outside. Plus my mom had gotten to love my cat, and she wasn't about to let me take her away.

Whenever I went home to visit my parents, my cat would run up to greet me and run around my legs meowing until I finally started petting her.

Well, now she's gone. She disappeared for more than a day, which is very odd for her. She usually was only outside for 15 or 20 minutes at a time before scraping at the door to be let in again. My dad found her yesterday morning in the street right in front of my driveway. My mom also saw it and couldn't stop crying, my dad said. He got a phone call from her in the middle of the day, because she felt guilty for calling the cat. She thought her calling the cat made her come out of hiding and get hit.

Either way, I'm pissed because the cat was hit on my road, obviously by someone who lived on my road. Everyone knows my cat, and knows she belongs to our family. It's incredibly rude to kill a cat, then leave it's dead body right in front of the owner's driveway without ever even mentioning it to my family. I mean, can you be any more inconsiderate?

In other news, my dad found my other cat, Little Kitty. Hey, I named her when I was 5, so I wasn't too creative yet. "You've had the cat since you were 5, you say?" Yeah, I have. For all you math majors out there, that makes my cat 16 years old. He disappeared about 2 or 3 months ago, and showed up at a gas station more than a mile away today. Weird, huh? We all thought so. We assumed he just went somewhere to die. I mean, 16 years old is pretty old. Spazz was about 3 or 3.5. That's not old enough to die yet.

But anyway, Little Kitty is back, and Spazz is gone.

Oh, and my dad's new car, as I'm sure you're all curious about, since it was mentioned in the post and all, is a '95 Pontiac Formula. 350, of course, since my dad will settle for no less than a huge V8 in whatever car he's driving. He sold his '93 Formula earlier today.