BOB WAYNE’S WEBLOG

My friend Dawn was over one Friday night lot too long ago for Sci-fi Night. The Diva Drew made a spectacular dinner, as always, and Dawn brought caramel corn (or carmal corn, as we Midwesterners pronounce it). During dinner, the conversation turned to cats.

“I miss my cat,” Dawn remarked.

“So do I,” the Diva returned.

“You miss my cat?” Dawn said.

“No,” the Diva said. “I miss my cat.”

“Oh, that’s right. Your kitty died this year too, didn’t he?”

This scintillating conversation could have gone on for hours. Thankfully it died along with the cats.

Dawn’s cat was a mean, bad-tempered alley cat who would immediately hiss at anyone who walked into the room and would bite you if you even thought about trying to be nice to it. On more than a few occasions I remember Dawn telling me, “I don’t even like that stupid cat.”

The Diva’s cat Mingo, on the other hand, was just about the sweetest cat your could ever meet. (Now let’s not get carried away here. He was sweet for a cat.) Whenever he wanted attention, he would”give you paw.”

He would sit next to you, reach out with his paw, and gently touch the side of your face. If you ignored him, he would continue to do it until the situation turned more to his favor. Every night at bedtime, “the Ming” would crawl into the bed and promptly take his place between us. Whether we wanted him there or not.

He would lay there quietly until he was sure The Diva was sleeping and then get up and wander off to do his nocturnal kitty thing. Which usually turned out to be wandering around the basement howling. At the top of his lungs. And being a big cat, Ming was loud. Luckily for his sake, he had the decency to do it in the basment where his yowling was minimized. Otherwise, he might have met the fate of his big brother Dave.

If you’d like to see a tribute site to “the mighty Mingo”, you can follow the link to one of the Diva Drew’s blogs, Kittywumpuss.