Monkey Kitty
This photo was taken around 1983. My three-year-old son and I chose her from the pound in Tacoma. We didn’t have a crate to bring her home in so she’d gotten loose from the small box the Humane Society handed her to us i after I was already travelling north in I-5. We’d just past the relatively new Tacoma Dome when she exited the box and found her way beneath my feet. I was in the fast lane and it was rush hour and there was a utility truck that, I noticed too late, was parked in the middle of my lane and when I glanced out the window, there was no room for me to scoot the car into the neighboring lane and just as I slammed down on the brake she hopped away from my feet and the car skidded and I knew we were all going to slam into the rear of that damned truck and die. The truck had orange cones and “Men Working” signs in the bed of it and miraculously, my car stopped mere centimeters from the trucks rear-end.
But I didn’t have time to exhale before I knew we were going to be rear-ended before anyone realized we were stopped. Desperate, I kept looking for an opportunity to merge. Hundreds of cars whizzed by and t here was even a cop, but he could do nothing but glance at us in shock without wrecking himself as he passed us.
Then, from behind, a horn honked and in my rear-view mirror the driver behind us was signalling for me to back up, which was exactly what he was doing, backing up, in the fast lane, on I-5, during rush hour. So I backed up and had a chance at merging so I took it.
Monkey moved with us more than once and even though there was a year when I couldn’t keep her in the house I was renting, as soon as I could, I grabbed her back into the family.
She moved with us onto our five acres of raw land, where she camped with us and there she lived for many years after. In the photo below she is out in the first snow of the season during our first winter on our property. As the years slid by she became Grandma Monkey.
Grandma Monkey lived to be about eighteen, a grand old age for a cat. She symbolized family, stability, friendship and there are many episodes of her life that we all remember because she shared them with us.
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