My beautiful feral cat. He was trapped by a co-worker and given to me. Thus began my journey of turning a "wild" cat into a "house" cat. For the first couple of months, I couldn't get him out of one room. I brought food in there for him and a litter box and spent hours every day just sitting quietly in the room with him. Bit by bit, he eventually realized that this "human" could be trusted and gave his heart to me.

Unfortunately, the feral never left him. One of my son's friends left the door open (to this day this boy has never been welcomed to step foot on my property) and Kay Kay ran out. I couldn't get him to come back in the house. I left food out for him and every morning it was gone; then for the span of one week, his food wasn't touched. I've never known what happened to him. I have my suspicions that neighbours poisoned him, but it's never been proven. When Kay Kay and I meet again, he'll let me know.



Stupid ~ Born 1993 Became an AngelKitty 1997
Probably the one fur baby closest to my heart. My precious little boy who didn't stand a chance from the day I found him cold, battered and beaten outside my door. He was close to two years of age when he came and my vet told me he wouldn't have lasted another week on his own. As it turned out, the years of abuse on the street left him with weakened and scarred lungs, which caused extreme difficulty in breathing. I only had two years of him before he gave up the fight and moved on to the Bridge. To this day I can't think of him without tears rolling down my face knowing that if it wasn't for the ignorance and lack of caring on the part of some person who doesn't deserve time on this earth, my baby could still be with me.

Friday first came into my life 10 years ago when my sister-in-law was ordered to remove her from her apartment or face eviction. I offered to take her. She was a beautiful, shy little calico with fur so long it swept the floor. She adjusted well to my multi-cat home and we lived in harmony for all those years. Eventually, age took over her sweet little body and on September 6, 1998 I made the painful decision to allow Friday to move over to the bridge.

Stay sweet little girl...

My domain is named after my cat, Action Cat. I never really got around to putting up a decent page about him. (Hell, I don't even have a decent photo of him online.) This wasn't because I didn't love him, but because I spent so much time trying to be of some use in the fight against animal cruelty and homeless cats that I didn't have much energy left over for making him a snazzy website. So for this one day, May 7, 1999 I've turned my site over to him as a memorial.

He had a long happy life and he died peacefully, in his sleep. He was far, far luckier than a lot of cats. He had a home, and people who loved him and took good care of him.

He was a stray when we got him, but those days were long, long behind him by now; I doubt if he could even remember a time that his every wish wasn't granted, except for the wish to roam the great outdoors at 4 a.m.

Here's a little bit about him, and some of my favorite Action Cat memories. He was a wonderful cat and he will be missed forever.

Action Cat was an adult stray roaming the south side of Chicago before he was adopted. He was a big black and white cat with asymmetrical markings, and he was anywhere from 15 to 17 years old. He lived with my parents because I travel so much, but before that (during my first marriage) he lived in a condo in Chicago. We lived on a cul-de-sac next to a small park, on the lakefront, and Action Cat was allowed to roam the other apartments, and the back yard and park when there were people out there to keep an eye on him. He was allowed to do this because if we didn't let him outside he carried on in a way that I can only describe as psychotic. This was why the first two people who tried to take him in gave up on him.

He literally knew more people than we did, and he got invited to more parties too. I had several numbers on the speed dial to locate him in a hurry if I needed to -- he liked to spend his mornings at Westy's place (where she served him broiled milkfish) and his afternoons at the Moyles' (where he had his own special chair, bowls and toys, not to mention his salmon treats), but he could be in any of about 95 apartments in between those times. Everyone loved him -- someone offered to adopt him from us about once a week. A few people told me that he had inspired them to adopt a cat of their own, because they had no idea cats could be so much fun before they met him. He was very patient with children and their groping style of petting, and he had a distinct fondness for the elderly. I used to speculate that he belonged to an elderly person who died, and that's how he came to be homeless.

Every few days I'd pass someone on the street who would say to me, "Hey, how's Action Cat doing?" Most of the time I didn't know who they were, and they only knew me as Action Cat's person. The kids in that complex called me "Mrs. Action Cat." He had everyone trained to buzz him back up into the apartment when he was through schmoozing -- including the UPS man, the mail man, and the unfortunate girl who lived in the garden apartment of our unit (unfortunate because Action Cat would go to her living room window and stare at her until she buzzed him up). Once the police even let him in.

In the summer afternoons he liked to go from picnic blanket to picnic blanket in the park and see who had something good to eat, and in the winter he often followed the pizza delivery guys to their destination in case he got lucky there. I had to walk him on a leash during baby bird season, which is how most people figured out that he belonged to me.

His life in Tennessee USA was a lot less frenetic -- he went out in the yard during the day (under supervision), but the neighbors all have dogs, so he gave up trying to visit them. He usually spent his afternoons sitting under the tree. My mom is a music teacher with a steady flow of people in and out of the house, so he still got to socialize, and my parents spoiled him beyond rotten. (The last time I was home I got chewed out for using his blanket.)

Once a neighbor asked me if I could babysit her little girl while she ran out on some crucial errand; when I walked inside their apartment I saw a giant, beautiful studio photo of their little girl and a cat. "Wow," I said, "this looks just like my cat - I'm not kidding, they could be twins." She said, "That is your cat."

Coming back from the store I saw a small crowd gathered around the complex's locked back gate, trying to decide whether to let in a woman who said she'd lost her keys. She noticed me and said, "Hey great, I can prove I live here -- I know Action Cat."

"That's no good," a man said, "everyone knows Action Cat."

Once in an effort to cut back on the food he was getting from people, I embroidered this on Action Cat's collar: "PLEASE DON'T FEED ME!" A couple days later, I noticed that the "N'T" had unravelled so that it now said "PLEASE DO FEED ME!" I didn't have time to fix it that morning so I left it the way it was, and let him outside. Later that afternoon someone called me to ask, "What exactly do you want me to feed Action Cat? He's not eating the tuna packed in oil."

Little AC, I'll always think of you with great love and a million, million fond memories. You were an exceptional, wonderful, amazing cat. And I know you're enjoying yourself at the Rainbow Bridge, where presumably some rotten human doesn't insist that you come inside at 10 p.m. when all the fun is just starting. We'll see you there, Mom Jana and Dad Mark.

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