Odo the Kitten and Heather. Click to zoom in.
    At the age of 19, almost four years after telling me that she wouldn’t date me because I was too old for her, Heather came for me. It was an indirect pursuit at best, a third-hand request* for an escort to see the movie “Apollo 13.” I was, at the time, involved in a strained relationship with a much older woman**.
    Having always carried a torch for Heather, I quickly ended the aforementioned relationship and began my life with her. We were probably in love before we even finished that second first date. A few months later, as fall set in, we were accompanying Steve Valente on a futile mission to find a stud for his Siamese named Toomi.
    Steve was a massive Italian man who’d moved to Detroit from New York in order to work for EDS but, after a single round of layoffs, ended up working with me at IDSI. A lonely man, his Stallone-esque accent and brooding appearance caused the skittish Detroit girls to shy away from him and he found none of his New York courting methods worked here. Completely incompatible. He eventually threw in the towel and moved back to Rochester where he is now a happy husband and father of at least three children***.
    Several years before meeting that fate, however, Heather chauffered him to a breeder he’d located in a seedy area of Detroit. He wished to provide his regal lady cat Toomi with a kitten or two to keep her company. I accompanied him for moral support, and together we all entered the aging brick bungalow where I met Odo.
    The family that ran the small cattery out of their house were a bit grubby on the whole. What could only be the back seat of a Ford Aerostar stood as the front porch bench and a fly buzzed torpidly out into the cold air as we stepped past the torn screen door and into the warm. Happy faced and besmudged children bounced roly-poly through the house chasing and being chased by small herds of cats. The children’s father sat with his back to us, partially reclined in a partially shredded Laz-E-Boy silently watching a television which radiated local news from its rickety corner TV-stand. Throughout our entire visit the only movement he exhibited involved cats scampering across him. I tentatively retain the assumption that he was, in fact, still alive.
    The lady of the house was breeding Siamese cats to pay her way through school, a refreshing change from the pole dancing customary amongst most Detroit coeds. A quick inventory of her incisors (she had one) and a survey of her handsome face showed that traditional career avenues involving stiletto heels and overpriced cocktails were, sadly, closed to her. The cats, however, seemed very nice on the whole.
    Steve, a big softy who doted on his beloved Toomi, didn’t feel good about leaving her there to be bred. But he noted that the cats seemed healthier than the humans dwelling in that house, and in particular there was one kitten which caught my eye. They children were calling him “coyboy,” but I’m still not sure why.
    Steve saw that I really liked the little pot-bellied critter.
    ”That was a really good kitten,” he told me as we climbed back into the car, “You should get him.”
    I agreed with him in principal, but I was still living at home and my step-father wanted no cats. Forbade them, as a matter of fact. Something about bursitis. In any case, it was Heather who purchased my kitten and volunteered to house him in her room until such time as I had a place of my own.
    The picture you see above was taken a few weeks after that. I named him Odo. His arm isn’t really freakishly long, that was just a lucky shot. See, cats are held together by a loose arrangement of sub-dermal rubber bands, allowing them to assume all sorts of bizarre kitty topological arrangements.
    At this time his voice was too large for his body. His little butt would pop out like a turkey timer every time he went, “WOW!”

* – By way of her brother, a high-school classmate of mine.
** – A divorcee who lived in San Fransisco. But that’s a story for another day
*** – I’ve lost touch with him some four years ago. He may have spawned again, as I have.