The Wein and Chuck

I came across some photos of The Wein and Chuck as I was sorting through the bottomless pile of pictures yesterday.

Weiner was an amazingly photogenic, all-around cool feline. Around 1975 he showed up at our Linden Avenue house and decided to live with us, and he died (of liver cancer, as I recall) around 1980 when we lived on Logan Avenue. He wasn't with us that long, but he left his mark because he was such an exceptional cat.

He was part Siamese, so he had a loud, attention-getting meow, and he used to howl (poor thing) whenever I practiced the flute. (My tone wasn't that great. In fact, I remember bursting into tears during one of my flute lessons when my teacher told me she was "writhing in pain" after listening to me play a piece in B flat--which is actually a very hard key to play in for the flute--but I digress.) The Wein was a handsome, sleek cat with mucho personality.

Chuck, on the other hand, lived to the ripe old age of 19. He came to live with us at about the same time as Wein; he was just a lot hardier. He moved with us five times, lived in five different houses, and survived the Emigration Canyon fire. Apparently he took off when the fire got close to the house, and survived on mice (or something) for a couple of weeks, when homeowners were finally allowed back into the canyon. He was a mellow, good-natured cat.

This is our Linden Avenue house. The cat on the sidewalk is Burt, who showed up at our house one day but only stayed for a couple of months. Burt is the cat who occasionally came home with a fully-cooked t-bone steak--presumably snatched from a neighbor's barbeque. He was a good cat too, but I don't think the other boys liked him much.

We've had some pretty great cats in our lives.