Guitars and sharps and flats

A peril of living alone with a job that has a significant travel component is the inability to have a pet of substance, defined of course as a dog. Dogs supply a bounty of life’s joys, but require huge time commitments. I would love to have a dog again, but I accumulate too many miles with Continental and Delta.

Cats, on the other hand, can survive days alone, tending to and cleaning up after themselves, but undoubtedly using their alone time to plot against the weak – defined as “me” and “anyone else with horrible cat allergies.”

The easiest way to kill me would be the combination of a small room, shag wool carpeting, a cat, a padlock, an hour, and no inhaler.

As a child, I had five cats during my first 8 or 9 years on this planet.

Pepper ran away and later turned up about 8 miles away in the garage of the administrative assistant at my father’s office. We learned that the cat she found and the one we lost were one and the same approximately 10 years after she took off for, perhaps, a more loving home.

Bandit was great, but was hit by a car after a large snowstorm. We saw a trail of blood across my neighbor’s back yard as she attempted to drag her injured body home. She is the only cat I have ever had, or will ever have, compassion for.

Sheriff, Bandit’s counterpart, never quite liked me. She, however, loved my mother. She came down with some type of feline leukemia, and we had to put her down soon thereafter.

Brother and Sister were part of the household for just a few months, and I’m not sure why we ended up giving them away.

Perhaps the two weekly allergy at my pediatrician’s office finally drew sympathy from my parents. I’m told that these regular medications were a loving attempt to cure me of my allergies. Depending on perspective, these actions could have been a failed attempt at murdering their son.