Four Years of Evil

Happy 4th Birthday Mr. Doo!

I wished Mr. Doo a Happy Birthday this morning and sang to him, calling him The Prince of Darkness. Now, you might wonder why I regard him evil, and what that all means. Do I think he is truly sinister? No, not really. He is spirited and full of personality. Too much personality for a cat. His evil is in the spirit of Baby Stewie.

I'd like to share the story of Mr. Doo. I've not told it and I think it would be most fitting today.

Four years ago around this time, Pooky and I were celebrating our first anniversary of being a couple. It was then that we knew we'd be moving to Washington and we agreed that we'd have a cat once again once we settled into our new living arrangements. We had lost his cat, Roo, when we went to visit my mother for two weeks. He wandered off from the house (he was indoor/outdoor) and I tend to think he met his fate through an encounter with a larger animal. He was always getting to scrapes with something.

I knew that I wanted a white with black spots styled cat. I fell in love with one while visiting a farm a friend lived on in New Jersey. I even have a picture of that kitty. Now, I also knew that the next cat I had I'd name him Fez. Usually I don't pre-name my kitties, but this time I just had to name a kitty Fez.

Come the merry month of May we traveled across the country and we settled into the Seattle area around the first of June. After a week of being in our apartment Pooky announced we could go look for a cat. We tried the animal shelters but none struck me as Fez. We tried a pet store and they had one black kitten that looked sickly and I didn't think he looked like a Fez.

Fearing that we'd never find a cat, I started to despair. But Pooky said we should go back to the pet store as he had a feeling. When we returned they suddendly had a bunch of kittens! Three of them were white with light gray patches, the black one was still there, and then in the middle was this large cat that had white with black patches and it was playing with the others. I thought the big cat was the mother, but I also knew that this was THE cat I had been looking for!

Pooky doesn't like female cats, says their personalities are different than a male, which is true. So my hopes of taking home this perfectly colored kitty was slim. Someone looking at the kittens asked the clerk if the big cat was the mother. She replied no, that he was an older kitten. My ears perked up! It was a male cat, and he was available!

So I asked immediately if I could hold him. She brought him out and put him in my arms. He purred loudly at me and I just knew: This was Fez! $99 later we had him in a box to take home. On the drive home he got upset about being in the box and he started to get evil. I wondered if this kitty was going to be one of those wild kind that always scratch and hiss, never permitting affection. He was 4 months old, whereas the other kittens in the shop were 8 weeks. Had he been previously adopted and returned?

I finally let him out of the box and he was happier. When we got him home we turned him loose and he followed me into the bedroom and helped me fold clothes and put them away. He helped by sitting on the clothes. By the end of the evening I was looking forward to him sleeping with us on the bed. NOT! He came up on the bed and immediately started to shred my feet!

It became his nightly ritual. He would stalk me from the bathroom, run and pounce on me once I turned off the light, then he'd attack me feet. He would then be tossed from the bedroom so we could sleep without fear of losing a toe. During the day he would run through the apartment gripping the carpet as he ran, and he'd fly across the furniture. Pooky would play with him and get him to go in circles. Fez was a ball of feline fury—it was apparent he possessed a strong evil gene. But I loved him!

He was fearless. One day his curiosity got the best of him and he joined me while I was taking a shower. He would climb up Pooky's back. He would sit on the dining room table and watch us eat our meals. He was determined to escape, too!

One day I realized that Fez had grown up into Mr. Doo. He had celebrated his first birthday and he had a more distinguished air about him. I also had realized that he needed feline companionship so when I saw someone was giving away free kittens, that's how we got Mr. B (Pair of Eyes) and that's a completely different story in itself.