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| Name: |
Sydney
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Age: |
16 1/2 years old
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| Gender: |
Male
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Kind: |
Tuxedo cat
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| Home: |
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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Around
Thanksgiving 1995 a small tuxedo kitten was found alone outside an
apartment building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A wonderful cat-lady named
Marion who lived there rescued him but could not keep him because her
resident cat wouldn't stand for another. I lived in Cambridge at the time
and was volunteering with a small nearby cat-rescue. The kitten came to be
fostered in my apartment.
None of us had been able to to hold him/her still enough to determine the
gender. He/she immediately hid under my old-fashioned bathtub with claw
feet. I named him/her Sydney, thinking that the name could go either way.
After six days, little Sydney came out and started to become more sociable,
at which point I discovered that he was a "he."
As Christmas approached, adopters was found for him: a middle-aged couple.
We told them right from the start that Sydney was very shy and might hide
at first, and they shouldn't try to force him out but let him unwind at his
own pace. We also told them that if the adoption didn't work out, we would
take him back, in fact we insisted he be brought back in that case.
A few days later I got an indignant call from the woman: The man had tried
to pull Sydney out from under the bed, and Sydney had scratched him. They
indignantly demanded we take him back, like she thought I'd try and back
out of it. I said, "Of course," thinking we can't get him away from those
unacceptable-adopters soon enough!
He was brought back on Christmas eve. He walked right out of the carrier
looking up at me, (in his cat way) smiling and saying, "So good to be HOME
again!" So it went, another case of foster-failure...
And so my little Thanksgiving/Christmas boy has been home with me ever
since... moving from Cambridge, to an apartment (once lived in by H.P.
Lovecraft!) in Providence, R.I. and then a house in Providence.. and then
ten years ago, here to Ann Arbor.
He is going on seventeen years old now, and his kidneys are not all they used to
be any more so he may not be with me a whole lot longer, but he is still my
dear little baby boy!
His little knitted toy mousie in the last picture is a treasured gift from
his sweetie, Miss Scrappy-2 Tweedle of Hamilton, Ontario!
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