Biscuit is a ten-year-old girl living in Pittsburgh PA (formerly Dutchess County, New York).
In addition to being lovely, poised, and sociable, Biscuit is one of the two heroines of my book Another Insane Devotion (Da Capo, 2012). She may be the only cat who's been photographed for Oprah and The New York Post and caricatured in The New York Times Book Review. You can find out more about her and the book at my website: petertrachtenberg.com.
I adopted her as a kitten after some friends found her hunched miserably on a tree on their property, drenched with rain and sick with a respiratory infection, while their dogs wheeled and snapped below. She was very ill, and at first they didn't think she'd make it. By the time I came to see her (she was being kept in one of my friends' studio, a safe distance from the dogs), she was better, but her face was still caked with mucus. Still, the moment she saw me, the little cat strode over to me, clasped my hand in her forepaws and began licking it. It wasn't the grateful licking of a dog. It was rough and it was proprietary. She was claiming me.
Biscuit's a very social cat. When I lived in the country and felt she could be let out safely, she used to make the rounds of the neighbors' houses. She'd just stride over to them with her short, bowed legs and her bustling walk and her snuffling. She's never gotten over her respiratory infection, and even in a dark room you can always tell when she's come in because of the sound she makes-- a sound like a small whisk broom briskly sweeping. She's both good natured and feisty. She'll walk into her carrier the moment I open the door, but at the vet it takes two and often three people to hold her down.
She's fun-loving. Back when I first had her, she liked to visit a riding stable down the street. A woman who worked there swore she once saw Biscuit jump up and catch the tail of one of the horses so she could swing from it like Tarzan. It's a miracle she didn't get her brains kicked out. Needless to say, she is much loved.
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