A couple of years ago – nearly a decade ago, truth be told – my ex-girlfriend gave me a cat who looked, with the way his fur was colored, like a combination of Charlie Chaplin, Hitler, and local funnyman Katchupoy. I decided to name him Zardos, after Prince Zardoz of the Boazanian empire. In this case, he was delegated to nothing more than a funny lolcat.
The fact of the matter is, this guy is an idiot. Back when he was younger, he’d jump around inside my room when it was time to wake up. When I had friends sleep over, he’d jump onto their stomachs to make sure that they got up and fed him. He was an active, noisy cat, and everybody soon grew to know, if not love, the strange way this little dude would meow. We called it the “question meow”, since it always sounded like he was asking you something.
This was back in the day, of course. Now, he’s a good, hearty age of seven years (pretty old in cat years), and he’s been through a lot. There was a time when he’d vanish for weeks, going to God knows where (my niece saw him in Taft Avenue one time, which is more than four kilometers from where I live). He would get into fights, from which I would have to carefully extract him with the help of a tub of water and a stick. And whenever he’d come back home, he’d have this smug, self-satisfied look that seemed to say “I fathered two more litters of kittens today. How’d YOUR day go?”
But man. Seven years. In those years, he’d gotten into really dangerous fights that would leave him with scars that’d take days to heal. He has a hole on one corner of his left ear, presumably due to a fight he had. And there’s an empty patch of skin at the scruff of his neck due to an infection he had, which I needed to irradiate with a watered-down Betadine solution. The guy was sweet enough indoors, but when he’s outdoors, he’s a menace to cat society, and to himself.
To keep the little guy safe, I decided to quarantine him at home. This entailed changing his litter box every week, and feeding him on a regular basis (he used to forage for himself during his wilder days). Luckily, I have no trouble doing both. But from the looks of it, this little guy’s no longer just the small, silly, bundle of fur that would jump on our bellies just to wake us up. He was an old man, with graying, dusty fur, liver spots popping up around his body, and falling teeth. I would imagine that he’d last a good five more years as a healthy cat before he begrudgingly lets old age mellow his temper down to a slow rumble that means he’ll have to refrain from jumping to high places all the time.
I’m glad that my niece has taken a liking to him, and cares for him just as much as I do. And while my girlfriend can’t stand it when he suddenly slumps down to sleep on her feet, she finds his antics hilarious. My mother talks to him frequently, and my father and brother both feed him scraps from the table – admittedly not a very good thing to do, but it’s good to know that my old cat is well appreciated.
Which leads me to this point. I’ve been meaning to start making a picture blog about my cat for a long time, but never got around to doing so. Last week, I decided to just go ahead with it, and decided to set it up on Tumblr, since that’s one of the better photoblogging services available. And so, Zardos the Cat is born.
Zardos, the cat who said "bleh".
if you like cats; if you like LOLcats; if you like funny animals; and if what I’ve just written has touched your heart in some odd manner (d’awwwww!); feel free to follow that link (or click on the picture above) and head on over to the photoblog. It’s the least I can do for a cat who’s kept me company for seven years, and hopefully for more years to come.
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