to those who are clueless as to why this is "sylvie's" place, and not "steph's" place.. well, SylvieCat was my first AOL screen name. DMadCat was D's. Anywhoo.. so we sometimes still call each other "Sylvie n' Mad". :)

Um.. guess I should elaborate on the "Sylvie" bit. I had a cat named Sylvester (he was silver in color, not black & white). I was very close to him.. but being that he was male, he loved to roam quite a bit. My parents never got him fixed. They made poor attempts to keep him indoors the few times that he did come home, but my dad would always "accidentally" let him outside in the mormings, on his way to work.

Sylvester was a wonderful cat. He was big and tough. He was a hunter. He wasn't big on affection, but I could lay down on my back, put him on my chest, and he'd knead me forever (drooling much of the time). But when he was gone (which was probably 90% of the collective time in which I owned him), I missed him terribly. I'd be lucky to catch him walking down a back alley. I'd get to pet him for a few minutes before he took off again to roam the streets. He always show up battered from cat fights, and so on. At one point in his 12 years of life, my uncle's dog partially mauled him. I think he also got hit by a car. His brain swelled, and a vet had to insert a tube in his skull to drain the fluids.

The reason why we got my cat Alfie (most of you've heard of her) was because Sylvester had been "missing" for several months. All of us thought he was dead. In the summer of '83, my mom picked Alfie out of a litter of kittens at a church function. I thought she was cute (black and white), but I wanted another kitten- one that looked like Sylvester. Believe it or not, within a matter of days after getting Alfie, Sylvester jumped the back fence and came inside for a meal. (He was very partial to raw eggs. LOL)

warning.. this might be a bit graphic for some readers.
Over the years, he was in and out of my life. Finally, in '90 or '91, Sylvester met his fate. I was outside looking for my sister's cat. Instead, I found Sylvester- sitting on the side of our house, meowing for help. I came up behind him, not believing it was him after years of wondering where he was. As I came 'round to face him, I saw the most horrendous thing ever. One of his eyes was missing, and the socket was full of maggots. I screamed and cried for my mom to come out. We took him to the vet, where we were told there was nothing that could be done- the little freakish bugs were eating away at his brain. My mom can't believe that he was even aware of anything enough to know where his home was. As sad and horrific as that experience was for me, I can't tell you how happy I was that my cat did remember.. and that he came home (to me) to die.