“In was 1944, Germany….I had to do it.  I had to save the pope.”

Rick and I were walking home from church.  We were in our Catholic phase, going to St. Anne’s on the corner of  Shepherd and Westheimer. I’m not sure the word Alzheimer existed in 1985.  We just called her the crazy lady. She had a shopping cart and she would patrol the street talking to herself.  On this fine spring morning she was saving the pope. She must have had some cogent moments, however, because she managed to call the police and have my car towed one time.

We were living in the downstairs unit of an old duplex in Montrose that Rick and his best friend, Jeff, bought before we were married. Jeff lived upstairs. It was Three’s Company.  Each day we would carpool to our downtown bank jobs, resplendent in our navy suits and briefcases.  At night, I nuked an extra Lean Cuisine  and Jeff would join us for dinner. When we weren’t all putting in weekend face time at work, Jeff and Rick watched  WWF and Planet of the Apes on TV.  On Sundays, Jeff entertained us with stories of his nocturnal exploits.

I was spending a lot of time in Toronto for my job with a Canadian bank.  Huge chunks of time, sometimes only coming home for an odd weekend visit. This was one of those times.  On Saturday morning I got up early to run some errands and went outside to hop in my car.  It wasn’t there. We didn’t have a garage, so the three of us parked in the driveway or on the street.  My car just wasn’t there.  When I asked Rick about it, he swore it was in front of the house, on the street.  Only when I opened the front door and asked him to show it to me did he agree that it, in fact, was not there.

I called Jeff to ask him about it.  “Hey, do you know where my car is?”  He said, “It probably got towed because of all the tickets on it.”  “What? Are you kidding me?  You saw tickets stacking up on my car and you didn’t mention it to Rick”.  Jeff moved to the top of my shit list, giving Rick a momentary reprieve. But Rick was not about to get off the hook that easily. I called the police to report my car missing and they told me that my car had been towed as an abandoned car TEN DAYS AGO. That’s right, you heard me, TEN DAYS AGO.  Rick instantly replaced Jeff in the dog house. We found my car in the impounding lot and had to pay $200 in storage fees.  Put that in today’s dollars.

Willie came with the house.  After we got burglarized the second time, we gave up the urban life in Montrose and moved to the burbs.  Well to Bellaire. We bought a nice little ranch house on a quiet street.  We brought our Rottweiler and outdoor cat with us.  It wasn’t long before we noticed this mangy, gray tabby hanging out at our back door.  It seemed like he belonged.  Like he had some claim on the place.  He took a liking to us.  I can’t say the feeling was mutual.  He was not an attractive cat.  His bones showed.  His skin was as scabby as a leper.  His belly was distended like some starving street urchin. And he had a mean streak.  But he was encamped.  He wasn’t going anywhere so we really had no choice.

Once we got all moved in, I turned my attention to this grotesque cat who simply would not go away. I dropped him off at our gay vet, Dr. McKnight, on my to work.  I said, please fix this cat’s skin. It’s disgusting.  He poked around the cat’s distended belly and said that he couldn’t treat the mange while she was pregnant.  Momentarily surprised by this turn of events, I said, “get rid of them.”  (OK, I’m a dyed in the wool pro Lifer, but hey, it was just a cat).  I told him I’d pick her up on my way home from work.

Later that day I got a call from the vet’s office.  “Ms. Sloas, I’m sorry, but this has only happened to me once before, ever, I mean it.  I went in to spay her and she was already spayed.  I’ll only charge you half price.”  You have got to be friggin kidding me.  I said, “what was it that you thought were kittens”.  “Constipation”.  

Our menagerie, Buck, YoYo and Willie II