I first saw Boog on the porch of my brother-and-sister-in-law’s house. He was a stray, somewhere between six months and a year old when he started hanging around their house; they had two cats already and had agreed not to take on any more. In typical Boog fashion, he charmed each of them into secretly feeding him. When Steve and Joanie realized what was going on, they asked me if I wanted a cat.

I remember seeing him stretched out there, sleeping on their porch, a skinny little black and white tuxedo kitty. As the afternoon sun caught his fur, I could see the black was actually an extremely dark red. Although we had cats and dogs around most of the time when I was growing up, I had never had my very own pet before. As I picked Boog up to carry him home, I had the feeling things were never going to be the same. It was July, 1982.

Boog poses with a cherry tomato in the back of my old Isuzu pickup
(circa 1987)

Boog was a character from the start. Since he had been a stray, I always let him outside whenever he wanted. He would go off on adventures, but always came back sooner or later. One of those adventures came to an end when my brother visited a neighbor’s house and found Boog sleeping on their couch. It turned out he was leading a dual life, staying at their house whenever things were dull at my place. They called him Mr. Mike.

We both had our adventures, I guess. I had a fairly disastrous relationship with a woman I had been in a band with, and when that was over it really helped to have this furry little friend who was always there, who I could pet and hold when I felt lonely. I think that was when we really bonded.

Still, my adventures couldn’t hold a candle to Boog’s. One time as he was on the losing end of a fight with another cat, he dashed across the street back to the house; unfortunately a small car ran over his hindquarters (I only heard this months later, from a neighbor who assumed Boog had been killed). When I got home, he was hiding under the porch and in bad shape, with a piteous little hoarse meow. The vet who looked at him said he had a broken pelvis, but that the muscles of his back end would more or less hold the bones in place until they could mend; I just had to keep him inside for a couple weeks. Boog didn’t seem too tempted to go anywhere.

Boog hanging out in the attic, a year or two after he became diabetic
(circa 1990)

A few years and a couple bands later (for me), Boog had another major crisis. My girlfriend of several years and I moved in together in August of ’88. Shortly after that, Boog got very sick, wasting away to almost nothing (this was amazing in itself—I always teased Boog that he was “portly,” which I think is pretty common among former strays). We think that he may have drunk some antifreeze or something.

In any case, the vet said most of Boog’s liver had been destroyed, though that wasn’t necessarily fatal. He did get better, but after a couple months his pancreas shut down and he became diabetic. For the rest of Boog’s life, he had to have daily (later, twice daily) insulin shots. To this day, being around needles makes my testicles want to climb back up into my body cavity, but it was the only way to keep Mr. Boog alive.

I became fairly adept at guessing his blood sugar level from the amount of urine clumping the litter box when I cleaned it every morning, and if he staggered around and tried to climb into corners I knew his glucose was dangerously low. In addition, he had more than the usual number of abscessed wounds from fighting (I mean socializing) with the other neighborhood cats. Fortunately our landlord was the vet next door, so at least getting help didn't involve a car trip, something Boog hated.

Boog pretends his little buddy Fido isn’t there to help play with the venetian blinds. Note how Boog’s decorating taste ran to kitschy things like lava lamps and cypress-knee lamps.
(1998)

I don’t want to make it sound like Boog was sick all the time. Far from it. In fact, one of my strongest memories of him is from one warm afternoon sitting on the front porch watching him and the other cats wander around under the trees in the front yard. Boog sniffed the ground, sniffed the air, stretched and dug his front paws in the dark earth, and you could just see how every molecule of his being was intensely glad to be alive. He had this blissful look on his face I will never forget.

When I had to go out of town on band trips after my girlfriend and I broke up, someone still had to give Boog his shot. He always took this as an opportunity to establish who was boss around the house in my absence. One time I let a friend stay in the house since I was going to be gone for a week. I called from Colorado to check in, only to find Boog had given my friend such a hard time about the shot that she was reduced to tears. She phoned her vet in a panic, convinced he would die without the shot but unable to get him to stay still enough to take it. You just know that he put another chalk mark on the board for that one.

Boog doesn’t want to pose with his Valentine decoration, courtesy of Elise. Sometimes it’s not easy to be a cat.
(2/14/99)

I could go on and on, but there’s no way to really capture Boog’s personality. I can talk about the way he used to jump out from behind a chair to tackle my ankle, or the little anxious meow he would let out when I walked in the front door, like he was asking “Is it really you?” There was the lordly way he ignored all lesser cats; I had a long succession of roommates, and most of them had cats as well—flyspecks on the wall to Mr. Boog. Of course, on a winter afternoon, he and Tigger might both be sleeping on the bed, so close their backs touched. But that was strictly an accident.

There's just no way to describe him, even less than you can really describe a person you know well. And make no mistake about it, Boog had as much personality as most people. More than many, to tell the truth. Anyone who knew me well got to know Boog, and he made an impression on everyone who knew him. I’ll just say we all agreed Mr. Boog was one amazing, unforgettable cat, and we’ll leave it at that.

The last couple years were harder and harder. By 1999, Boog was nearly 18 and had been diabetic for 11 of those years. He had lost a couple of canine teeth, so eating was difficult (and maintaining his blood sugar was more and more an exercise in tightrope-walking); he had cataracts, and then either had a series of strokes or possibly a brain tumor. His pancreas flared up several times, necessitating emergency late-night vet visits.

Elise fixed up a little heating pad under a towel for him next to the heater vent in the bathroom, and any time either of us walked by he would struggle up and meow for us to stop and pet him. But things got worse and worse, and finally on October 20, 1999 all three of us were ready to give up.

I miss my little friend very much. But I will always remember him and be thankful for the nearly 19 years of love and affection (and yes, being a royal pain in the ass, too) which he gave me.