Mike over at Senior Thinking wrote about his dog-like cat and it reminded me of my son's cat, Jimi Hendrix.

We got Jimi at the pound and knew he was the cat for us the moment we laid eyes on him because he had a lot of spunk. He kept sticking his arm out of the cage as far as he could, trying to grab us all while practically screaming at us. He wouldn't shut up. When we decided to take him, they let us have him in the office while we filled out the paperwork. He got into EVERYTHING and kept knocking the phone off the receiver and knocking papers off the desk. Eventually the pound worker took him back to the cage until all the paperwork was done because he was such a pest. He totally sealed the deal with his antics.

If I were to compare Jimi to a human, he'd be James Dean. He is a tough and cool cat. Even though he was neutered at a very young age, I'd feel sorry for any cat OR dog who was on the receiving side of Jimi's rage. Jimi even had a spiked collar, which fit his personality to a "T".

Jimi had some weird idiosyncrasies as well, and I'm sure he'd hate me publishing it for all of the world to see but I'm going to do it anyway. Jimi liked to maintain the "bad boy" image in public, but he's a big softie when nobody is looking.

Early on, he adopted one of my son's stuffed bears that was twice his size. It was clearly his bear because, he'd nurse on it (loudly, I might add!) which was always funny. But the most funny thing was that he used to bring 'offerings" to the bear. Thankfully, they weren't the type of gifts that most cats bring (dead mice, dead birds, etc.). He would steal makeup and leave it next to the stuffed bear.

My sister was living with us when Jimi started doing this and we'd regularly have to sort through the pile of mascara and lipsticks around the bear when we had to get ready for work in the morning. One morning, we found a tube of mascara that didn't belong to either one of us. That's when we discovered that Jimi was also a cat burglar (get it? ha ha) It was during the summer, so it was apparent that he was sneaking into open windows and stealing makeup to bring to the shrine of the bear. The funny thing was that it was always makeup.. nothing else.

Jimi also liked riding in the car, so he'd try to sneak in whenever he saw us leaving. If it was just to go pick up the kids from somewhere, I'd let him come along because I enjoyed seeing the strange looks I'd get from people who noticed that there was a cat in the back window. It got to be a problem once when the neighbor was having a garage sale, because apparently he tried to go for a ride in EVERYONE's car. Someone actually drove off before they noticed him in the car. Funny cat.

I miss Jimi. He's living with my son's ex-girlfriend right now because my son can't have cats where he is. I can't either because there are a lot of wild animals where we live and Jimi is not a cat that can be kept indoors. I've tried it and he's miserable. He likes to be inside to sleep, but he's beyond cranky if he can't go outside as he pleases. You know that saying, "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"? Well, let's just say that Jimi is 'mama'.

I'm a dog person. I'm not even a little bit of a cat person. But Jimi was definitely the exception to the rule.

UPDATE:
I finally located a picture that I wanted to put in this post. We all wondered if Jimi was sending us a message when we found him laying next to a headless bunny on our front porch.


Yikes.