Just 2 of many

Lion and Butterball. Two wonderful cats of mine who made an indelible impression on me.

Lion came much later, and he had the weirdest trait of wanting to bite any human big toe in sight. Wearing sandals? Keep lively becaus that cat would come up and rub against your legs and put his head down to snuggle and the next thing you know, tiny sharp teeth are piercing your toe from the top and bottom. Being barefoot was dangerous because the requisite tap dance to protect yourself was liable to give you splinters on your feet.

Then there was the excellent option of covering his face with a woolie or something and watch him shake his haed slowly and walk backwards. All you had to do was aim him off the porch toward the umbrella grass, and you could actually get him to fall. It was hilarious.

Once, though, he got some crazy eye infection that made one of his eyes swell up to apparently twice the normal size. We would swab it with bits of amoxicillin from a broken open leftover pill, and eventually the swelling subsided, but the weird blue-white color remained. It was kinda sad - at least until he tried gnawing off a toe at which point people's pity typically evaporated as fast as their foot could retract in a move part evasive maneuver, part wind-up.

Butterball came much earlier. He was part of one the earliest litters. He was chubby and black and about as laid back as they come. When I would go out to take the trash to the street, he would follow me up the driveway as I dragged the cans. When I left the cans and turned around, he was there - waiting. I would pick him up and carry him back with me to the door, but by the time I got to the porch, he would wriggle and squirm to be let down. He would literally follow me to be carried back to where he started.

Butterball went missing at some point, and the rumor was one of the older neighbors killed him - probably on purpose (the jerks!). He was a great cat even if he was a bit dumb and lazy - we could identify that way.