Sam was from a litter Jim had. Jim was a stray Persian who found the offices of Nadler Publishing, my employer way back in the early days of the first President Clinton. Jim was practically starved, yet turned out to be pregnant(and we couldn't, of course, change the name when we found out the beast was female). So you see, there's nothing about being a right wing maniac that prevents you from recognizing that sometimes a mother's name is Jim.*
When Jim had her litter, Sam seemed to take to me. He slept in my shirt pocket while I worked, stretched out on my thigh and dug his claws in absently. Mom adopted him.
He used to chase flashlight beams and crash into walls, but something in him broke one day and he got real weird about people. My Mom can cut the knots out of his tummy hair, but when he hears other people, he generally hides out. To the extent I sometimes forget she has a cat.
He hates my kids. When he wasn't hiding from them when they were babies and toddlers, he'd hiss and swipe at them with his pathetic, hairy, de-clawed paws.
But the other night he didn't run when my car turned in the driveway. He didn't hide when I walked through the door. He just laid in his place on the dining room table. Even let me pet him some.
He's a huge musk ox of a cat.
*Nadler Publishing was founded with the tabloid K.C. Jones, which was conceived as a sort of local National Review, or, if you prefer, a hard right Village Voice. It's editor in chief was an ultra-right wing vegetarian Jew who eventually married a Christian anarchist. His partner idolized Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street and was a proud alumni of the Reagan Youth skate punk outfit.
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