A small female Bengal cat got out of the house one day and got pregnant. A few weeks after the kittens were born, Gaby came out of her Step Mother and Father's house carrying a woven basket with five of the most adorable kittens you've ever seen. They were all crying and it was real high. There was no getting out of adopting one of these. Gaby picked an all black male. When we were coming up with names, she didn't like any of the ones we (the adults) suggested. You know, names like, Deepak, Wes Montgomery, Martin, Dewey, Jimi, Erastus H. Sipperley and Topo Gigio. Just normal run of the mill cat names. She liked Jangle. So, that was it. But we just called him Django. And that's how we spelled it. So Gaby never knew that her Jangle was really Django Reinhardt, legendary French gypsy guitarist.
Django was real smart and lovable. Always sweet and curious (most kitties are though, right). He would scratch through a bag of cat food or kitty litter and spill everything all over the floor. I finally started keeping these bags in a closet under the basement steps. The closet door was old and falling apart. He used to scratch strips of wood from the door and moulding, trying to get at those bags. He never got in. When he got to be about a year and a half old, he got really sick one day. He just laid around all day. He was taken to the veterinarian the next day and they said that his kidneys were failing. He had to be put to sleep. When I came home from work, there was a feeling the same as if a human had died. That night, I went down to the closet and picked up all of Django's strips of wood and put them in a Ziplock bag. I attached the bag to the back of my music stand with a clothespin (where it remained for years) and cried just as hard as I would have for any human.
Very soon, Gaby wanted another. A friend of a friend gave her a little Tortoise shell kitten. She was named Issa. Issa was also a very sweet kitty. The fourteen year old Tabby, Willie took a liking to her. He would groom her every day. She would just lay there and enjoy it. Then, they would wrestle. All in fun but, it sounded like they were killing each other.
Issa grew, but never got too big. She loved to be around while I was building guitar amps in the basement. I always liked to be working in the early hours of the morning. The routine was always the same, I would listen to WNUR (which played very interesting music at 3 am) and build these cool amps, with Issa always within arms reach. She mostly just laid around, but every now and then, she would meow just to let me know she was there. Or, she would walk across the bench over all the resistors and capacitors and I would have to grab her before she got burned by the soldering iron. It was also really nice to take a break and pet her for a while. These are very comforting memories. I'm considering borrowing someones cat to help with my next project.
