My "Sweety-Bumpus"

4:55 a.m. and Jones the cat is pulling my door open from the inside to get out. No, I am not interested in waking from that beautiful dream but am coddled enough to get up out of bed and let him out the front door. This 13-year-old pussycat came to live in my house when my 13-year-old daughter had to leave her father's house for reasons auspicious to her needs.

I remember what a handsome cat he was. Jones, a silver-grey, Russian-like-blue cat, with a long neck and large paws, scented the floors with his grace. And, I got him fixed the second day he was here; he'd never be able to live in harmony with my other cat, Buster, unless they were compatibly exchanged. Buster was a big fluff of a cat who we had as a little, flurry of a kitten and who purred to you out of love for taking care of him. On the other hand, Jones, from the very beginning, wanted no part of anyone living here, except my daughter, who, conveniently, developed allergies to him.

Thirty days after he arrived, he came in one night at 10:00 p.m. with his left, back paw bleeding so much that we had to bring him to the emergency cat hospital in San Mateo where they stiched him up, put a lampshade around his neck and sent him home with us. Two days later, lampshade intact, he slipped through one of the 3 1/2" louvered windows in my son's room to flee for outward bounds, only to be arrested by the quick-footed, left-kicking occupant who was determined to conquer. A year-and-a-half later, he had his first episode with urinary tract blockage. He was, it seems, on the brink of death when I took him down to the veterenarian's. They told us to come back the next morning and when we did, he visibly got up went to the water bowl and bit a tidbit of food, all inside a cage. It was hard to coax him to eat. We bought baby food to feed him but the only kind he liked was made out of lamb. Touch-and-go, and he survived it, making us much more aware of systemic breakdowns later.

Jones is pretty content these days and prefers not to go out other than on his pre-sunrise jaunts, when no other cat-owners are awake to signal the call of the wild...