Little Black Sambo

I kinda skipped over our Little Black Sambo story.   Remember the book?  I'm not sure if it's even out on the shelves these days.  It's probably not politically correct...but Grandma Great still owns my dad's childhood copy, which she read to us grandkids and now to my kids.  My kids know it nearly by heart. 

A couple years ago in May, we were at Jay's parents house and the neighbor guy, we called him crazy Mark, handed my kids two kittens, literally.  He gave them each a kitten and told them to take them home.  Who does that to a mother?   Crazy Mark, that's who... So off we went with a solid black kitten and a yellow/white tiger-stripped kitten.  Fortunately, we pawned the yellow kitten off on our friends.  We kept the black kitten and my kids named him Little Black Sambo. 

Sambo was so tiny and estimated to be only about five weeks old.  We thought this annoying suckling sound and his pawing would subside, but they never did, ever.  It was very strange.  You would be sitting there and he would start sucking on your pant leg.  Weird, very weird. My mom kept him one time while we were away for a week...she said never again, that cat is weird.  I know, he fit right in with our zoo.

Meepie, our older cat, hated Little Black Sambo with all his might, and of course, Little Black Sambo was intrigued by the mighty Meepie.  He followed him everywhere and tried to play with him.  Meepie wanted none of it.  They co-existed but it was not peaceful.

We started noticing that stuffed animals would be in the living room randomly but we didn't know how or why.  The kids denied it, but that wasn't anything unusual...they deny everything.  One night when Jay was working and I was up watching TV in the living room, out of the corner of my eye I saw this stuffed animal move across the carpet...it was crazy.  Behind this huge stuffed bear was Little Black Sambo, you couldn't even see him he was so small.  Hilarious.  He was the one carrying those stuffed animals around every night.  Too cute.  Sambo would sometimes talk to you, which was adorable, and he could catch flies.  He was a great cat.  He was absolutely humongous by the time he hit the two year mark in April of 2010. 

In late October of last year, I thought I heard the strangest sound during the night, Jay did too.  Turns out it was Sambo.  He was sick and in pain.  He had developed a urinary tract infection, which apparently is common in large male cats.  He spent a week at the vet on a catheter and they sent him home.  He was home about 36 hours when I took him back and told them he was not well and that they needed to put him to sleep.  I felt horrible about dropping him off, but it would not get better.  It was so sad.  I could not have a cat that couldn't hold his urine and/or was in severe pain.

Crazy thing, Meepie came out of his depression.  He was a new man.  We didn't realize how much he hated Little Black Sambo...but we sure do miss him anyway:)