I Live With Three Beautiful Ladies (Revisited)

I Live With Three Beautiful Ladies

Posted by V. T. Eric Layton on Apr 1, 2010

I love them dearly.

Back in ’98, my mom was dying. She was living here with me in Tampa at the time. She was too sick to stay in her beloved cabin in the North Carolina mountains anymore. One day mom told me she wanted a little kitten. I was incredulous, to say the least. What was I going to do? Tell her no? I said, “Sure, mom. Whatever you want.” She was going to find one in the newspaper. Alright. That was that.

About a week or so later, a friend who worked with me at the Sears Service Center here in Tampa came running into the shop at work one morning. He was in a frenzy. “Eric! There’s a tiny kitten out in the back parking lot!” Well, the back parking lot was also where 20 or 30 service vans came and went about this time every morning. That kitten didn’t have a chance. We ran back there to check.

She was really tiny… about 5 or 6 days old. There was a feral colony in the woods behind the service center, so I figured one of the mama cats was moving her litter from one place to another and dropped this one along the way. I could tell it was a little girl because it was a three color cat, also known as calico. Calico cats are almost always female. I gathered her up and clocked out and took her home to my mom.

She was so little, though, that she wasn’t eating solid food yet. I had to become a substitute cat mother for her. With a little help and training from my then girlfriend, Sherry, we learned how to bottle feed and take care of the little one. I wanted to name her “Sears the cat”. My mother was having none of that. She said, “This kitten is PRECIOUS.” It stuck.

What I didn’t know at the time I brought Precious home from work was that my mother had already found a kitten in the paper. A lady was bringing it over in a couple days. Oh my. So, that’s how I ended up with Precious and Patches (another calico). Sadly, my mother didn’t live too long after this. She never really got to enjoy the kitties’ company. However, they’ve been the absolute best thing she could have ever left me.

A couple years after mom died. I brought in a little feral black kitten that was living in my backyard. Her name is Li’l Black Kitty. Original, huh? She’s a sweetheart. And Li’l Black Kitty makes three. That’s how I ended up living with three beautiful ladies. Here they are… Precious, Patches, and Li’l Black Kitty.

Yeah… Yeah… I know what posts like this do to my burly biker reputation.

Until next time… ride safely!

~Eric

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This article was originally published on my Nocturnal Slacker | Lockergnome blog. You can click HERE to see it there and read the accompanying comments.