Bye William

Yesterday morning, William was very listless, had no appetite, and had no energy to do anything. I took him to the vet, and sadly discovered he was in heart failure.

I think I've had William for 16 years. When he joined me at the warehouse I was living in, I called him Willie. He was Willie for several years, and then gradually, we started calling hiim William. I guess he grew up.

I wasn't ever going to get a cat because I had cat allergies. I read somewhere (I'm sure now this was completely unsubstantiated) that certain kinds of cats have low dander and can help someone overcome allergies. Meanwhile, my pal Candy, a scientific authority if anyone was, told me that if I ate bee pollen and washed my cat once each month, I could easily overcome a cat allergy. Armed with this sage advice, I answered an ad for an Oriental shorthair kitten somewhere out in Scarborough. I stocked up on bee pollen and aquired the kitten.

Willie howled for two solid days. He was not impressed with me or the place I lived. By the time he settled down, I realized I was not breaking out and experiencing my usual symptoms. Willie turned out to be way too smart to be a cat. I would play a game with him, and as soon as he figured out the game, he would howl, and I would have to invent a new game. After about a year, I decided to get him a feline companion because I just couldn't invent games fast enough. That's when Delia came on the scene. Meanwhile, Willie was not impressed with being washed every month and that strategy lasted all of one attempt. I stopped eating bee pollen after a couple months, and my allergy was pretty much gone (and it stayed gone too). Candy should get the Nobel Prize for her work on eradicating allergies.

Back when I lived in the warehouse, there would occasionally be film crews on-site filming some show or movie. We had a love/hate relationship with them. They always acted like they owned the world, with a fine balance between rudeness and arrogance. On the other hand, sometimes they needed a studio to film in and paid extremely well on those occasions for the use of space. Some people in the building named them film scum. One day, I was in my studio, reading or painting, when a crew set up in the hallway outside my door. William would have been less than a year old at the time. When they were ready to shoot, some guy shouted, "Quiiiiietttttt....Readyyyyyy....Roll-em." Willie immediately ran up to the door and howled in his loudest other-worldly howl. Then silence. "What the hell was that?" "I never heard anything like it." Then...."Quiiiiietttttt....Readyyyyyy....Roll-em.". Willie, who had by that point settled back down on my lap, ran over to the door again and let out another loud and long howl. This happened three times in a row. Then I heard a sound at the door. Instead of knocking on the door to see if I was home, somebody thought they could buy off Willie by sliding slices of lunch meat under my door. This was amusing me to no end so I quietly watched. So did Willie, at this point once again settled on my lap. They eventually built sound barriers and shifted their shoot down the hall.

At that time, Willie had the ability to jump up to the top of a door. Occasionally, I would see him balancing on top of a door like it was the most normal thing in the world for a cat to do.

I think Willie became William when Tuffy P and I got married and moved to the first Anchovy World Headquarters, on Blackthorn Ave in Toronto. By that time, I had Willie and Delia, and I also had my father's cat Spud, as he couldn't care for Spud anymore. Tuffy P. had Twiggy and William was not going to play nice. He had been an indoor cat all this time, and we decided to give him an opportunity to go outside. We heard or read somewhere that this strategy was sometimes successful if cats don't get along. I'm sure this was completely unsubstantiated. The first time he went outside, he encountered a big old neighbourhood tom we called Red. Red was maybe the toughest old grizzled tom in the hood. William started to walk in slow motion as if doing that would make him invisible to Red. Red ambled in front of William's path and waited. Williams slowmotion turned to a full stop as he changed direction. Wherever he went, Red would show up in front of him. It turned out Red was OK with William, and going outside did help him get along with Twig.

William put me to sleep most nights. It was as if it was his job. I would settle down in bed, and he would jump up on my chest and start purring. This usually put me to sleep in minutes, after which, he would hop off my chest and settle in somewhere else on the bed. The only time he didn't do this was during the period in which I stayed with my father, more-or-less looking after him. At that time, William stuck to my dad like glue. During that time, he liked to curl up and sleep beside my dad.

Over the past year, William became much less robust, and more delicate. He lost some weight, and he avoided rough-housing with the other cats. Maybe that was the onset of his heart problems? We just figured he was getting old.

William was a good cat-buddy. He was with us a long time, and I'll miss the little guy.