Crazy Willy

One of my beloved feline friends is Willy The Cat otherwise christened by me "Crazy Willy" and the "Flying Mad Dutchman". I found little Willy on a hot Summer day in 1998 while eating lunch on the front porch of my mother's home where I was living at the time. I kept hearing this pitiful crying of a kitten somewhere nearby. I stopped eating and started searching for it by ear and traced it to a landscaping juniper bush in the next-door neighbor's yard. The neighbor's sprinkler was on and getting the juniper plant wet as well as me as I worked to locate the crying kitten. I struggled to get a glance at it as the source of the crying evaded me but I finally got a gander at this tiny vulnerable pitiful-looking little orange kitten inside the prickly hedge with matted wet hair plastered with juniper needles. I grabbed neo-Willy who initially was terrified that I was about to eat him but I immediately caressed him and spoke comfortingly to him and he responded with an immediate and obvious 180 degree emotional turn from terror to excitement that he had a new friend and savior in me as he clearly knew he was in trouble.

Mom and I nursed him back to health and he soon demonstrated to us how he got in trouble in the first place getting separated from his mom and litter mates too soon in life. Willy, as it turned out was an impulsive, spastic ADHD Type-A personality dare devil kitty with no self control. No doubt his brash and adventurous streak led him at even that young an age to head out from the nest after his mom had left her babies for a short time and he got lost and I fortunately I found him.

Since Willy entered our lives he has never ceased to entertain us and bring us the utmost joy. Willy was one of my best friends at a time in my life when I had few human friends during latter par of my dark years of self-imposed social isolation. Most of the cats in my life from that period are now buried and gone with only Buster (born in late July 1995 still living in mom's house) along with Willy's adopted brother Puffy (born in 1999 in mom's house). Buster's brother Rudy lives down mom's street but visits her every day for love and some wet cat food.

Anywho, below are three images of Willy I captured today while working at mom's house.

There's a cat hidden somewhere in this picture.

Willy's logic: if I can't see them they can't see me.

Liquid orange cat cascading out of the bottom of this curtain.

Photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)