CAT LIST

As a kid in the 'hood, I didn't even know anybody that had a cat for a pet. There were a few we'd see, but nobody back then liked them so we just chased them off or ignored them.

Our first cats lasted only a week or so around Halloween. They showed up when Scott was about 8. He named them Bootsey and Catsy. Somewhere we got a doghouse with a small door and thought they might like it. They went in and out, but seemed puzzled by it. We later found out that they were neighbor Julie Moore's.

Midnight was our first real cat. Black as Mac the dog, this cat was strictly outdoors. He had a personality and never roughed up the kids too much. He stopped one morning to scratch an itch and my wife backed over him in the car. We really liked that guy and were sorry he met his demise that way.

Smoky was kinda our Ginger. A non-descript, but pleasant cat that left after Spring Break one year when the food supply dried up.

Feets we inherited when our next door neighbors moved and left her. Her name was really Sweets, but I refuse to call her that and since she had 4 white feet, called her feets. Not very personable, she was always around for feeding time. A cat fight she lost cost her her life as she limped to the woods one last time and never returned. I didn't know she was hurt that badly.

Next came Joney B. Jones. A big tabby, he loved to roam. A turdy old man on Richview Road shot him in the face with a pellet gun. A hole through his right ear remained after we cleaned him up. Someone spotted him going down into a sewer, and he started hanging out with some bad cats. But he'd come home four or five times a week. I liked him. I even made up a song about him that was pretty stupid.

About the same time Herzog, an all white cat, came along. His moniker was in honor of Whitey Herzog, great Cardinal manager. He slept on Bandit's side in his dog house. Bandit didn't care, but Herzog wasn't around long. I think he had travel and adventure on his mind.

Just before Feets was our best cat ever, Cujo. He was our inside cat and when he escaped outside, he got crazy. Once back inside, he returned to normal. He had all kinds of personality, and was our kids' bud. Courtney even took him to Marion for one of her Senior picture shots. When it came time for him to be put to sleep, I gave him a bowl of strawberry ice cream before he made the trip to John Fields'. I figured it was the least I could do for him.

Miscellaneous, Moonlight Graham, Cuddles also called Scottie are our grandkittens. Fetch and Woodsie are friends' cats. But like dogs, cats are not in the picture any more for us. Our pets are now the occasional geckos that get in our house.

THESE AREN'T RAINIERS, BUT THEY'LL HAVE TO DO

In the West, it's becoming the sad time of year. No, not the monsoons, though this summer has seen a rough one where microbursts of up to 90 miles per hour ripped the roof off our church.

No, it's not the opening NFL camp of the Arizona Cardinals. Actually there are only two reasons why the Cardinals won't be good again this season: Bill and Michael Bidwill.

No, it's not the oppressive heat. It was much hotter in the Midwest and at Disneyland last Monday where the temp was 100 and the humidity wasn't far behind.

No, it's not the Diamondbacks and their stoic and stolid no nonsense/no personality manager Bob Melvin. They're no good, but what NL team is? The media would have you believe it's the Mets, but we know starting pitching and we know better.

It's the end of RAiNIER CHERRIES!! What a sad time! What a great fruit. In San Diego I bought two pounds for $4.99. When I returned to Scottsdale I bought one pound for $6.99. Against my wife's wishes, but, hey, they're coming to an end. And I'm hooked.

I go back to my neighbor's cherry tree when I was a kid. I loved them then, too. But not like Orla Ray "Butch" Lashbrook. He'd sit in that tree and eat his fill. It made Mrs. Igo so mad to see him eat her cherries. He'd just come down and laugh and run off. But they couldn't touch RaIniers.

Huge yellow and red cherries come in July and are gone by the end of the month. I start craving them around May 1. We tried freezing some once, but no go. I guess I'll just have to stick around Arizona next July to partake in culinary heaven.

On an unrelated note, thanks to loyal reader Scott Q. who reminded me that I omitted one dog from an earlier blog--Mac. How I could forget that dog, I don't know. A couple of summer school students set him in my chair one morning just before the bell rang. They told me one of their dogs had pups and this one was mine.

A heinz, he was dark black and I said, "Hey, he's dark like you, Mac (student MacArthur Thomas), I'll call him Mac."

Mac responded, "That isn't funny, Mr. Quinn. I got babies named after me." We kidded a lot; I knew he wasn't mad. And so Mac was taken home to the family. In a line of dogs who wouldn't come to me, Mac fit right in. When called, he'd usually take off and go the other way. He was a mischievous little guy.

We tired of him and gave him to a neighbor who would only take him if we threw in the dog house. We did, gladly. To top it off, I found out later that the girls that presented him to me had just found him on the street. Oh, well. I hope MacArthur's babies turned out better.

IT'S STILL THE SAME
Yesterday I watched a re-run of an old favorite movie of mine, A Man and a Woman. With a backdrop of Monte Carlo, and a musical score that is awesome, especially the almost haunting theme song, it's still a movie I don't miss when it comes on one of the movie channels I get on cable. Actually, I'm not that much of a movie watcher anymore, but they come with my sports channels.

It's a black and white/color movie with some subtitles and some real cheesy dialogue, "Love is stronger than we." Now, that is Green Bay cheesy.

I've been to Monte Carlo three times. I actually even won money at the casino there. Ok, I played a poker machine for about two minutes and won maybe a dollar or so, but I still left there with loot. Amazingly, it hasn't changed at all. Monte Carlo that is.

By going back even further to another old movie, To Catch a Thief, you'll find the same thing. Not one thing appears to have changed in the harbor or skyline. Not so most places. No new highways either. Just more traffic.

I started writing this blog yesterday, stopped to pick up some friends to play golf, finished the blog today, and now for two days I've had the theme song of this movie going around in my head. Oh well, it's a lot better than The Macarena.

A LIST OF DOGS

Snooky was my first dog. I was four. He was a thief. We lived in one of the very first houses in the Fruit Bowl on Hillcrest. Snooky would bring us stuff from neighbors' yards. Once he even dragged back a half-gallon of milk.

A fox terrier by the name of Tippy was my next dog. My oldest niece let him squirm out of her hands and he broke a leg.

My next dog was a collie. I don't even remember his name. We got him from Happy's Pet Shop and he had hair balls and died after a month or so. A neighbor, Danny Vaught, bought his brother. Same place: same result.

Ginger was also a terrier who was a favorite of my Mom's. I don't recall anything distinguishing about her. She was just around and liked to lap sit.

A chihuahua, dubbed Chiquita saw me through my junior high and high school years. Not real timid, not real aggressive, she was pretty cool.

Pierre, how original(!) was a pretty cool poodle my wife and I bought. He would sorta come to me when I called, though sometimes he would run all over 24th and 23rd Streets before he meandered back home. He didn't like Scott when he was born, so he got shipped to my parents. (Pierre, not Scott.)

Bandit was my last dog. He never came to me, but he was my favorite. A big white and black Great Pyrenees mix, he was my bud. I'd walk him, bathe him, yell at him, but he was just cool. He'd jog with me, too. When arthritic hips gave out on him after 13 years, I couldn't even take him to the vet to have him put to sleep. Caroline and friend, Nida, did the dirty work.

And that's it for me. Like the movie Must Love Dogs, you don't have to have one to love them.

WHAT ABOUT TOAST AND CEREAL?

I've never been much of an indoor cook. I love to grill hamburgers, brats, steaks, even chicken on the barbie as they say Down Under, but somehow I never mastered the range. Oh, eggs, I suppose I can handled well, but they're not much of a challenge. And a microwave is easy, too. Ok, Kids, so I once nuked a piece of sausage so bad the cat refused to eat it. But as I was saying...

Starbucks has taken off and who'd a thunk it? How could you amass an empire based almost solely on coffee? Well, they have.

My idea never got off the entrapeneural ground. My idea, hatched in 1978 was to have a drive -thru cereal and toast restaurant. Why not? There are plenty of other specialty shops. And besides, who doesn't love cereal and toast?

I tossed it around to some of my students. They thought it was goofy. Hey, but back then they'd have thought the idea of Starbucks equally crazy.

Specialty cereals and toast on all kinds of breads and bagels. It could happen. Maybe if I added turkey bacon....

BICECLETAS

I've blogged before about bicycles. With Armstrong and Landis and bicycling becoming such a popular sport, it's hard to ignore.

I had a few bikes in my day, and I have one now that I inherited from Courtney when she left Arizona for California. I used to ride it quite a bit around the one and a half mile loop of our subdivision, but I've ignored it for some time now.

My reason: the seat's too hard. I looked at a bike shop for a softer seat, but none of them looked too comfortable. Bikes seem to be built more for speed now than in the old days. Gears? Are you kidding me. In my day, you coasted or stood up and leaned into climbing a hill.

Helmets for riding bikes? Not back then. You went over the handlebars if you had a bad wreck. And if you were riding on the handlebars, you just got thrown farther. If you were riding on the back, you could get flipped. But I remember a lot more ankles caught in the spokes.

Finally, locks for bikes? Why? No one would take your bike. It was an unwritten code. You respected somebody's bike like their ballglove. You left them alone.

That's honestly the way it was back when. And I never remember my backside being sore after a long day's ride.

ROADRUNNERS AND COYOTES AND JAVELINAS, OH MY

Privy to viewing all three in Arizona, I believe the roadrunner my favorite. I really think coyotes are pretty, and while I've only seen javelinas up close one time, I really like them, too, so the decision is tough. But roadrunners win out.

Now, I've never seen a baby of any of the three, but this picture showing the baby roadrunner is awesome. I'd love to get a bunch of them and set them free in our neighborhood. We only have a few, maybe just one coyote for them to watch out for, but we just have too much greenery in the green belt of Scottsdale, so I'll have to do my bird watching on area golf courses.

I'm not sure what it is that draws me to them. They're not pretty, they're very awkward, they are not friendly. In fact, they don't seem personable at all. But we sure didn't have any in Mt. Vernon, though Opdyke's team name was the Roadrunners. I used to think that was goofy, but no more.

Now if Summersville could change its name to the javelinas. Where's the phonebook? Let me get Cheryl McClure or Diane Payne on the phone.