For a cat person, Jay has a funny way of expressing it, being catless. His most recent kitty was the late Puddytat (as in: "I tawt I taw a..."), a beautiful seal point Siamese who wandered up one day and stayed for eight years. Jay and Puddytat went through a lot together, not all of it pretty. Alas, Puddytat had a disastrous encounter with a neighbor's land yacht and disappeared, but showed up ten days later, weak and injured. Jay rushed him to a local vet who diagnosed a broken jaw and a damaged eye and managed to restore Puddytat to functionality, but not quite. Puddytat lost an eye. A year or so after the injury he asked to go outside one sunny afternoon. That was many Novembers ago, and Puddytat has never been heard from since. Jay's still heartbroken.

Insistent Puddytat napped on Jay's computer desk in front of the keyboard, swishing his tail when disturbed by uncatlike activities like typing and moving the computer mouse. Quoting wistful Jay," At night, he slept on my feet, which was way welcome in the winter but somewhat of an imposition in warmer months." So the irreplaceable Puddytat remains un-replaced.

In addition to Puddytat (pictured at right), Jay's two-ago-former abode generally had one or more porch cats dropping by for snacks. Puddytat brought an orange tomcat home and introduced him, just in time for dinner. Jay named him Jellico. "Puddytat is the only cat I know who kept a pet cat." Puddytat insisted that Jellico remain a porch cat, while Puddytat remained mostly an indoor cat who walked by himself (in the Rudyard Kilping sense of the phrase) and went to romp outside when he pleased. After a few months, Jellico apparently moved on to a more gourmet porch. That is, he stopped coming around. The second picture shows His Orange Highness munching Original Flavor, hanging out on the porch.

These days, Jay consoles himself with mere pictures of cats, some local, and some from the far reaches of his Hondacars' universe - about two days drive. The most catworthy place has been Key West, home for a while to His Exalted Authorness Ernest Hemingway. Ernie's wife's elegant house there, now a Hemingway shrine, still houses multitudinous people of the cat persuasion, setting off a long-running flap in the Conch Republic that for now has subsided to dull mutterings.

Ernie, the tour guides explain, was a cat person, and kept twenty of them. Some of the cats that now hang out around the place are actual descendents of original six-toed Hemingcats. Wooooo-ooooo-ooooo. Disregarding the number of toes, they're all very friendly and most are willing to pose for pictures. The most famous of the famed is a grey one named (brace yourself) Zane.