Let me tell you a few things about Woogie.
Towards the end, Woogie was not in good shape. The tumour in his cheek that grew over Christmas had receded, but the left side of his face was literally dissolving away. In spite of all of this, he remained the single sweetest cat in the whole wide world. Pick him up, and he was happy as a clam, purring away like a buzzsaw. He had the softest fur of any animal I have ever met in my entire life, so much so that whole gangs of veterinary staff would often flock to him at his checkups just to feel it for themselves. And he was very enamoured of all of us. He loved people. He trusted his family implicitly, even when they were dunking him in soapy water or driving him to the vet.
A few years ago when I was still living at 108, I would invariably be the last person to bed at night, meaning that I would end up being responsible for putting Woogie to bed in the basement for the evening. He spent his nights in the basement for most of his life, because he was a loud, ornery, insistent son of a bitch and could wake the whole household at dawn in his attempts to get to his breakfast if he were not safely squared away downstairs. For years, he would race me to the top of the basement stairs every time I put him down there. For a while this bothered me because I thought I must have been seriously messing up his mojo (no pun intended) for him to want out that badly, but on the occasions that he did beat me to the top of the stairs, he would just sit there waiting for me to show up, panting and out of breath. It was all a game to him.
Woogie’s breakfast was only the first of his many daily devotions to his single favourite thing in the whole wide world: eating. To get between Woogie and his food could be a dangerous game. In his later years he developed a fondness for Kraft Dinner so fanatical that he could literally not be stopped from eating off my plate: he would keep coming and coming, climbing tables, chairs, couches, and stuff his face into the food with a disgruntled bark. As he was scarfing down mouthfuls of the stuff, he would occasionally talk with his mouth full, probably saying something along the lines of “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”
Woogie had a number of irrational fears. There were a couple of years when he was afraid of napkins. When he was 17 or 18 he fell off the couch and landed his forepaw in a cup of hot tea; following that, he was afraid of tea. In spite of all this, he was never afraid to stick up for himself with the neighbourhood cats, which culminated in the event last year when – at the age of 20, mind you – he worked out his inner Yoda, and attacked two cats a quarter of his age who had cornered Mojo. When the fight was over, he picked up his cane and hobbled away as though he hadn’t been kicking serious ass, only a moment before.
Woogie was hit by a car when he was around two years old, and this severely messed up his back. In spite of this, he lived to be 21 years old. For a while now I’ve suspected that death simply would not come for this cat; the reaper got scared away during the car accident, and was not coming back. Every time a vet told us that Woogie’s days were numbered, he’d just keep on going. This past Christmas, we got the worst prognosis in a long list of them, when the vet told us that he would not last more than a few days, but he proved them wrong yet again. Adam put the best capper on it on Saturday, as we were pulling into the parking lot at the vet’s: “Wouldn’t it be funny if we were hit by a car right now and we were all killed but Woogie survived?”
“Woogie” was not his original name; when we got him, he was named Tiger. This begat “Shny” which begat “J. Woogles Shny Brown,” which then contracted simply to “Woogie.” Among the many other nicknames visited upon Woogie in his lifetime, there were: Wooger, Booger, Boogie, Jumper, Shmoo Baloo, Smelly Belly (may be the literal translation of “Shmoo Baloo”), Bumhead, Stinky, Murray, The Bagel, Oldie McGee, Monsier LeBelly, MacDuff, Crazybelly, Mr. Boo, Mr. Belly, Mr. Pee Pee, Stinky Pete, Thumper, Belly Cat, His Royal Fatness, His Royal Cuteness, Shniggely, Jabba the Cute, Black Lips, Mow-roooooooooooo, Meng-yaaaaaaaaaaaaang, Poopmaker, Shmoogles, Shnoogles, Boogles McShny, Mr. Magoo, Lt. Col. John Woogie, Kato, Gee, Old Gee, Crazy Old Gee, Farty, Zitty Kitty, Flabby Tabby, ManMan, Woogie’s Twin Brother Bloogie, and PissMaster Prime.
That’s a few things about Woogie.