Rockvale TN, May 9, 2011 – Fueled by Islay single-malt and his crusty but sunny disposition, his Old-Timer knife snug in his pocket, our hero sits down to write.

One time in Seattle when I was working as a walker/sitter for my friend Dan MacDonald's company, Fantastic Dog and Cat, I met a lady who was getting ready to go on Christmas Back Home, and I was going to sit her cats. This happened a lot at that time in Seattle, because of Microsoft and all. Where you got people making a ton of bucks, but they're working long hours to do it. Thus they need someone to take the pet care load off them. So she brings em out and there's a kinda nice domestic short hair or something and then this cat that she kept raving about, a cat she referred to as a 'Hemingway cat”. This means that it had extra toes on the front, which a lot of the descendents of Hemingway's do in fact. She'd bought it in Key West, of course.

I'm from Florida sorta. In Miami I once had a multi-toed cat named Hank Aaron because his front feet looked like baseball gloves. He was a nice big yellow guy. My point is that the multiple toe genetic variation is quite common, especially in Florida I guess, but just because you bought the cat from a place in Key West and it has extra toes does not extend it into literature.

I've been paying attention lately to the increasing number of white w/blk markings kitties lately and they are indeed making a comeback, at least in the images that come across my realtime vision, increasing as a percentage of the population. I've had a few of 'em myself lately, which, at last, you say, brings me to my topic.

I know that it is hard for you to believe, out there in little people land, that occasionally someone even as fabulously wealthy as I can be “down on his uppers”, I think they used to say...why, we even had to sell the Renoir... but it happens.

Such that a few months ago, when it was time to spay our three adorable American Bob Tail girls, we wuz broke and the Renoir was gone already. So in true hillbilly fashion the little bob tail girls started hanging out on motorcycles and smoking cigarettes with yet another local bob-tail dude, plus his friend Lefty on the side, apparently, because half of their babies are longtails. It was about this time that I wiki'ed bob tail cat and came back with American Bob Tail cat, for which they've got this whole historical legend laid out, I won't go into it, you should just go read it for yourself. It is fascinatingly overblown stuff.

My point though, is that my bobtail girls are the daughters of my long tail Baby Mama and one or both of the Bob-Tail Brothers, notorious gangstah siblings who used to hang out around here in Rockvale until the County got the upper hand - - I hope they are alive in good hands even though neutralized, and I'm pretty sure they are, because they were awesome, dood. Nothin hipper than a bob-tail cat. Guys in Playboy Magazine, or its niche-heir today, all want 'em. Show their sensitive yet manly side, to have a bobtail. They are, as the French say, “tres cool”.

What is it about bob tails that people find so cool? More cuddly, that's what. A recent survey discerned that more than 87 per cent of respondents found the American Bob Tail to be far more huggable-looking than long tail cats similar in size, age, and coloring. Okay, so I only asked my wife.

The little guys are just cute, that's it, soon to be the pet of the decade. Move over chihuahua, pot-bellied pig, It's coming and it's FUZZY! I swear there's gonna be a plethora of bob tail cats in the media, just you wait. You be seein' Oprah with a bob tail, Charlie Sheen doing blow with his. I was right about that roller skate thing in 1969, too, as well as other prognostications since.

Meantime I got a ranch to run. And kittens to find homes for. No Asians need apply.

One of the problems, of course, is that since the bobs are so cute, the kittens without the mutation, that is, the long tails, are gonna be more difficult to find homes for. So any normal people out there, any Cat Mothers who don't NEED a showy pet to love one, get in touch. While these kitties are not “sports” they are wonderful, I think I mentioned the two white w/blks, and the Black one, which I named Roger in honor of Captain Midnight but which you can name whatever you want. The smallest of the whites, about a month younger than her cuz, is gonna be a fluffy.

If you live in Tennessee or north Alabama and want an adorable kitten, just write to me care of panama@panamaredmusic.com. We'll deliver.

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