Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 197

In Loving Memory
Fup. Store Cat.
1988 — 2007

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Fup watercolor courtesy of reader Linda McDougall. Click here for a larger view.

Bear

Zooey

see Fup's photo album

Oreo glimpsed her first on the stairs of a fire escape. He figured she lived in the building.

He didn't think of the cat again until a few days later, when sunlight caught her face peeking out from under a parked car. No doubt there was some resemblance to Fup (the same green eyes, same white cheeks and chin), but he never gave it another thought.

More than a week passed before she reappeared, along 10th Avenue near Jamison Square. This time, he approached her.

Who's Fup? She had to be told. She'd come to Portland from far away. By herself? Had she ever quite answered Oreo's question?

When the following afternoon they crossed paths again, in the parking lot at 13th and Glisan, he offered, "I'd like to introduce you to some friends."

But as they approached the Park Blocks from Flanders Street, bystanders, one after another, stopped in their tracks, startled. Double-take after double-take. One redheaded woman actually said, "G'day, Fup," without breaking stride.

By the time Zooey started barking at them through the door — and Zooey rarely barked — Oreo was so freaked out that he plumb chickened out. Made up a hasty excuse and turned the cat away.

The Trip to Kahani

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Read the press release.

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Fup's Picks

That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are
by Bruce Eric Kaplan

"All these cats lead exciting and varied lives wholly independent of the human race," notes the editor in his Introduction. Well, duh. Scant attention has been paid to the role of community in modern cat culture, so what a relief that here, finally, fifty articulate felines set the record straight. Funny, sad, occasionally shocking, but never less than true, these brave monologues reaffirm our interdependency in ways that choreographed public displays such as Paws Across America never can.

Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs
by Amy Hempel

In "Dog Kibble," Tasha Baxter's verse exhibits a brutal economy of words: "Life is never meaningless," her villanelle announces, "there is always food." Here and throughout this collection these authors demand your attention, as if to bark, "You can send me to my room for yelling at the neighbors but you cannot silence what woofs in my heart!" Among the selections nominated for Best American Writing by Pets 2000 are Bob Barker Barry's sordid and hilarious hallucinogenic escapades with Lynda; a tragic, posthumous prose poem by Marrow Irving; and Sadie Louise Lamott's "Spoon River Sadie Louise," a wildly metered exploration of the cross-cultural dynamics within a household occupied by dogs, cats, birds, and small children. The sheer intellect of these collected pieces will renew your faith in dogs.

Is Your Cat Too Fat?
by Bronwen Meredith

Too fat for what? And what business is it of this Meredith person's anyway? Bronwen sounds like the kind of lady I wouldn't like at all.

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