Melissa, Greek for "honeybee."
I acquired her after the death of Melanie, my ancient female Bombay cat, at the age of 16, on December 6, 1998. Born May 2, 1982, in El Paso, Texas, she was the last survivor of what was once a houseful of cats that also included:
By-Tor, a gray-and-white Persian male born Valentine's Day 1984, El Paso. His body was powerful and his demeanor tough, like his namesake, Prince By-Tor, a character created by Neil Peart of the Canadian progressive-rock band Rush in his lyrics for the group's songs "By-Tor And The Snow-Dog"(1974) and "The Necromancer"(1975). And By-Tor's love life was flat,especially after he was fixed, but that meant that the female cats who met him did not appreciate him, for his heart was really as soft,warm, tender and gooey as his birthday suggests beneath the fierce exterior. In April 1990 he expired aged 6 in Carthage, Texas from ingestion of a toxic substance or substances unknown and returned to the elements.
Abyot, a little multicolored long-haired female, white and black and burnt- orange, with green eyes, born August 7, 1984, El Paso. Her name, "revolution" in Amharic, reflects the African roots of the domestic cat. Demure and ladylike but warm of heart, Abyot was missed after she crawled into the engine compartment of the wrong pickup truck for warmth on a cold morning in February 1992 and died, at the age of 7, after the owner started the engine.
Ormazd, a gray, green-eyed male tabby born October 14, 1985, Austin, Texas. Independent of spirit like all cats and not firmly attached to me or to my household, he departed for greener pastures in April 1987.
Also, Porphyri, a yellow-eyed black female with touches of white on her front paws who was born July 10, 2001 in Shreveport, Louisiana, lived with me for about two weeks in early February 2002 before dying mysteriously.
And Bethany, a calico with gray-green eyes born March 21, 2004 in Deadwood, Texas, lived with me for about a month before succumbing to a respiratory ailment acquired at the unkempt home of the unkempt old woman from whom I acquired her.
Neither Abyot nor Ormazd nor Porphyri nor Bethany, nor Melissa, nor her late companion Akobundu, a green-eyed gray tabby male born March 19, 2000 in Carthage, Texas who died of acute kidney failure in the same location on February 5, 2004, ever knew Dharma, my first cat. He was another green-eyed gray male tabby more distinctly marked than Ormazd or Akobundu who was born September 15, 1982, in El Paso and died beneath the wheels of an unknown motor vehicle in the 9900 block of El Paso's Rushing Drive in March 1984, aged 1 1/2. Loyal, curious, intelligent and affectionate, Dharma was too recklessly eager to experience the world for his own good, as it turned out.
Let us return to the present.
Born October 1, 1999, in Carthage, Texas, Melissa is 9 years, 8 months old. She is a Libra with a Cancer Moon; her nature is affectionate but sensitive, even fragile, and nervous; she dislikes disharmony. She is solid black with just a hint of rust in her longish fur, and she has chartreuse eyes, as Melanie had, and as you can see from Melissa's picture up at the top of this page. Melissa is of mixed ancestry, her father feral and known only to God who knows all, her mother a cat owned, so to speak, by Harold & Janet Glaze of Carthage. Melissa has two siblings who, unfortunately, I could not adopt as well. One, who was gray and white, was already promised to someone else; the other was also solid black. Like Melanie, Melissa was rather wild at first;capturing her required chasing her around the Glazes' living room for over half an hour before she was finally cornered in a bathroom.
She was spayed when she began to cry for a male in the night and disturb my sleep. Anybody who knows anything about astrology knows how Libra likes relationships; she can have them, but I refuse to contribute to the nation's pet overpopulation problem. Millions of unwanted cats and dogs are put to death in animal shelters, even so-called "no-kill" ones, every year, or die miserable deaths wandering around in the city or countryside, where they are unable, despite what some people believe, to fend for themselves. Think about that, and please get your cat or dog fixed.
(Photo by Mark Andrew Holmes, processed by Corbett C. Jones.)