Patrick Cleary

Thanks.

So in the last year of her life, my cat Rita had a vomiting problem.

She vomited everywhere.

Now, she didn't like to vomit on anything hard.

She liked to be on soft surfaces.

So she would jump up on the bed or on the couch.

And all of that was a little bit difficult to clean up.

She was a lady, though.

She would warn you.

She had this meow.

She would go, wow, wow, wow, wow, blah, you know.

And she had not only trained me, she trained all my friends and family that if we were having people over to dinner, if you heard, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody would get up and run to wherever she was and put her on the floor.

Now, Rita was the first of what I call the indeterminate cat-sitting adoptions, which is if anybody says, could you take care of my cat, but it's for an indeterminate amount of time, you've adopted a cat, right?

It's now happened to me multiple times, and I fall for it every time.

It's like, we just don't know, just a couple of days, and then a long time later, you're like, this is my cat.

And I got her from a friend of mine who I had never met.

This was back in the days...

Well, it was back in the days when the internet was new and it was bulletin board system.

And a woman who lived nearby said, my husband, I need to leave him.

And he said, if I leave, he'll kill the animals.