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Snoopy: November 7, 1970 ~ August 10, 1991

Probably one of my other more memorable cats I’ve had over the years was Snoopy, and it was a bit strange and odd how he happened to come into my life. I was on my way home from high school on November 7, 1970 and stopped in my local magazine shop. I was busy browsing the magazine racks looking for any new magazines that may have come out and that I might want to buy, when in came this magnificently, all pure white young cat. He was by no means a kitten exactly, but what intrigued me was his brilliant white fur. I had never in my life seen an all white cat before, and you might say he was “calling to me”. He sauntered over to me as if I were a long lost friend, and began rubbing his feline body against his legs. Considering that he was a stray cat, he was very clean looking as if at one time he may have belonged to someone. I quick dashed out the magazine store to find a public phone, and called my mother’s place of work about finding this gorgeous white cat, and would it be all right to bring him home, and she said yes. I dashed back into the store, where the white cat hadn’t moved a muscle from where I had left him, as if he were waiting for me. I scooped him up and wrapped him under my black velvet coat that I was wearing at the time, as it was a very chilly day that day. He made himself at home right away, as if he had lived there all his life, and the other cats that I had at the time, consisting of Babette, Friskey, Biddy and Patchouli seemed to welcome him as well, like he was a member of the feline family. Rather unusual as usually whenever a pet owner introduces a new pet into the family where a pet or pets already exists, there is often an “adjustment” period where they get to know each other and get along.

I don’t know why, but when it came to name this cat, I picked out the name Snoopy, after that famous Charlie Brown beagle created by Charles Shultz. Now here is where an oddity occurred and has always struck my mind even to this day, so many years later. My great-grandmother had died only a few months before on August 30, 1970 at the age of 98. Both my mother and grandmother informed me, that my great-grandmother while throughout her life always had pets, she always, but always wanted a pure white cat, but never had one. It almost became the family joke that Snoopy was “Grandma’s” cat, not only because he was a pure white cat, but he appeared in our lives only a little while after her death. And odder still, the fact, that Snoopy was the only cat in our home to live as long as he did. He died on August 10, 1991, some twenty years after finding him and as I said, he hadn’t been a kitten, so therefore probably even older. To this day, I can’t help thinking, that in more ways than one, Snoopy really was in every sense of the word, was “Grandma’s” cat.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

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