>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From Eamonn:

At 7:56 PM +0100 3/29/07, Eamonn Corbally wrote:
hi there.
you don't know how seeing the little fella's name affected me. I loved that cat soo much.
I'm so happy to hear he's with someone who's caring for him.
hope he made it through but he's getting on. i had him at least 4 years and I've been back here 10!
best of luck,

Eamonn

------------------------------- from me:

Hallo Eamonn!

"little fella" ?? are we talking about the same beast here?
BIG - 18 pounds (1 and a 1/4 stone) when i met him, black, and DJ swore he was 18 years old when i took him home to retire to the country!
i have had him for 5 and a half years since then...

But if he was named after Sailor Ripley, Wild At Heart didn't come out until 1990, but that is 17 years ago now, so i was pretty curious how old he really was.

He appears to be older than 14. My cat Sue (i didn't name her) died at 20. And he looks as old as she did around 17, 18 or so.

When did he break his leg?

I took Sailor to Palo Alto (where Stanford is) cuz for him it's an available cat door, and 3 doting Thumbs who open things for him, like cans of Tuna, which i swear he can spell, and let him sashay out the door without having to bother with the actual cat door. He is been spoiled rotten. We call him the "Sean Connery of cats" ... he has a slightly arrogant and demanding way of staring you down until you do what he wants.

He has almost sickened and died twice - bad fang was pulled, that put him off his food until we saw he was wasting away, but we've had him fixed up, and he is quite bouncy.

Mostly his quality of life improved when i put him on Advantage. Poor old guy is horribly allergic to fleas. He was covered in scabs when i took him home - when i put him on advantage he turned glossy and sleek and ... arrogant. :P

He actually has instructed my housemates on how he should be WALKED every evening, if you can believe that! He has a certain route around the block he likes, which takes him by something similar to catnip which he rolls around in either at the beginning or end of the walk. He walks his own pace, and if you try to hurry him, he gets disgusted and heads home. We even have the Sailor Walking Sweater to wear so the person who walks him can mosey at Sailor's pace, even if it's chilly. It's been passed down from designated walker to walker.

Your name is still on the überWarehaus door, or was when DJ and Todd were evicted 4 years ago. (Everyone was tossed out - the asshole owner decided to 'voluntarily' do a seismic retrofit on the building, saving himself the need to re-house and reinstate tenants, and allowing him to jack the rent.
WEIRD coincidence that Karen met you in London! wow.

Well thank you very much for getting back to me. Right now we think Sailor may be dealing with a condition called FATE - which results in a blood clot that lodges in an artery to the back legs (or possibly kidneys.) FATE, untreated, causes mortality relatively quickly - although the process is painful and distressing.

He seemed to have a stroke and couldn't use one leg for a day 2 weeks ago. It was awful!
He is fine now, but i need to know what i can about him so i can decide whether or not to put him on aspirin every 3 days ... aspirin is poison to cats, but small doses could prevent a clot and another stroke.

OK, tell Karen i said hi! she is fabulous and funny as hell, and lucky to be over there.
(I grew up in Surrey... sigh ... i miss it,)

-amacker

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From Eamonn:

Thank you sooo much for a great message, I really enjoyed that.
Good to hear you discovered it's Sailor's world, we only live in it.
I did name him after Nicholas Cage's character as that was my favourite film at the time. Good clue as to age, that was released in 1990 (sorry, you already said that doh!) so it would have been soon after I got the boy and named him. Unbelievably (perhaps not, I did a lot of drugs and alcohol in SF) considering how much I love him I can't remember a) where I got him and b) how old he was when I got him but he was a teeny skinny little thing so quite young.
I guess we are looking at about 15-16.

How did you know he broke his leg? Actually it was his hip.
I was never able to prove this but I'm pretty sure my arsehole hippy Deadhead landlord threw him over the fence into next door's backyard when I lived on 20th St. The nice gay boys next door pretty much substantiated my suspicions. Sailor was incredibly agile and would never have fallen (and too arrogant to admit it if he did).The landlord hated cat's in general and Sailor particularly because Sailor took ownership of the house without lawyers or deeds and generally terrorised his quite large dogs who could never figure out why they weren't doing the terrorising. They hadn't figured on Sails. They were large Rhodesian Ridgebacks and delighted in bounding up the stairs and hearing the other cats panic and scatter. Sailor doesn't do panic and scatter and (I promise you this is true!!!) one day he was at the top the stairs when they came bounding up making an outrageous racket. The other cats were already gone but Sails just sat there and when the first dog got near him he twatted it on the nose and it fucked off whimpering proper quick and neither ever messed with him again. True as I sit here that.

My already deep love for him knew no bounds after that. Mad bastard used to chase the racoons off! Couldn't catch my breath and I used to wish he wouldn't but he couldn't be dissuaded. That was taking bravado and arrogance too far, nasty fuckers racoons but he managed to escape any damage. Too bloody cool.

God it's all coming back. I swear he was legendary that Sailor. Everyone who came in contact with him (bar the landlord) fell in love with him. I had an outrageous string of girlfriends on 20th St and every single one adored him. Wait! You thinking what I'm thinking??? ;-)

You know, in the excitement of your messages and again I swear this is true, I have thought about Sails a million times and often wondered (and hoped) but it was only a day or two before your message that I had one of those deep, sad, ooohhhhh I wonder how, where he is moments.
Your message was a dream come true and I really can't thank you enough for the love and care you've been giving him, you're so sweet.
He's still mine you know! :-) Guess where he got his arrogance from?

xxx

E

------------------------------- from me:

Wow ! there is so much about this cat that is exactly the same, and so much that i didn't know and love hearing!~ What a character! "it's Sailor's world, we only live in it." - think i shall title his webpage that ... and yes, he has a webpage. http://www.bitchwick.com/amacker/sailor

You know about Sailor's head fetish, i take it? His favorite position is on top of your pillow, around the top of your head, with one claw ever-so-slightly in your temple, lest you be so foolish as to move while he sleeps. He used to sleep like that, whispering in my ear with his breath, what i swear sounded like either a spell or a suggestive programming mantra. I would wake up feeling very much like doing his bidding.

He has a definite fan club. After DJ and i broke up, he became attached to my housemates in succession: Deborah, Jeanevive, Mikey and Qat. They were each Sailor's Person, Personal Walker and Thumb and to whom he issued commands. He slept on their heads.

Now the Brit closes his door so Sailor has moved upstairs to my room and i am again his primary Thumb. He sleeps with me and wakes me up when its raining to turn it off ... IMMEDIATELY. At which point it's best to give him a can of something yummy and distract him with a good chin scratch. And when it's cold and he is feeling stiff, or just doesn't want to deal with the ignominy of using the cat door, i must drag my lazy ass outta bed and go downstairs and open the door properly for his stately departure. (Stately walk quickly devolving into a bouncy run as he scampers off to graze, or herd snails, or whatever cats do when it's raining and they want to go outside.)

I always say i have 1 cat (Gargamel), and one cat has me (Sailor). Gargamel is my überKitten (now 5) - we have each other, i guess. I would date the man who has 1/2 of his personality, cuteness, and communication skills, adoration and faithfulness to yours truly.

One of the things i love him for is that he has figured out how to trick Sailor into playing with him. Rather than beat the old man up, or watch Sailor run off, he flips over on his back in pretend submission, hooking one claw into Sailor's collar to try to keep him there, and biffs him one in the nose. Sailor gets all pissed off and tears into Gargamel, and if you didn't know better, you'd say the poor kid was getting his ass kicked. But if you look closely, you realize that whenever it looks like Sailor has won and will saunter off now, Gargamel pops him one in the nose to keep it going! What used to be a 20 second squabble, Gargamel learned to artfully sustain for 5 minutes or more! Keeps Sailor young, i think.

Speaking of age, I am gonna go with 16 and a half. I figured you saw the movie in the theatre, which came out mid-August. I figure he could have been no younger than 2 months when you got him, unless he was abandoned. There are two major "kitten seasons" - one being about the late summer time frame. That puts him at 16 and i'll call it 17 on August 17th (the movie's debut day can be Sailor's birthday.) Making him a Leo. Which fits .. .Heh..

As for his hip, he has always favored his left rear leg and i figured it was hip or leg broken and didn't set properly, but he IS agile as hell. It's just as he ages it is getting stiffer and probably arthritic.

Walking Sailor one night, Deborah suddenly realized he wasn't beside her... she called him, and he answered in his trademark "Meeee" - the diminutive squeak which seems so incredibly rediculous coming from such a huge and proud and disdainful beast! - from a branch over her head! and he had LEAPED up there - not climbed. DJ and Todd both confirmed he used to JUMP to the loft and THRU the circular hole above the door dividing Todd's space from DJ's.

Todd's ex-wife Shanon had a Rhodesian Ridgeback too! Sailor tolerated her. If anything, she seemed leery of him. Sailor is also not a bit put off when dogs come around. He stalks to the end of the driveway and watches them keenly. The smart ones walk crisply away.

x0,,
amacker

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From Eamonn:

The head fetish! I'd completely forgotten about that. Brilliant!!! I didn't call it that but I do remember it very well. Took me a long time to get used to it.

more special Sailor traits.....

a female room-mate was going through a hard time after a break-up while I was over here. When I got back she told me Sailor stayed with her every second of the time she was upset and that the loving way he was looking at her made her cry. Special. He's very intuitive and sensitive.

e

btw,
I cc'd my first wife in on some replies. She was another big Sailor fan.

To: Lisa Corbally
Subject: Re: Sailor

The return of Sailor Ripley!!!

I'm so happy!!!

On 30 Mar 2007, at 23:40, Lisa Corbally wrote:

How amazing…

One of my favorite stories is you walking around Hollywood Park in The Castro, off your knocker at 2 am, calling out for your ‘’sailor boy’’, didn’t he follow you to the store? You’re lucky you didn’t come home with more than a cat that night!

--------------------

off me tits and hey lady, it was 5AM and you were warm in bed while I was buying smokes!
He always followed me down to Cala. Made sure i bought the right food!
This lady has him and he's fat and old but still Sailor and still making all the rules!!! :-)))

e
xxx

ps
there's still 'an army on the dance floor..."