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| Peake and Oddvar |
Old customers may remember Oddvar the Cat
Back when we were on Staten Island, a neighbor asked if we wanted a kitten, He had found two kittens on a job site. One was a cute little thing. The other was a grey can with one bad eye. He gave us the gray cat.
The eye could not be saved, unfortunately. But that did no stop that little gray kitten. We named him Oddvar, as Odin would have been too obvious. And from his first day with us, well, he got into mischief.
Oddvar became part of the Trollwise Press. He liked to climb atop the laser printer and watch the paper load. The gray cat liked to run around the office, sometimes making a mess. Some days he was like a “little fur man.” And some days he was “Mr. Bad.” There were times he annoyed Freja, our calico. Oddvar learned to avoid provoking Sadie, the senior cat at the time. And he got along well with Smudge, a black cat wit ha penchant for wrecking house plants.
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| Freja and Oddvar |
One day, we brought home a tiger stripe. The young cat had been begging at our apartment complex. We called him Torkatt because the first time we saw hi m was after a wild thunderstorm. Oddvar was thrilled. He and Torkatt played around the apartment. They would ”wrestle” on the living room floor.
When we moved here to our house, Oddvar thought he was in paradise. Rooms and stairs gave him more places to run and play. He outlived Sadie and Smudge, and saw other cats come into the home. He was a happy fellow. And so it was hard for us when he became old an ill. Both Oddvar and Freja were on their “last legs.” He was 14, she was 17. We took them to the vet one last time.
I still miss them.
Though it has been 11 years since he passed, I can still see Oddvar perched on the laser printer, that one glowing eye scanning the room. I can hear that reedy meow. Oddvar was more than the average housecat. He got into everything.
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| Oddvar and Torkatt |
Torkatt came to use for the Holidays in 1998. The decorations had already been put away. After moving to the house here, he settled in nicely.
That holiday season, Audrey and I set up the tree as usual. And we set up the little HO train and small Yule village I had made. None of the cats had ever disturbed it.
Imagine our surprise the next morning to see our train and village scattered around the room. Torkatt was like a little tornado. So we had to use bigger trains and more substantial buildings ever after.
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| Oddvar loved to be picked up. |
