this is my cat ricky. i remember distinctly the night we sat down as a family and decided ricky's name. my brother wanted to name him frankenstein. but i think i started crying so we didn't name him frankenstein. why i chose the name ricky i have ABSOLUTELY no idea. which frustrates me now. but maybe it was just to prove to my future self that you don't have to find meaning in everything.

ricky is now 15 years old. i got him back in the summer of '91. he's in pretty good shape give his age. he's not running around after squirrels anymore, but he can still get up onto my bed. but in all those 15 years this cat has never once been affectionate. he's been cute plenty of times and he'll let you pet him (operative word there is 'let') but he's not a snuggler. and he doesn't like to be picked up. and he is most definitely not a lapcat.

either way, he's always been my grumpy little furball. and now i've got to make some tough choices. when i move to seattle, do i try to bring him with me? as of right now, i'm considering moving in w/ meg and she has a wonderful little cat by the name of sushi. but ricky is old and i hear that sush is a fighter. sushi will kick the living shit out of ricky if i tried to bring him with. not to mention ricky trying to adapt to new and much smaller surroundings. so do i leave him here? he and my grandmother are good company for one another while my mom's at work. but things have changed around here. ricky tossed his kibbles the other night and he's been 'marking' the house. (he used to be an indoor/outdoor cat so he got all that territorial shit out of him while he was outside. but a bad run-in with a gopher left him with a mangled foot and as a permanently indoor cat). my mom can't deal with all this mess and she's not going to. so ricky has been relegated to living in the garage. i feel incredibly sorry for him. but i understand my mom's anger too. he's been doing it a lot. so can i just leave him here? trapped in a garage indefinitely? i don't know what to do...