PART II: THE KITTIES WE LOVED
Hover your cursor over any image to see its caption. (Feature may not be available on mobile devices.)
Kitty #1: José Gato (“Joe Cat”), 1971-1991
This handsome black-and-white fellow — our much-loved, hand-shaking surrogate child — brightened our lives for two full decades.
Throughout that time, I was in the habit of lifting him to my shoulder, as shown in several photos below, and then waltzing him around a room, saying “Ah, don José, you dance divinely!”
Kitty #2: Sugar, 1991-2011
This tiny tabby — the runt of her litter who never weighed more than seven pounds at any point in her twenty years of life, but still came packed with purrrsonality — was Bernie’s all-time favorite feline. He named her Sugar even before knowing that she would always sheath her claws, never scratch us or tear up anything in our home, and during her last two years (’09-’11) patiently travel with us in BluCon, our 27′ Lazy Daze motorhome.
In the 53 years that I lived with Bernie, I only saw him cry twice: first when his mom died in ’02, and again when Sugar died in ’11.
Sugar made occasional appearances in three of my six “Two for Art” PDF newsletters: June-July 2009, August 2009, October 2009; and also in a memorial after her death: September 2011. (The other issues are October 2010 and December 2010.)
◄ I photographed Sugar basking in the sun in our “villa on the hill” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2004.
Later that same year, Bernie used my photo to paint a large-than-life-size watercolor portrait of Sugar. You can see this beautiful painting on the separate Bernard Marks Fine Art website.
Kitty #3: Snooty, 1991-2002
A shy, reclusive Calico whom I described as “a snooty little beauty,” Snooty shared with Sugar our home in Riverwoods, Illinois, but, unfortunately, died much younger than her tiny-tabby sister.
Kitty #4: Smokey, 2011 (age 5 when we adopted him) to 2024
This dapper green-eyed, gray-and-white-tuxedo guy came into our lives when he was five, several weeks after Sugar died in 2011. For several years after that, he traveled with us in BluCon, our motorhome. After Bernie’s death, Smokey remained my faithful companion at home and when we went out camping in our van until his own death at 18 in 2024.
