This is Faus—or, rather, this was Faus (in December, I think). He is otherwise known as He of the Gold-Plated Intestines . . . he belongs, nominally, to Karolyn, but he knows very well who dishes out the catfood, and it isn't her. Soon after they moved in, he came down with something that involved not being able to poop at all—his intestines had simply stopped working. Long story short, he had an operation to remove all sorts of nasty impacted things from his lower tract; and lots of interesting medicine, including one that isn't for sale in this country, so we had to have it made up at the compounding pharmacy. And he had to eat special easy-to-digest preseciption food (at something like $36 a case). No one actually knew what was wrong with him—possibly a parasite, possibly some disease, possibly something else—so we simply operated on the principle that eventually he'd get better. Or not. $2500 (more or less—because, after all, what's better to spend money you don't have on than a cat who has maybe a 50/50 chance of survival?) later, he just got better suddenly. (And, of course, refused to eat the rest of his expensive cat food . . . now he eats anything, including potato salad and black-eyed peas.)
Last week, after he suddenly decided to attack the paper in my printer. He sometimes goes by Gangsta' Faus, because he's short and stocky and very solid, and looks like he'd be right at home in a fedora and pin-striped suit.
He hs a softer side, though—this is Kissy, whom I received for Christmas when I was two, plus other bears of similar vintage, a couple of newish ones, and my twenty-five-cent thrift store elephant, who has the typical Republican sh*t-eatin' grin.
Many, many thanks to Dr. Alexis Wangen, veterinarian extraordinaire (she works out of Banfield at PetSmart in East Asheville, in case you are in the neighborhood), and the good people at CareCredit (because I really, really needed something else to pay off). Everyone at Banfield asks after him whenever we take someone in for something—they think he's "just the sweetest thing." That's because he isn't shredding their paperwork.