Coconut came to me at a little less than a year old by way of Rosie, a noisy but big-hearted metermaid for the City of Laguna Beach, CA. She had found him & his sister alone in their carrier in a parking lot. They had just been de-clawed. I think what had happened was that their owner had put the carrier down & by mistake drove off without them. Rosie advertised but received no response. So she gave the little girl to a friend & kept the boy-kitty who was to be Coconut.

I remember those days when Rosie still had him, helping her clean his poor little paws. He would look up at me with those big liquid eyes that were frequently all black pupil as if to ask me who would cause him such pain & why. My heart went out to him then & I wished he was mine.

And soon he was. Rosie is an exuberant, somewhat raucous person & given to speaking VERY LOUDLY instead of quietly & Coconut quickly became terrified of her although she loved him. She would come home & he would hide. She recognized that he was afraid of her & so one day brought him next door to the fountain studio where I worked & asked us to find him a home. Which we did. With me, of course.

So Coconut came home with me & my house was never the same again.

He was not the classic beautiful Siamese at all. He was quite tall - which saved his life on one occasion. His fur grew away from his backbone down his back, like a part.. I called him "my Siamese Ridgeback." On the back of his neck, it was creamy white & grew UP his neck instead of down. And he had an underbite! So he was less than beautiful by a breeder's standards. But he was gorgeous to me.

In addition to his other odd physical attributes, I think he was part owl. He had the uncanny ability to be able to swivel his head almost totally around 180 degrees. He could sit with his body facing north & quite comfortably with his head facing east! This served HIM very well in his last weeks when he didn't want to be fed!

From the beginning he was a devoted kitty. Constantly talking to me in his rusty voice, following me from room to room like a puppy, sitting at the screen door waiting for me to return, demanding that I return if I went outside, & waiting for me in the hallway when I walked in the door from work or errands or whatever. He was my shadow. He loved to nap with me but it was always a useless endeavor as he tired of the napping part quickly & would then bite my nose to wake me up. He loved to huff himself up & prance about the room on his long legs, his chocolate ears laid back, his ridgeback fur on end & his tail ahuff. He would stalk another kitty & stand over him, staring him down, & then attack ferociously with his clawless paws, burying his muzzle harmlessly in his companion's tummy fur. To the end, until he became ill, he would frequently climb up on top of another kitty in the age-old "position" & then stop, totally at a loss as to what to do next, then climb off & stalk away as if he had planned it that way all along.

Coconut loved visitors & inevitably, even with someone he didn't know, there would come the moment which we knew well & often took mischievous pleasure in not warning the potential recipient. Coconut would stand at their feet, looking up, measuring, then in a leap, he would bound to their chest & then to their shoulder where he would scramble to drape himself around the startled newcomer's neck. As he grew older though, we would warn when this was coming as sometimes if he wasn't caught, he would have to fall back to the ground & this was terribly hurtful to his pride. My oldest daughter once & only once made the mistake of laughing when this happened & he immediately slunk away & hid under the bed. She had to find him & apologize & ever after made sure that she caught him. With us, we would stand & pat our chests with our hands, & up he would come!

Visitors were also amused by his habit of sitting Buddha- like on the coffeetable every evening. He would sit for hours in the same position, his blue eyes fixed firmly on me. He wasn't always "there" though. I think he drifted off somewhere else that only he knew of. He could be spoken to without noticing or hearing, seemingly in a cat-like trance. One could almost watch him 'returning" when he did, see the sudden focus in his eyes, & the subtle change in his posture. If for some reason, dinner time was delayed, he would use the coffee table as a base to walk back & forth over me, usually my chest, between me & my book or whatever I was doing. He was NOT a light cat, so this was not especially comfortable for me & usually got my attention rather effectively.

Coconut was also the instigator & sole participant of what the girls called "racetrack time." This occurred every evening at around 9 or 10 o'clock when suddenly he would be off & running. From one end of our little house to the other, leaping from the tops of one piece of furniture to the other, ears laid back, fur bristling, eyes blazing, inevitably coming to a sudden halt on the coffee table amidst the mess of magazines, books, coffeecups, plates, glasses, all sliding to the floor if not caught in time.

Alas, Coconut was also a sprayer. And this almost caused his end some years ago. I still have the charcoal smudge on the wall as a reminder of how close he came. As a sprayer, he favored vertical surfaces & this time he chose the bathroom wall. Being a tall kitty, his stream hit the wall about 6 inches above an electrical socket. This might have saved his life, since by the time the pee dripped down the wall & into the socket, he was long gone & when the flame shot out, he was already up to something elsewhere in the house. But the racket was impressive as was the charcoaling on the wall. He of course was oblivious.

Coconut adored raw hamburger, plants, catnip, me, the girls, the other kitties, vertical surfaces, the bathroom wicker basket on which he "sharpened" his "claws." He knew that containers on the kitchen counter frequently had interesting things inside them that would be accessible should the container end up on the floor. He saw to that more times than I could count - milk, jam, tonic water, butter, yogurt, bread, anything wrapped in foil, orange juice, tubs of leftovers, packages of pasta or rice, etc. He didn't always like what he found but frequently he did. Nevertheless it was always worth a shove off the counter to find out.

His were the footprints all over the house when the paper bag full of ashes from the fireplace was left for just a moment before taking to the trash. He was the one who discovered that for some reason rubbing his paws on the back wall of the bathtub felt wonderful (Ambrose does it now!). He was the one who always stalked across the mantle to reach a vase of flowers & arrange to make them more accessible to the rest - on the floor. He was the one who would get up on the waterbed for a quick nap, discover he was alone, & demand at the top of his voice that one of the other kitties come keep him company.

He was not a sunshine napper, or a window snoozer. He didn't have time. He was too busy, too occupied. Life was too much fun to spend a lot of it asleep. He lived his life to the fullest, every day of it. I doubt that even now he is spending much time in that glorious sunshine. He is probably racing around the other kitties, tearing through the flowers & leaving petals fluttering to the ground behind him. Once again his ears are laid back, his blue eyes are blazing, his ridgeback fur is bristling, & his tail is ahuff. It's "racetrack time" in kitty heaven &