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I'VE ALWAYS HAD cats. Pretty ones, ugly ones, smart ones, stupid ones, just all kinds. They were named Angel, BoBo, Yummers, SweetFace, Donald, Frank, Mort, HairBall, Dugan, LuLu and Ozzie. And those are just the ones I remember.

Angel was my first cat. She was a New Orleans cat, and I adored her because she slept in my bed every night. In Arizona there were probably a series of cats, but Yummers stands out in my memory.

Yummers was a big male cat that loved to perch on the side of the tub when I took a bath and put his foot in the water. He would just lay there and watch the ripples. Yummers also liked to climb up my arm when I was sitting on the bathroom counter putting on my makeup, put his face next to mine and watch me in the mirror to learn, I guess, some eye liner techniques.

When I moved to San Francisco in the late '60s, I found an abandoned, skinny Siamese cat on a dark Sausalito pier and took him home to my three-floor walk-up flat and called him Donald. Everyone hated Donald because he was so ugly and had a bad meow and would do his business in my roommate's shoes. I mean, they really hated that cat.

Donald didn't walk; he only ran. When he leapt to my window sill and went flying out the window right in front of Frank's and my eyes (Frank was another cat I owned at the time and everyone liked him because he wasn't Donald), we were stunned. We flew down the stairs out to Clay Street to find Donald, who had disappeared. We looked for days to no avail.


Five days later Donald appeared and made a bed in the far end of a closet where he stayed for three days and then came out hungry, happy and surprisingly, pregnant. Donald had kittens a few weeks later and in very short order my roommates all moved out.

Now, I've got Ozzie. This Maine Coon hybrid is frighteningly huge with no tail except an electrified powder-puff kind of deal, totally docile, wouldn't hurt any living creature (I've watched him watch a bee climb all over his paw and not do a thing, not even snap at that bee) and never complains. What a cat.

Not long ago, Ozzie raced out the cat door into the night. Now this cat doesn't often move that quickly and when I heard sounds in the front yard, I checked to see what was going on. There on my porch was a big deer eating the tops of what few flowers I had pitifully planted. And next to the deer, I mean so close you could barely see a space, was Ozzie, sitting proudly next to this deer's foot. It was ridiculous but I wanted to call the newspaper and get someone to see this because it was just something.

Cats — aren't they something?

Barbara Marino is a San Rafael resident. The IJ has been asking readers to share their stories of love, dating, parenting, marriage, friendship and other experiences for our How It Is column. All stories must not have been published in part or in its entirety previously. Send your stories of no more than 500 words to Please write How It Is in the subject line. The IJ reserves the right to edit them for publication. Please include your full name, address and a daytime phone number.