Grizzly: Memoirs of a Great Cat

I remember hearing stories from my sister, Mandy, about the time she first got Grizzly. Her and her husband, Rob, had rescued him as a kitten, but he immediately scratched Rob, who lost patience quickly. He was going to return that stubborn kitten, but my sister softened him up. They kept that crazy cat, and he grew to be a beautiful animalstill as mean as the day they got him!

Grizzly was a beautiful, slick black cat with a slim physique. He had frightening, green eyes and very silky fur. His pure dislike for me may have been clear, but that cat loved my sister very much, and it showed. She was his friend, his motherthat odd creature who served him.

One of my best, and most painful, memories of Grizzly happened one night my younger sister, Lindy, and I were staying the night at Mandy's. Mandy was sleeping, and Lindy and I were watching television in her room. I was lying with my head at the foot of her bed, my feet on the pillows. Lindy was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, and, unknowing to me, Grizzly was sleeping to my right, at Mandy's feet. Well, Lindy and I were laughing at something on TV, but we were trying to be quiet. I turned around to make sure that we weren't waking Mandy up, but before I could turn my face all the way Grizzly lashed out and slapped me across the face, I actually heard my skin rip.

I whipped my head back around, covering my mouth with my hands. Lindy was laughing, but then she saw blood pooling from my face into my hand. Then, Mandy stirred, sat up a little, and showed her sincere concern. "Why are you guys being weird?" Were her exact words, I believe. Then she went right back to sleep. I hurried out of the room. Lindy in tow. We went to the guest bathroom and there was blood covering my teeth, lips, chin and hands. I cleaned myself up, threw the bloody tissue into the garbage, and then had a few minutes of fun making the gash in my lip "talk."

The next morning Mandy and Rob were up when I got downstairs, and the first thing they said to me was something to the effect of, "let me see what he did." I told them what happened and Mandy said she knew because she saw all the bloody Kleenix in the garbage. A earned a nickname because of the scar he left in my lip, which, thankfully has disappeared by now. I'm able to laugh at this now, it actually is pretty funny, even though that was his first true attack on me, and it was a whopper!

Another memory of Grizzly didn't end in bodily harm, but it did contain sheer terror. I was sleeping in the guest room at Mandy's house, and I don't know why, but I was awoken in the middle of the night. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Grizzly, just standing over me, staring at me. I didn't move, I lay frozen in fear! Thankfully he decided to spare my life that night.

But no matter what memories I carry away from my time with Grizzly, I could never stop seeing his beauty, and his special love for one human being, my sister, his friend, Mandy.