Sixteen years ago my sons and I took a bus to downtown Everett and met my husband’s bus that he drove into town daily from Granite Falls, Washington.

One of his passengers had brought us the newest addition to our family- it was a tiny little kitten who was the runt of the litter and just about seven weeks old with bowed front legs, blue eyes and a little ringed tail.

The kitten was sitting in a McDonalds bag with the edges rolled down and he smelled like French fries.

He looked up into my face and meowed and when I reached down to pick him up he crawled up my arm straight to my shoulder- where he promptly sunk his claws into my skin so he wouldn’t slide off and then he tried to bite my glasses.

It took three of us to get him out of my hair.

My sons and I had already picked out a name for this tiny creature- we’d just seen a movie that we all loved and my boys were already familiar with the music- I made them aware of it because the composer was my Grandfather’s favorite- he said this man wrote the most perfect music in the world…

 we named that little guy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The funny thing is when the boys heard ” Amadeus ” they thought it sounded like “Mama’s Deus ” so they called our Wolfie ” Mommy’s Deus”  for years.

Anyway on the bus ride home we had put Wolfgang in a box and he howled and growled and the bus driver, a bear of a guy named Pat laughed and called back to us, ” Hey, what wild animal do you have back there?”

I opened the box and lifted Wolfgang out by the scruff of his neck held him up and he hissed and spit at everybody and that was pretty much sums up Wolfie.

He’s been more of a companion then pet and he’s inspired stories that I’ve written and some of his real life exploits have turned up in a series I did about a character called ” Insanity Jones “.

People thought I made up things about ” Insanity” like how he sat in the middle of the street one day and backed up traffic and his hatred of fire engines and how I had to lock him up if he saw firemen because he’d try to bite them – but that was all true.

And then there was the Summer four years ago when Wolfie saw my oldest Son’s pitbull running straight for me- I was not in danger but Wolfie didn’t know that.

The next thing I know Wolfie is running by me jumps up and wraps himself around Puma’s head and tries to take his eyes out- and at the end of the day my cat didn’t have a mark on him.

He also spent the rest of the week tormenting that poor dog and barfing on my Son’s suitcase- don’t ask, but when Wolfie got mad at you that’s what he did.

That’s Wolfie’s story, his true story- he was loved and cherished and spoiled and loyal and mean and smart and he was my heart.

When he died that morning, part of me did too.

Tonight we buried him under his favorite tree, then we made a little bonfire for him.

He was up there somewhere wishing, I’m sure, that it would have spread so that he could’ve had one last shot at those Firemen.