Snacks! Snacks! Snacks!

 Our cats, especially Sundance, operates on this principle quite loudly and persistently.

The cat  above, however, reminds me of a kitten I bought when I was about ten or twelve. We were visiting my mother's mother and the kids next door had a cat who had kittens. I wanted the black one with the white spot on its chest, and they wanted a nickle. I went into my grandmother's house and asked my father for a nickle. As I recall, he only had a dime but he gave it to me without asking why I wanted it. It was only after we were in the car on the way home -- a drive of about 125 miles -- that he realized I had something in the back seat. To his credit, he let me keep the cat. He told me later that he had assumed that I had wanted money to get an ice cream cone up at Shahan's, a small store a couple of blocks away. That gives you an idea of how long ago this was -- I would have been able to get an ice cream cone for five cents. Good ice cream, too, I might add.

At any rate, I named the cat Black Magic, and we mostly called him Magic. He was not one to ask for what he wanted, however. He was almost mute, one reason I had been able to smuggle him into the car in the first place. He was a great cat, however, and I loved him. When I went into the monastery, I could not take him, of course, and he adopted my father as his new favorite. When I was 25 my parents had him put to sleep. He had lost his sight and apparently even his sense of smell.

Because he was all black except for that white spot on his chest/neck, my mother used to say he looked like a priest cat, wearing a Roman collar.