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So my cat, Murphy (or “kitty,” as I always called him), perished in the early winter 2010, succumbing to lymphoma. I said no, I’m not getting a new cat any time soon when anyone asked. But four days ago on my way out in the evening to go to a “dinner party,” I was interrupted while mounting my bicycle by a persistent mewling (this kept me from mounting). Mewling source turned out to be a kitter kat two stoops down, and I approached said kitter. Usually feral Brooklyn cats know to run in fear when approached, but this one climbed up and in fact onto me, ending up purring on my shoulders. Violet, who lives in the building the stoop belongs to and who had set out the food that had attracted kitty to the stoop in q came out and quickly talked me into keeping him. So I did. Without further ado, here is tim:

Mind you this is after (seriously) seven baths with dishwashing liquid, since feral cats in Brooklyn apparently sleep in pools of motor oil, so maybe he’s a bit woozy from Dawn fumes. He still smells like a jiffy-lube. So I’ll excuse him for the fact that he’s drinking from an obviously unscrubbed toilet while he has a bowl of what has often been called the best tap water in the continental U.S. rather nearby:

I guess the toilet is filled with the same yummy water. But I never poop in that red bowl; it’s my favorite bowl.

Manhattan is a very dangerous place to bicycle, straight up. But both of my major bike-related injuries occurred in Brooklyn, and though that’s probably because I live here, and so bike here more often, I don’t know that Brooklyn really gets its proper props as a very dangerous place to pedal. Probably the greatest threat comes from other people on the road, mainly in cars, but they often won’t stop to be photographed, or if they have stopped, are hard to really capture from a prone position, what with all those EMTs and ambulances in the way. Bad streets though can be just as insidious and just lie there while you click away. So I started carrying my camera on my bike to preserve a record of the offenses (click the images for nice, big versions; the street names link to google streetview images of the roads in question).

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