Originally posted June 25, 2008
When one owns pets, saying goodbye is part of the package. But it never gets easier.
This morning it was Smudge, the cat that the Texas Gal had bottle-raised, the little white lady who had been the Texas Gal’s baby since she was less than a day old.
It was the summer of 1998, and the Texas Gal was still in Texas, working as a buyer for a manufacturing firm in Dallas. One of the warehouse guys came to her office, carrying a small something. He said he’d seen it on the floor as he was driving a forklift. He thought it was a mouse, and he stopped to pick it up intact rather than have to clean it up later. But it was a kitten, no more than three inches long, so he brought it to the Texas Gal’s office, knowing she was a cat person.
The little thing was white with a gray patch on her forehead, so her name was Smudge. The mama cat might have dropped her when she was startled while moving her litter, or maybe Smudge got left behind as a runt. But raised on bottled milk and love, she survived. She never got very big – maybe eight pounds at the most. But she was the Texas Gal’s kitty for just about ten years.
And Smudge was no one else’s cat. She and I shared the same quarters for seven years, and, at best, she tolerated me. I could pet her and she’d put up with it for a moment or two, then squirm away or – if she could not get away – slap my hand five or six times with a tiny lightning-fast front paw. Still, the Texas Gal told me, no one else had ever been able to touch Smudge without her screaming and biting. So I did pretty well.
She was skittish, Smudge was, possibly because of her origins. Loud noises and strangers worried her. And it didn’t help that one of the catboys, Clarence, liked to chase her. She spent a lot of time in dark corners. And she spent a lot of time curled up on the Texas Gal’s lap, the one place in the world she felt safe.
About ten days ago, on a Saturday night, the Texas Gal noticed that something was wrong. We took Smudge to the emergency vet, who corrected the immediate problem with a minor procedure but told us that the root cause was unchanged. The problem was likely to be chronic. Last evening, we concluded, reluctantly, that the vet was right, and Mudgie was only going to be less and less comfortable as time went on. So this morning, we took her to see Dr. Tess, and we said goodbye.
So here’s a Baker’s Dozen for the Texas Gal’s baby.
A Baker’s Dozen of Babys
“Baby Don’t Do Me Wrong” by John Lee Hooker from I Feel Good, 1971
“Baby Please Don’t Go” by Muddy Waters from Muddy Waters at Newport, 1960
“Baby Ruth” by Delbert McClinton from The Jealous Kind, 1980
“You, Baby” by the Ronettes from Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes, 1964
“Baby, I Love You” by Aretha Franklin, Atlantic single 2427, 1967
“I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” by John Hammond from Tangled Up In Blues, 1999
“Rock A Bye Baby Blues” by Ray Thomas from From Mighty Oaks, 1975
“Baby Let’s Wait” by the Royal Guardsmen, Laurie single 3461, 1969
“Our Baby’s Gone” by Herb Pederson from Southwest, 1976
“Baby It’s You” by the Shirelles, Scepter single 1227, 1962
“My Baby Loves Lovin’” by White Plains, Deram single 85058, 1970
“Ruby Baby” by Donald Fagen from The Nightfly, 1982
“Me and Baby Jane” by Leon Russell from Carney, 1972
A few notes:
This set is a little bluesier than most of them get, what with John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and John Hammond. Delbert McClinton shades that way sometimes too.
It’s funny that the one track with the word “blues” in its title is one of the more odd blues that one can find. Ray Thomas, a member of the Moody Blues, released From Mighty Oaks during the years when the Moodies were inactive. Like most solo outings from the members of the group, the album sounds very much like the Moody Blues. And even though Thomas’ voice slides into blue tones now and then during “Rock A Bye Baby Blues,” when you consider the non-blues chord progression, his voice and the airy production, well, if it’s a blues, it’s a unique one.
“Baby Let’s Wait” is a dirge-like ballad that reached the lower levels of the Top 40 – No. 38 – in 1969. The Royal Guardsmen are better known for reaching No. 2 as 1966 turned into 1967 with “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” and for that record’s follow-up, “The Return of the Red Baron,” which went to No. 15 in the spring of 1967.
I wrote some time back about Smith’s version of “Baby It’s You,” which went to No. 5 in 1969. The original by the Shirelles went to No. 8 in early 1962. Smith might have had the better version, but the Shirelles had the better career: Smith had just the one Top 40 hit, while the Shirelles had twelve of them, including two No. 1 hits: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “Soldier Boy.”
Tags: Aretha Franklin, Delbert McClinton, Donald Fagen, Herb Peterson, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker, Leon Russell, Muddy Waters, Ray Thomas, Ronettes, Royal Guardsmen, Shirelles, White Plains
Echoes In The Wind Archives 
August 24, 2011 at 9:34 am |
[…] summer, shortly after we had to let go of the Texas Gal’s beloved Smudge, one of the Texas Gal’s co-workers said a kitten had found its way to her mother’s place. The […]