Leif's Photos of Scamp

Leif loved cats and he knew that I did, too. He twice got me cats for Mother's Day, once as a teen in junior high and once as a senior in high school.

The cat in these photos is Scamp, our all-time favorite cat, and the one Leif first picked out when we were living at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He went to a pet store and picked out the liveliest one he could find, the one that was climbing all over the place and virtually meowing, "look at me, look at me." Scamp was a tiny kitten when they brought him home and we all loved watching his antics. I wrote two earlier post about Scamp with photos of Leif and him together, but when I found these photos Leif took, I wanted to post them, too.

One thing Scamp enjoyed immensely was changing sheets on the beds. When he noticed that was happening, he would jump up on the bed and run around under the sheet as the new one was settling down on the bed. It looked so funny, like some kind of giant mole scooting around under the sheet. If I picked up a small part of one side I could make it like a narrow tunnel looking in at him and he would go nuts trying to rush down the small space at me, or pose in various amusing ways with just his face showing down the tube made by the sheet and the bed. It was so much fun that when I put clean sheets on the beds I would often lift the sheet up and flutter it down again and again so that he could jump under it, tunnel and scoot, and play silly games. Sometimes we would take photos.

All but one of these photos were taken in late fall or December 1989 when Leif was nearly 15 years old and Scamp was a grown cat, two-and-a-half years old. The other one is the second one from the top, taken when Scamp was still a kitten shortly after we got him in May 1987.

Scamp was a beautiful cat but he had a funny nose which was part orangey-pink and park black, giving him a kind of odd look as though something was wrong with his nose.

I don't know why Leif never took photos of other cats he had when he was older, Merlin, the second cat he gave me, or Sugar and Spice, the cats he and Nikko had when they were married. Leif always loved to cuddle something, whether it was a stuffed animal he had as a child, or a cat, or his lady love. Cats were particularly interesting to him (along with snakes, which he also had as pets at times, and birds, which he never did) and you could see how much he enjoyed having them in his arms and playing with them. It was another sad thing for him that he became allergic to them and after he contracted asthma, he couldn't have cats as they brought on asthma attacks.

Seeing these photos brought back a lot of happy memories for me. Scamp was special. Leif picked a great cat.