Hi, Spoonkins. Whatcha got on the grill this evening, Wes? I'll take a little bit of it, whatever it is. And a cold beer. You know the brand.

Before I came over here I was putting something away in the closet and my walking stick fell out of its hiding place. I'd forgotten where I stashed it. It was one of the first sticks Lightnin made back during his walking-stick phase. He'd go out in the forest and study the trees for a long time, deciding which branches were really walking sticks in disguise. Then he'd cut them to length, sand them down to the grain, varnish and polish them until they shone. Sometimes he put just a smidgen of artwork somewhere on the handle, or along the stick itself. The one he made for me is painted black with the Eye of Horus carved midway down the shaft.

Seeing it again reminded me of the day Cayce walked into my life. He was just a tiny thing, but he had the most enormous hands I have ever seen. It was hard to believe those hands. I had received a call from a friend asking me if I would be in the market for a companion. If so, her next door neighbor had picked up a hitchhiker in Baytown who was looking for a home. I said, "Well, I might be interested. I'll be over to take a look."

The first time I laid eyes on him, he came walking toward me across the kitchen floor, putting one enormous hand down in front of the other in a most deliberate way. It reminded me of a fashion model on the runway. The great gold eyes looked deep into mine. He stopped at my feet and said, "Meow." I handed over my heart immediately.

I picked him up and held him close. He purred. Then I looked at the hands more closely. Each foreleg was graced with two paws, one growing out of the other like a big thumb. The thumb part had four claws in it and the full paw had five. A total of nine claws on each front leg. I checked the back legs. He had seven back there. And each and every one of them was fully functional. I obviously had a magick cat on my hands. I named him Cayce. We were inseparable from the first moment.

He had hitchhiked to Baytown in the engine of someone's car. They found him when they arrived at their destination. From that person he was handed off to my friend's neighbor, Sue, who decided after she got home with him that she could never put up with a CAT. Especially one as ugly as him. So my friend Pam called me, and that's how he came to live at Rock & Roll Heaven.

When he was about six months old he disappeared. Went outside one day and just didn't come back. I searched and searched. Walked the neighborhood for almost a week, poking under every bush and shrub with my new black walking stick, knocking on doors asking people if they'd seen him, searching the ditches for his dead body. Nothing. Finally I decided to put an ad in the local Weekly Wipe. My friends just shook their heads.

I knew it was an act of desperation, but I was a desperate woman. It was my last hope. And hope was rewarded. The telephone rang. It was a lady who lived in Seabrook, about four miles from us. "I think I may have your missing cat," she said. "He sure fits the description." I rushed over there. Sure enough, who should come strolling toward me once again, in his deliberate big-handed way, but Cayce. "Meow," he said. Once again, he'd been hitchin' a ride.

Cayce evolved into a beautiful tomcat. Big and muscular, with long silky black hair and enormous gold eyes. And he finally grew into those feet. By the time he reached his full size, they were just perfect. You'd think that a tomcat with all that equipment would be out terrorizing the neighborhood. But not Cayce. He was the most mellow dude on the block. I think that was because he KNEW he was bad. He didn't have to prove it.

Once in a while he'd get in a scrape with another tomcat, but it was only because the other cat insisted. All Cayce really had to do was look at his own feet and know his power. He was the epitome of cool. I only saw him angry once, as a matter of fact, and it was me who made him that way. It happened one winter. A neighbor's female feline was in heat and Cayce wanted to go out because she was calling his name outside our back door. He was insistent. He paced and howled.

"No, Cayce," I said. "You're just getting over an infection, remember? If you go out there you're liable to get crossways with another tomcat and we'll have to go back to the doctor."

" Meow, meow, meooowwwwww," said Cayce.

"No, Cayce. Not today."

"Meooowwwwww, meooowwwwww."

"No, Cayce."

I think it was that last "no" that did it.

Cayce sprang into action. He leaped up on the table and from there over to the bar. Landed right on top of a pile of jackets. You know how it goes ... one person lays their jacket down and the next person thinks that's the jacket pile, and it grows. There were probably four or five jackets in the pile. Cayce jumped on top and started pawing at the first jacket until he knocked it on the floor. Then he worked on the second one. Plop, it followed the first. One by one he dug through the pile until he reached my leather motorcycle jacket. Then he squatted on top of it and pissed all over it, looking me dead in the eye the whole time. I opened the back door and let him out.

He loved to camp. That cat was a born camper. We'd take him with us to the river and he was really in his element there. He was the king and the banks of the Blanco framed his very own jungle. By day he would prowl the river banks and climb to the tallest branches in the trees. By night he'd stretch out full-length on a big log and toast his tummy by the campfire.

Cayce had other talents, too. He used those mutant paws just like hands. Sometimes I'd strip chicken off the bone and put it in his dish. He'd reach down there and pick up the chicken, munching away on it just like you or me, holding it in his hand. It was the darndest thing. He'd reach out and grasp an object, look it over, then set it back down right where he found it.

And there was the time he decided to show me another little trick. I was in the bathroom doing the makeup trip. Cayce came wandering in and jumped up on the toilet seat. I looked at him. "Whatcha doin', Case?" "Meow," Cayce said. Then he squatted over the open hole and peed right in the toilet bowl. I said, "Cayce, you're so smart!" Visions of tossing the litterbox danced through my head. But he never did it again. Just wanted to show me that he could.

He was about five years old when I happened to notice that he wasn't acting like his usual self. He was lethargic and started to lose weight. I'd seen that look before in other cats. I prayed to the gods that my fears were unfounded. But with every day that passed, it became more of a certainty that my prayers would not be answered. A visit to the vet confirmed what I already knew. Cayce was suffering from feline leukemia. It was only a matter of time.

In my head swam visions of the horrible deaths I had seen the others face. Sweet Angelina. And Harley. Harley was just a baby. I had watched them waste away before my eyes, unable to act either to save them or put them out of their misery. I was paralyzed at the horror I was witnessing. Alice finally had to take matters in her own hands and ask Gary to come by with his gun. I didn't want to watch Cayce suffer like that. I didn't think I could stand it. And I didn't want to be a coward any more. I had to face this one square. I just had to. Cayce deserved nothing less.

Together we stalked the inevitable. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible and spent as much time with him as I could. Finally one day I saw that he was really suffering. He was having trouble breathing. He looked at me with those great golden orbs and begged me to let him go home. The tears flowed from my eyes in rivers. Like the Blanco he had loved so much. And I knew it was time to go.

Lightnin offered to ride with us but I said no. It was something we had to do on our own. I gathered the wasted body of my beloved friend in my arms and walked out the door.