I got Zen in March of 2002. I went to the ASPCA with the intention of getting a cat. They have this gigantic display window with about 15 cats meowing, purring, jumping, and playing. In the middle of that mess there was this fat cat sitting on a yellow pillow like the sphinx. Cats were walking around him, jumping over him, trying to get him to play... but he just sat there as calm and content as a cat can be. He had a busted ear, and a busted tooth, looked like a prize fighter who's best days where behind him. A prize fighter who was happy to just not move, not think, not run or train. So Zen he was. My girlfriend at the time had a niece who insisted on calling him tiger (fairly lame name for a domesticated cat) so I compromised and gave him a last name of Tigre. Never knew how old he was, cause all the adult cats at the ASPCA were 4 years old.
He was on the lazy side. The only toy he consistently would play with was a superball. I'll be finding them around the apartment till I leave, I suppose. He was a big pig, spent a lot of time begging me for table scraps. Had to put him on a diet. The cat actually liked to have his belly rubbed, not common in cats I've had. The only time he purred for the first year I had him was when he had dental surgery and received morphine. Purred like the Cheshire Cat that night. When I had to stick him into a cage to take him somewhere he'd whine and drool as if he were a Saint Bernard about to get a meal of fillet.
I remember when I was watching a friends dog for a while, Zen was scared at first. But slowly he realized he... and his claws were in charge. So he'd sit in the middle of a room and wait for the dog to approach. Then he'd unleash a fury of punches with his claws. When my friend came to get his dog, the dog had the molted end of a claw jammed into his skin right above his eye.
Well that's all, he died yesterday. Goodbye Zen Tigre.
