The Three Inspirations

Felix, Suly and Lulu are the driving force behind this mural. There are other inspirations but we'll meet them later. felix is a big tabby, Suly is a Siamese and Lulu is all black. They were all born in Russia; Felix and Suly in Moscow, Lulu in Ekaterinburg. They are 16, 15 and 14 respectively and related. Mama Suly, Papa Felix and Baby Lulu--yes Felix and Suly had sex and produced two black babies. How a tabby and Siamese did that is a mystery to me, I think my landlady back in Ekaterinburg was taking Suly out for some good times while I was traveling all over the Urals.
Suly is actually my former boyfriend's cat. I had arrived in Moscow back in February 1992 with Bancroft, my fuzzy black cat, from San Francisco. Suly was a gift to Artem (my ex) to help round out the house--two guys and two cats. Suly was bought on the Arbat, Moscow's pedestrian street known for its artists selling their wares and, back then, old ladies selling puppies and kittens. Suly got picked up as a two for one deal--Angelina, Artem's friend, took one and gave the other to him. Suly had her fur bleached white (a common practice among the grandmas selling the kitties to make them look more desirable) so the contrast between snowy white fur and the chocolate points made her all the more sellable. Bancroft didn't appreciate her at first, chasing her around the apartment, whacking her like a cat toy. But with time, they became good friends, snuggling together, she curled up in his furry tummy--spooning kitty style.
Bancroft died in the beginning of 1994. We found him dead under the house and buried him down the hill in a little glen next to a holy spring. I was very sad that my friend of 5 years was gone-he too traveled a lot from San Diego (his home) to San Francisco and then all the way to Moscow via London. But after a month or so of morning, Artem and I went to check out Moscow's bustling pet market. Not to get a cat per se but just to check out the animals. It was March and the snow was starting to melt and spring could be felt slowly creeping into the capital. The market was bustling that Sunday. The ladies with their basket of puppies and kittens; little Perisans and Russian blues with their fur brushed forward to look fuzzier, all sorts of bleach jobs done to make the white cats look whiter, puppies with little bows tied on their heads or around their necks. Men selling monkeys, exotic birds, nutrias (a relative of the muskrat prized for its fur) and even hedgehogs. The rows were so packed you could barely squeeze through. We pushed and shoved our way around looking at all the animals and picking up some cat food for Suly back home. I couldn't take any more of this so I stood off to the side in a clear spot waiting for Artem to get through the mass of people. When he did pop out, he was not alone. In his hands was a wee little tabby kitten looking around dazed and confused. Apparently, said Artem, he looked down at his feet and there were two big eyes looking up at him among the bustling crowd of feet. He would have been trampled for sure so Artem snatched him up. As soon as he plopped him in my hands, I knew Bancroft had returned. The little cat scurried up my arm and perched himself on my shoulder as we continued our walk around the market. "We should give him to somebody, we don't need another cat now", exclaimed Artem. "Nope, it's fate," I replied, "Bancroft has come back in a new form, he's ours." And that's how Felix came into my life. Whether Artem set the whole thing up, knowing I'd be a sucker for the kitten is still an unsolved mystery to me. To this day, Artem avers that the story happened as I just described it.
People grow up and they grow apart. After two years of being together, Artem and I broke up. It was an inevitable break up and I helped speed things along by taking a job in Ekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals, known as the place where they killed the Tsar and his family. I went east to the Urals and Artem went west to Germany. That decided, I took custody of the cats, packed all my stuff and headed to a place I had lived before. Old friends would greet me but a new job and new adventures awaited me. My main job was to travel around the Ural and Western Siberian region recruiting high school kids for a US-funded cultural exchange. While I was busy going to plaes like Nizhny Tagil, Tyumen, Kurgan, Ufa, Orenburg and Perm, Felix and Suly were busy doing the wild thing! As biology would have it, all that shagging resulted in two little black kittens. They happened to be born while I was in the US so my landlady Tatyana Mikhailovna, oversaw the whole process bless her heart. Suly took on her role as a mother like a horse to water. She took care of her babies with all the love she could give. She nursed her babies in the comfort of my armoire. Felix, just like a typical man, was trying to get it on with Suly right after the birth so I had to take him to the vet for neutering. Now that was an experience. They drug your cat, give him a snip, then give him back to you in a matter of minutes. No overnight stuff. So here I am taking a drugged cat home with no ability to produce anymore and a few stitches on his cajones to prove it. This calmed him down a bit and the family of four were able to be n the same apartment together. Upon my return from a US vacation, I was welcomed by the two little additions, black fuzzy clumps with four legs--Lulu and Eddy. As the grew, I knew I couldn't keep both of them so I wound up giving one away to an American teaching in town. Lulu stayed with mom and dad and Eddy went to Maria. Maria loved her Eddy so much, that she wound up taking her back to the US, settling in the Bronx. So the whole family of immigrant cats is now in NYC.
Now, Felix, Suly and Lulu are happy old Brooklynites. They lounge around the house, hang out in the garden, sleep by the radiator in winter, visit with Liz's cats upstairs, hang out in Jeff and Amy's place downstairs. Doing what cats do.