FAREWELL, PIMP KITTY

The food dish sits empty and undisturbed next to a jumbo-size container of cat food. Upstairs, there is an empty box in front of a window and covered with two towels that still have the impress of many an afternoon nap in the sunny spot. And throughout the foyer of the house, the pungent stench of cat spray grows fainter each day.

Pimp Kitty has left the building.

He pulled off his exit like the greedy opportunist he was, leaving for greener pastures when the gravy train he was riding here began to go off the rails. One of my downstairs housemates bought a dog, which as dogs go, is pretty harmless. He's a mid-size chow mix that's dumber than a bag of hammers and occasionally likes to launch himself toward the grillwork of my car. He's not going to make anybody forget Cujo anytime soon (unless he winds up in a realm populated by creatures who resemble Wilson tennis balls), but he did chase PK whenever they crossed paths, which was not too often. Having to ditch the saunter for the sprint was not PK's style, and so we now have a house filled by an absence. Sort of like the Cratchit house without Tiny Tim ... had Tiny Tim been a leering, debauched slackabout.

Which is a shame, because I had such plans for PK. With the Cherry Blossom Festival approaching, I thought this would be the year to dye him bright pink and see whether he could supplant the pink poodle as the festival's unofficial mascot. Of course, throwing his karma into the mix might have plunged the CBF into moral depths that would have made even Bangkok wince. Trust me, one glance from PK could have caused the festival queen and her court to turn a camper into a rolling brothel.

For Presidents' Day, I had thought of dressing him like George Washington, in the buff and blue of the Continental Army and wearing a powdered wig. Sure, he might have looked almost adorable in that get up, but the price would have been the mysterious collapse of the Washington Monument. That and a few litters of kittens born with powdered wigs.

Getting back to things cherry blossom and Japanese, I had hoped to try bonsai on PK, carefully reducing his food intake and pruning him until he became a tinier version of himself. There would have been dangers, of course. If PK got too much food, for example, he might have begun to grow back to his original size disproportionately. He could have been bonsai kitty over three-quarters of his body and have a hind leg return to original size. But in PK's case, something else would have grown back to original size first.

In any case, the brute is gone, and we won't see his like again soon. Though I could have sworn I saw a kitten hanging about recently, one with an oddly familiar leer ...