The story of Little Lucky and Frankie Blue Eyes

by Dave Quick
Special to The Gayly

You should never ask a first-time father or a cat lover if they have any photos. Here we go with a little history.

In 2007, my longtime friends Booker, a Sabretooth, and Beaumont were gone. Still mourning, I wasn't in a mood to yet seek a new cat. One of my corporate co-workers saw it differently. She kept bugging me to go see a kitten her sister had rescued. The kitten had difficulty breathing and they were afraid it would die, but they were “sure I could save it.”

Hum. . . nice pitch.

The sister lived temporarily in a trailer camp because her family house had been destroyed by a tornado. She worked in a little strip mall near the border of the city. One night when she was going to her car behind her workplace during a blizzard, she heard a little noise coming from a trash container behind a Chinese carry-out. It turned out to be a tiny starving kitten in a plastic trash bag.

She took the kitten home. It never quite recovered and remained under weight, but when very young it got out one day and became instantly pregnant. There was an extremely large and strong pure silver feral cat in the camp who the kids living there called Seldom Seen. The city tried catching Seldom Seen several times, but were unsuccessfull.

The mother cat gave birth to four little kittens including two who were pure silver. Little Lucky was the silver kitten who they were afraid would die. I went to meet her, which of course sealed the deal and I ended up with both Little Lucky and her brother, Frankie Blue Eyes.

Little Lucky is very small and still has some difficulty breathing but is in good overall health and Frankie is a twenty-two pound very clever mound of love. I once got a rare sighting of Seldom Seen - “the daddy” - on one of my three trips to the trailer. Frankie is the spitting image of his notorious father.

Two young children lived in the trailer and the youngest – “the godfather” - negotiated the adoption of the marvelous Twister Twins. Twister refers to the fact that the day they moved was Memorial Day in 2007 when there were more tornadoes spotted in Kansas that day than ever before. They are twins because after I agreed to adopt Little Lucky the youngest boy - the godfather - said that if I adopted Lucky she would be a “little lucky” and if I adopted both Lucky and Frankie they would become twins.

Sold!

So, there I was saying goodbye in 2007 to the famed Booker, a sabretooth. He was a feral kitten rescued from a Hell's Angels hideout. He became known as Booker, the wonder cat and he had far more friends than I have. He starred in dozens of my films that were featured at the Wichita Center for the Arts, the main Wichita Library and the Salina Art Center when I was a filmmaker in residence there.

I guess in the end I was “in a mood to seek a new cat!”

Copyright 2017 The Gayly – March 22, 2017 @ 10:10 a.m.