Strollin’ with Ryan

I am sick of feeling like crap, so on this fine spring day I decided to take a stroll with my dear friend Ryan. 

Ryan’s photo is on the bottom of this page, too.

Ryan has a bit of a colorful history. He was born in ‘da hood region of San Jose, somewhere around Quimby Street, the last week of March, 2007. A week before he ended up at San José’s Animal Care and Control, animal control officers had picked up a 5–6 week old tuxedo kitten with a medallion on his chest, and that kitten ended up at Unconditional Love Rescue in Los Gatos. A week later, some kids walked up to the same animal control officer with an identical kitten and told the officer to take the kitten or they were going to drown it. That kitten was Ryan, who was taken to Animal Control and then picked up by Unconditional Love and named Franc (his twin was Florian).

I adopted Ryan on June 1, the same day he was neutered. He was still high on kitty pain meds when I brought him home. I'd lost my 16 1/2 year old cat that March, about a week before Ryan was born. I missed having a tuxedo cat around the house. Ryan is so different from Elliott it's scary. 

Ryan used to really enjoy strolling with Scottie, but Ryan is now too big to share the stroller with anyone. He’s a bit of a tough guy wanna-be thug who is scared of strangers and likes to chase my daughter upstairs. He’s quite the stealth gangsta killah kitty so he wears a bell collar so he can’t sneak up on anyone.

The photo on the top of this entry is Ryan with Scottie back when they could still share the stroller.

I wasn’t fussy as to who went with me for a walk. I am so tired of not being able to walk any great distances due to pain in my foot, knees and back (and of course being out of shape sucks!) so I pulled the stroller out of the corner (it doubles as Cammi’s bedroom) and I grabbed the first cat who showed any interest. That happened to be Ryan. We did a pretty decent walk, a bit over a mile—for me that is quite the feat. However, I chose to walk along Capitol Expressway, which of course is busy with cars and Ryan wasn’t real happy with the cars. He laid down in the stroller and peered out cautiously and miaowed when I waited to cross the street.

I am sure I will pay for this dearly tomorrow. I am not as sore as I expected to be after walking down the incline at the BLVD Tavern last night after checking out the Vinyl Trees. Nothing like a bit of live music and people-watching. In previous entries I’ve talked about former NHL player Mark Smith’s band, and I was curious about the music. I mean come on, how many bands can you name that feature the digeridoo? Hmmmm? Former Shark (current Avalanche player) Scott Hannan showed up to support Smitty. Unfortunately the bar was also full of hockey groupie girls who were all three sheets to the wind, no doubt helping Smitty and his band earn a decent percentage of the bar take. Between Patricia and I, we had only three drinks. And NO I wasn't there in the capacity of hockey groupie, though yes, I have worked with Smitty and Scott back in my Hockeycorp days. I doubt either would remember me out of context, and I did not approach either. Wasn't the place ... no reason to do so.

Drunk people are funny. I was not one of them last night nor was my friend Patricia. But I think it’s safe to say that some of the idiocy we saw was pretty damn funny.

Off to ice my back and hope I am not too sore tomorrow …