Amy.

My cat Amy passed away two weeks ago. I'm finally writing about it now, because I think I might be able to say some nice things about her without blubbering. She was a huge part of my life for the last eight years, and I miss her a lot.

She went by many names: Lunchbox, Lunchy, Amos, Chubbs, or Tubbygoogoo (if you knew her well enough). My pal Nate tried to work Cuddletank into the nickname repertoire but it never really took. My dad called her "anything but late for lunch, dude." I usually just called her Amy.

I got Amy from the Humane Society on December 22, 1999. I had gone out there the day before with a girl I was slightly dating at the time, just to scope out the scene. I had been considering getting a cat for a few months previous to this. I was living alone in a one bedroom apartment, and my Mom had passed away about five months earlier. I was depressed, pretty lonely, working part time and going to college downtown. I thought it couldn't hurt to have some company on the nights I had to stay in alone and do immense amounts of reading.

So yes, we went to the Humane Society. Turned out almost all the cats were sick. The room with the little cages lining the walls was full of tired, sneezing felines who were really trying to conjure up some enthusiasm, but it wasn't really happening. Then, I saw Amy. She had her nose pressed to the cage, meowing and staring at me. I stepped closer to her cage, and noted that she seemed healthy. As I was getting a closer look, she put her paw through the cage and pressed it to my face. Not bad. Her adoption card said "Amy is an easygoing, friendly cat who needs a loving, indoor home." It also said she was four years old and had been surrendered by her previous owners.

We asked to take her out of her cage and took turns holding her and checking her out. She seemed happy. For some reason I couldn't go through with it (I'm sure I was terribly hung over) so I had them hold her for me and I told them I would let them know the next day. An hour later, I was mad I hadn't just taken her home. The paw through the cage thing? There was no way I could resist her charms.

So, I went back the next day and she moved in with me. From the minute she hopped out of her Humane Society provided box, she was right at home.It seemed though, that she was intent on proving her worth. She was incredibly friendly to everyone, slept with me every night, and was just all around perfect. They mentioned at the HS that she had been surrendered because she was urinating on the floor in the house of her previous owners. The girl there told me Amy hadn't had any problems like that during her stay, and after a few weeks of watching her poop like a champ, meticulously, in her litter box, I became convinced that her former owners were liars, but nice enough for not ditching her on the side of the road.

As my friends and I were tremendous drunks at the time, we would just wing our bottle caps through the apartment, trying to reach the kitchen from the front room. Amy started bringing them back. This became a great game for all of us, and yet another way for Amy to prove that she was the coolest cat ever. I finally had to sit her down and say "Look, you've got the job." But she kept at it. In the picture above, I'm slumped on the floor of my kitchen, drunk, and Amy is waiting for me to throw a bottle cap. I can't tell you how amusing this was at 3:45 in the morning on a Tuesday.
My brother bought Amy a video of kittens tumbling around with each other (some serious non-sexual cat porn) and, as you can see from this other photo, she enjoyed watching that quite a bit. We had a good time in that little apartment. Amy found a way to crawl through an unfinished hole in the wall of my apartment and go inside the structure, behind the wall and under an adjacent set of stairs. If I couldn't find her, I'd just shake the food bag and she'd hop back through the hole in the wall, covered with dust and paint flakes.

I'd let her stay outside while I went to work, and she was great about it. I walked to work, and when she'd see me up the block on my way home, she'd come meet me on the street and walk back into the apartment with me. Once, I had been out in my car, and I came home, pulled around the corner of the block I lived on, and she was laying out in the middle of the street. I pulled my car up to her, so far that I couldn't see her in front of me. She didn't move. I had to get out, pick her up, and move her onto the sidewalk. Eventually, I met a girl and we decided to move in together.
This girl had a dog, and I was concerned that Amy might not take to living with a canine. Turned out, as you can see, she didn't care. You can also see that she was getting fatter. I didn't really notice this happening. If she was hungry, I fed her. In retrospect, I didn't do the best job of monitoring her food intake. I was drunk a lot and wanted to be the nice guy. Eh, she was happy.

The house we lived in was in a small neighborhood, right below and behind a Fred Meyer. There was a long set of stairs that provided foot access to the store, so you didn't have to walk three blocks around it to get there. Our house was about 3 blocks from the stairs, of which there were probably fifty. One day I set out to get some groceries, and Amy started following me. After the first block, I just wanted to see how far she would go. She ended up following me to the base of the stairs, where I figured she would stop. I ran up the steps, got my foodstuffs, and when I came back out, she was waiting at the top of the steps for me. We walked home, slowly, together. The next time she went all the way to the front door of the store with me and waited outside while I shopped. The walks home were tough, as she was pretty winded by the end of it. The lady I was living with and I eventually went our separate ways, and Amy and I moved on.We moved into a big house with 3 other guys. We were all pretty lost, a few of us coming off breakups and getting into some serious boozing. As you can see, Amy loved horseplay with drunk dudes. Putting her on her back like a turtle left me with many well deserved battle scars. Amy kept eating, and with four drunk guys to feed her, she kept putting on the pounds. If it was morning and we were all sleeping one off, she'd go door to door in the house, scratching on each one until somebody woke up to give her some food. It was cute, but also jarring. She had also figured out how to turn on my computer, which made a loud Apple noise and lit up my entire bedroom. She was no slouch.

I met another lady friend and decided to try my hand at cohabitation again. We moved into an apartment, and Amy was happy as ever, until the evening of August 3, 2003. I was working at a bar with my girlfriend, and we always came home late. We would allow Amy to stay out, because she just hid in the bushes and watched the world go by. We came home this night to a faint sound of her crying from underneath a car. I had to pull her out, and I quickly realized there was blood on my hands. I flipped out. Luckily, our friend had given us a ride home, so she was sober and able to get us to the emergency vet. After a terribly long few hours, they concluded that she had been attacked by a raccoon. She had multiple puncture wounds, some broken toes, and lots of bruising.
She got set up with some pain patches and lots of antibiotics. As you can see, they had to shave almost her entire back end. Oh, and they mentioned that her excess body weight had possibly prevented her internal organs from being damaged, and may have saved her life. So take that, people who asked me if she was pregnant! After three or four days of being doped up and sleeping, she began to return to her former self. It took a while for her fur to grow back, but her wounds healed up and she was no worse for the wear. From then on, she stayed inside. This is why vets tell you to keep your cats indoors. Even geniuses like Amy can get ambushed.

My girlfriend came home with a kitten one day, and Amy wasn't entirely impressed. They didn't really get along, but the little one was too fast to get caught by Amy's swats and it made for some great photos. They eventually found a way to tolerate each other. After moving with my girlfriend into a new house for a few months, I once again found myself single, and Amy and I were back to living alone.

As usual, this is where Amy really shined. I was not in a great place in my life, but she couldn't have cared less. We watched hours of TV together, and spent plenty of time sitting on the porch and doing nothing. And, she found a nice little perch on the back of my couch to sit, look out the window, and watch the outside world. Without sounding too terribly corny, she helped me through some really hard times in that sad little apartment, and I will always be grateful for that.

After about eight months there, we moved on to a new house, with a new roommate, a friend of mine who had a dog and two cats of her own. Amy found a great new home there, and helped herself to any stray cat food that may have slipped by the other felines in the house. There was a couch on the porch that she loved to nap on, and she enjoyed some fancy baths in the claw foot tub. She didn't get along with the other cats perfectly, but they found a way to respect each other. Or something like that. Amy was getting older, and she was happy to sleep the day away or just hang out. Her days of fetching and leaping were behind her, but she was always happy. After a little over a year of living in this house, I decided to once again move in with my girlfriend. Joy and I got an apartment together and Amy was once again by herself, as far as other animals went. We put her on a weight loss program, now that she was finally somewhere where we could monitor her food intake, and I was finally sober and ready to stick to it.

Amy spent her last few years with Joy and I, living in a calm household with more love than she knew what to do with. We got a new cat, and she learned to tolerate him, though in true Amy spirit, they weren't best friends. That was my job. She developed arthritis in her back leg, but she still got around pretty well. We got her to lose seven pounds. She laid on my stomach every night while we watched Letterman.

The morning of the day she passed away, she and I were in the vet's office and he couldn't get her to stop purring so he could listen to her heartbeat. He finally did, and when he left the room, she and I had some time together to just sit and enjoy each other's company. I knew she was tired, I could see it. I told her she was doing great, and she laid there on the table, purring and staring at me. I told her I'd get her home soon. I'm still having trouble accepting the fact that it didn't happen.

But, I'm getting to the point where I can look at all these pictures of her and smile, absolutely enamored with what a fantastic cat she was. She was easily the most intelligent animal I've ever encountered in my life. And, most importantly, she was my friend when I felt hopeless and terribly alone. I really can't put into words how vital that was.

I can't get cynical about this one. I'm a lucky guy. She's proof.

I miss you, lady.

Scott Baio is 46...and Pregnant Ep. 8.

Scott and Renee's wedding is two weeks away, so they're out with Scott the wedding planner guy, scouting locations for the shindig. The place they're at is outdoors, an open grassy area with a weird series of thin pillars that seem to line a path of some sort. The location looks directly down on the smoggy cesspool that is Los Angeles. It really is like something out of a fairy tale. After arguing over something to with hanging curtains somewhere (which seems like a pretty logical idea but Baio's having none of it), Baio whines about money and says, once again, that he's ready to give big gay 'n' bald Scott and his sweet stone washed denim jacket that's a size too small his walking papers.

At his Daddy-To-Be class, which has now morphed into pretty much just a Daddy class, Baio and the three other guys in the group who may or may not be actors are taking a field trip with the instructor. They go to a music workshop, where this hippie-ish folk duo/married couple (?) walk them through some songs they can sing to their kids. After acing his way through the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" hand motions, Baio's feeling cocky and confident. He then partners up with one of the other dudes and pats him on the face while he sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." It's supposed to be cute and it isn't. This somehow leads him to thinking that he should be more responsible. He jots it down, but is clearly consumed with the music. Scott is excited to get home and give it a whirl with his daughter.

Upon arriving at home he does just that, though it seems Bailey is already asleep when he starts singing. Whatever, he's feeling like he finally accomplished something in his sad life and he may be right. Still reeling from that job well done, Scott puts the baby to bed and decides to help Renee with the wedding invitations, that are apparently going out two weeks before the ceremony. After annoying Renee by smacking his gum, Scott annoys her further by spitting it out in a piece of the fire engine red tissue paper she's stuffing in the envelopes. She tells him how expensive the paper is and they begin to bicker about the cost of the wedding again. Scott makes a sweet comment about how Other Scott is blowing all of his Happy Days residual money. And I laugh. Scott then suggest they do eVites for their wedding. I laugh again. Then they talk about how their bachelor/bachelorette parties are coming up.

Scott decides that with all this money being spent on top of his own declaration that "I have money, but I'm not made of money," that it might be time to nail down some work. He goes to see his agent, who shows him scripts for FrankenBaio, BaioWolf, and Brokeback Baio. Scott is not impressed, and said he would rather be Chachi for the rest of his life than do those flicks. His agent then suggests an animated film, where Scott would play a squirrel from Brooklyn trying to protect his nuts. Go ahead an engrave the Golden Globe. Scott asks if there's a role in it for the V man, and his agent says there might be.

At the recording studio where the audition is taking place, Scott and Johnny V meet the director of the project, a young guy who quickly loses his patience for the Vster. Scott does a terrible squirrel voice, bucking his front teeth out like a rabbit. After a slue of "hey, gimme my nuts" jokes that aren't even remotely funny the first time, the scene ends and we have no indication as to whether Scott got the job, but we have proof positive that Johnny V is a terrible leech who should be drop kicked if encountered on the street.

It's time for Scott's bachelor party, and he and the brosephs have decided to Wild Hog it. They get sadly dressed in leather and hop on their motorcycles, except for V, who rides on the back of Baio's three wheel cycle, complete with a wacky old-style helmet and goggles. This guy is a card! While the boys are setting up camp, we see Renee and her small group of friends sitting around getting pedicures and drinking wine, just kicking back and being pampered. You know, like girls like to do. There is possibly an Arbor Mist commercial being filmed in the room, but I can't confirm that. Scott and his homeboys get soused pretty quickly, duct taping loser cans of Miller Lite to their hands and pouring them on each other like they just clinched the pennant. Back at the house, Renee mentions that she's decided to let Scott plan the wedding. This is met with objection from Renee's intolerable daughter, who clearly has life figured out, as evidenced by her frequent use of double negatives.

Baio and the bros continue to camp and get gayer and gayer, pouring beer on each other and making toasts to their friend's upcoming ceremony, which he is clearly not looking forward to. As they sat around the campfire, I kept waiting for the Herv to say "You know guys, it doesn't get any better than this," but it didn't happen. What did happen was Herv, Steve, and Baio getting super loaded and deciding to sneak up on Johnny V while he's dropping a deuce. Really just one of those special reality TV moments. Look for it on an E! countdown in the near future. After that heartwarming moment (which ended up being nothing more than some shaky camera work and Johnny V in his boxers, pacing), the boys gather around the campfire and really start in on the wuss talk. "I've finally found what I'm looking for" and "Now you know what you've been searching for" both make an appearance. Thankfully, Hervey kills the moment when he tries to step into his sleeping bag but he's so hammered that he falls backwards, completely decimating their styrofoam cooler with his back. Hands down, the most legitimately funny moment this show has produced. At the end of the night, the guys decide they will help Baio plan the wedding. To make sure it's official, they bump knucks like the true choads that they are.

The ride home the next morning is rough, as both Hervey and the big V have to pull the hogs over and do some serious side of the road shrubbery vomiting. Again, Scott feels like he's played the responsible role, because a visibly woozy Johnny V is clinging to him on the back of his overgrown trike. Hervey continues to unload on the plant life.

Speaking of vomiting, next week Baio gets his marriage on.

Scott Baio is 46...and Pregnant Ep. 7.

In what is easily the most boring episode of the season thus far, I managed to like Scott Baio for around eight seconds. Which, if you've watched any Luke Perry movies, you know is a pretty decent amount of time, relatively speaking.

A few weeks have gone by, and Scott has managed to not harm his child. At present, we find him in an upscale crystal and china boutique with Renee and Scott, their wedding planner. Baio hates the other Scott, and not just because he's a big, bald, flamboyant homosexual. He's going to cost Baio a lot of money, and Baio is not down. They're in this shop for assholes, trying to get their wedding registry together. They're even talking about how it's a shop for assholes. Big Scott ends up referring to the place as the "antithesis of Target," and Scott uses the opportunity to make us all proud, even if it is incredibly brief: "I like Target," he says. Me too Scott, me too. But he's not done! He ends up clowning the hideous crystal goblets that Renee's been eying, and suggests that they should register for some practical items, instead of things they're only going to break out for special occasions. Of course, nobody cares about his (surprisingly level-headed) opinions, so he goes over to Bailey's stroller, tells her she's cute, and then morphs back into Baio Classic.

Taking Bill up on his offer (was it last episode?), Scott decides to rejoin the Daddy-To-Be class. This week they're meeting at Bill's house, outside, in front of Bill's big outdoor fireplace. Bill is sitting is front of it, peering over his glasses, the light from the fire shaking behind him and making him appear strangely sinister. One of the dudes has recently had his baby, he talks about how great it is, Scott whines about how he'll never get to that "nirvana" he's searching for, and Bill talks him down with common sense that in no way resembles any qualified diagnosis. I can't remember if this guy's even accredited in any way. Eh, who gives a shit. He tells Scott to lighten up, and Baio jots it down in his to-do list, which he apparently hadn't thrown out.

In a strange turn, Scott mentions that he and the pit crew of douchebro are going to take some sort of race car class. Scott is not looking forward to it, because now that he has reproduced, he apparently values his life. Which would explain the years of promiscuous sex with every blond girl in the greater Los Angeles area. Or would it...?

In an excruciatingly tedious scene, Renee (who shows little to no physical signs of having recently given birth) and her daughter are at a wedding dress shop, trying to find something to wear for the upcoming nuptials. Renee leaves her trashy doo rag skull cap device on the entire time, reminding us that at the end of the day, she probably curls up with some Hot Pockets and a can of the Silver Bullet, possibly to watch a little Maury. She ends up finding a fairly affordable dress for herself, which looks fine now, but she mentions that she'll have to trim it with some cherry red to match the bridesmaid dress her daughter picked out. Somebody call Jeff Foxworthy, we may have mined some new material for him.

Speaking of white people, at the auxiliary NASCAR track, the bro crew is gearing up (get it?) for their big day behind the wheel. In case you forgot what burrowing tick of annoyance Johnny V is, he decides to give a quick refresher. He finds a stack of free tires, grabs one, and tells everyone that he's going to take it home with him. But he didn't drive. Oh, Johnny! You're a character! The other guys decide that whoever finishes their fake race with the slowest time has to drive the V man home with his ratty tire. After an incredibly boring montage of the guys strapping in and driving around the track in which Scott drives incredibly slow (he says he doesn't want his daughter to get to know him through Happy Days reruns, which is a pretty cool thing to say), they tally up their scores and to no one's surprise, Scott is the slowest. But, he's got to get home to his daughter. Steve says he'll drive Johnny and his nutty tire home, but he bolts off before Johnny can wedge it in the trunk of his white BMW, which is a car that any soccer mom can tell you, is a great ride.

A few days later, in what has to be the most obviously staged moment of the show yet, Scott spots Johnny's SUV in front of a strip club, and we find out that it's not even noon yet. He goes inside, and Johnny's ponied up at the rack enjoying a slab of meat and a girl who is talking on her cell phone while she works the stripper pole. Scott gives her a twenty to leave them alone, and Johnny goes into his well rehearsed routine, which, if doesn't eventually lead to Johnny's suicide, will no doubt leave us all disappointed. He's whining about how Scott is ditching him, the same shit we've been seeing for weeks. Scott tells him to grow up, and then in one last fleeting glimpse of a likable Baio, tears up when he talks about his daughter. Not bad. Except that he's sitting in a strip club so it's hard to take seriously.

He then goes home and sings some weak 70's AOR song to Bailey. Advantage: Baio? They must be getting production notes regarding American's hatred of him.

Next week Scott hits the vocal booth and tries to nail down some voice over work. With nutty interference from Johnny V! Put your laughing caps on.