RIP Kurt Vonnegut
Just read that Kurt Vonnegut died today at the age of 84 - bummer…
Aside from Tom Robbins, I have more Vonnegut books on my shelf than any other fiction author. I really got into him in my early 20’s but it’s been a while since I’ve picked up one of his books. I’m looking forward to re-reading a few of his better books over the next week or so.
I just grabbed “Breakfast Of Champions” (not his most critically acclaimed book but one of my favorites) and was pleased to find that the bookmark I was using was in fact a homemade postcard from my sister, sent in 1998 while she lived in Durango.
The front of the postcard is a picture of the infamous “Fenster,” a cat that I owned my first year out of college with my roommate Evan in a tiny apartment in Beacon Hill.
Ironically, this was a cat that Vonnegut would have loved - full of personality and categorically insane. After about 4 months, we had to give him to one of Evan’s co-workers who was able to let him be an outdoor cat because he was inflicting too much physical pain on us and our friends.
I still have a few scars from his scratches and can guarantee that anyone who slept at our place and let their foot hang off the bed or the couch is still having nightmares…
Cute little guy but you can tell he was dangerous:
