Yellow Gold Has Fur

Yellow cats have been part of my life for forty years. One escorted me across half the country three times.  Colonel Mustard (pictured) is the latest bit of sunshine in my life.  His yellow fur flies in tiny helicopters when he shakes, covers chairs and tabletops. He offers kitty kisses to the tip my nose if he thinks I need cheering.

Yellow cat number one pressed his nose against the bars of a Syracuse, NY shelter in 1974.  He purred when I stroked his fur though the cage. He came home with us that day.  We called him Morris after a cat food commercial on TV that featured a golden kitty. We thought Morris was too ordinary a handle, too common, so his name evolved to Moshe, and finally to Mos. He lived with a houseful of adolescent boys in a Syracuse group home with us, moved from New York state to Nebraska three times, and settled in to help parent when our kids arrived.

Mos greeted a cadre of international students when they picnicked on the ranch in the early 1980’s.  He treated students from Japan, China, Finland, Malaysia, and Iran all the same.  He allowed each student a chance to give him one stroke, before he moved on the next, taking his ambassadorial duty very seriously.

Col. Mustard cheers me on to help the latest group of students from Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and the Island of Curacao.  He’s a bit shy and doesn’t want to meet any of them, prefers me to see the students at the office, but not bring them home to disrupt our golden naps.