So, when I was in college and I, I got a cat — a kitten and he was basically my best buddy for you know, 10, 11 years I think is how long he lived. And he did everything with me, he moved all over the place with me, he was just my, my buddy. And I feel like I’ll never get another cat like him. He was, he was the best. His name was Venom.
Uh, well, Venom and I had a special relationship where I always knew what was going on with him. I could just look at him and I would kinda instinctively and intuitively know how he was feeling. So I could avoid getting swatted, I could avoid being attacked, because he liked to play. Or I could tell he would want to come sit on my lap. There was, you know, we had our routines. It was really cute, whenever I’d get home, I would go, “Hello.” Or what would I say? “Hi Venom! Hi Venom!” and then he would go [meow, meow] like in the exact same notes that I had just done. So we kinda had this like greeting down pretty well.
And the funniest time, I guess it’s not really that I was communicating with him, but that he was communicating with me. Um, so back in like, 2003 I would say, I had an answering machine, I didn’t have a cell phone, I had a landline with an answering machine. And on my answering machine, the message that would come on, would be, “Hey, you’ve reached my name. Venom is listening to you right now. So, say hi to Venom and then tell me what you wanted you know, to — why you were calling me. Thanks. Bye.” And so, so I’d get people calling and they’d be like, “Oh, hey Venom.”
Well, it was so cute, one day I came home and I hadn’t checked my messages yet. And Venom was like, [meow], like “Hey!” And he runs over to the answering machine and h- — and there’s a big button that like just says play. And he tapped it with his, um, with his paw, and immediately my dad’s voice comes on and he goes, “Hey Venom, this is [diarist’s name]’s dad. Can you just tell [diarist] to give me a call back? Thanks Venom.” And then he like — then Venom like looked at me and was like, “Hey, your dad called.” I was like, “Oh, well thanks Venom. That was really sweet of you for letting me know that.” It just seemed like he was very intentionally doing that and it was like the cutest thing. It was so great. Man, I really miss him. He was the best.