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was on the ropes, a good portion of his skin in the lower part of his body had turned necrotic and had to be removed.

Don’t lose a fight with a San Francisco raccoon without flushing out the puncture, that’s what we’ve learned here, right? So Tom had some interest ing battle-damage on his rear section that gave him a pretty distinctive look. “I’m a good cat,” his features would read. “But don’t mess with me. I’m not the strongest cat in the room, but I can take what YOU can dish out. Look here; I lived through this.” But the march of the clock goes on for us all, and ol’ Tom got to be around fifteen or so. I understand that’s very old for a cat, but the old guy just did n’t seem to mind it very much. Sure, he slept most of the day and night, but he sure did like to lie out in the sun; the six-foot fence surrounding our yard didn’t seem to be a problem for him. Ever hear of a fifteen year old cat that could leap straight up six feet in the air? This one could. And he roamed around the neighborhood, at will. So one day the old cat goes out for his morning constitutional and he does n’t make it back home. Sad, right? But not unheard of; that’s life in the big city. There’re cars and dogs and crazy, maladjusted kids with a gallon of gas in a can. Shit happens. But we sure did love that old cat, so we kept an eye out. Every day we called the Animal Rescue, and the Lost and Found. And it seems that, around ten days after he first went walkabout, a kindly albeit crazy old lady, one of those folks who feeds the wild cats and the strays and takes the sick and injured in to the Animal Shelter… one of those nutty old ladies dropped off a sick and injured cat who pretty much met Tom’s description. He was so sick they had to euthanize the poor bas tard, so that’s the proverbial that, I figured.

Except that old lady who dropped him off… she lived about two blocks away from our old apartment.

Nearly three miles away from where we live now.

And that’s a mighty big coincidence, and one that started me thinking about how the comic book industry is like a good cat on its last legs.

It’s hard not to anthropomorphize what ol’ Tom was thinking, but I swear to God it’s not hard for me to imagine that he woke up that morning and thought to his little cat self, “These guys were awfully nice to me, and the days’s gonna come in the next week or so when I’m gonna breathe my last. And I sure don’t want either one of them to come out and see my unbreath ing carcass gettin’ picked at by seagulls. So I’m going off on one last

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