Harvie- Not A Pooka

A dear friend of mine from my theatre days in the early eighties, Fay, had to move into an apartment in Vero Beach, Florida, where she couldn't take her cat. Harvie was born during the Vero Beach Theatre Guild production of Harvey in 1980. She already knew me and loved me, so I inherited the Harv.

The flea situation in Vero Beach was very bad. Harvie hated to walk on the carpeted living room floor. It sort of happened gradually, but soon it became apparent that I had rearranged my living room furniture so that Harvie could go anywhere in the house without touching the carpet.

A year later I married my first wife, who promptly rearranged the furniture again. It might have had something to do with the fact that upon Harvie's first encounter with Jodi, the Harv threw up on her. Good job, Harv! Their relationship never got any better.

When Carmen moved in, she brought her own cat into the mix. It took time, but the two kitties learned to peacefully co-exist (mostly). We moved them to Saint Cloud, where we lived serially in three different houses, then to Orlando, where they both died within a few months of each other in 1999. Harvie was 19, Ms. Mouse was 18.

I'll tell you two short Harvie stories. One night in early '83 she came to the door making strange noises. She wasn't a talker, so her "voice" was weird anyway. I opened the door, and she came trotting in proudly with a mouse in her mouth. Then she stopped and set it down. It ran into my coat closet! Harvie told me with a look, "I'm tired from all that hunting," and went into the bedroom. I, on the other hand, was not at all ready to snooze. I propped open the front door, went into the closet, moved shoes, boots and boxes around until the mouse was spooked. Then I used my broom to run his mousy little butt out the door. All this commotion woke up the Harv. She was staring at me from the bedroom doorway. "You let my mouse out!" she said with her eyes. Then she went back to bed.

Later that same decade, my Uncle Jim came to visit on Christmas Day. Uncle Jim was a bird watcher, a long-time member of the Audubon Society, with a life list of birds numbering many many hundreds. Being in the Christmas spirit, that morning, not long before he came over, Harvie killed a bluejay and laid it in the center of our door mat. She was sump'n, that girl.