Meet Edison and Learn a Little Known Fact About His Namesake

This is Edison.

He was a stray that showed up at Mary's when she still lived here.

They named him Edison because his favorite place to sit was on the surge protector for her computer.  He was nothing but a bag of bones with a kinked tail where it had been broken.

  We ended up with Edison and he's been a nice addition.

I don't call him Edison much .... he's always been Eddie Kitty to me.

I read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen yesterday and now I'm sorry that he was named after Thomas Edison.  Did you know that Thomas Edison electrocuted stray dogs, cats, a few horses, cattle and an elephant named Topsy?  He wanted to prove the dangers of the alternating current.  It seems that Westinghouse developed AC and it was replacing the direct current that he had invented and was eating into his profits.  He even filmed the electrocution of the elephant and toured the US showing the film in hopes of destroying Westinghouse.

Eddie Kitty has used up several of his lives though.

We figured the first one probably went when his tail was broken.

In either 1997 or 1998, he lost another one.  Sometime during the Christmas season, Mardell and I went to town separately.  She was picking up donuts for the crew that we had working and then going to get a sandwich tray.  When she got out at Holland Bakery, she heard this yowling and saw an orange flash go underneath the car next to where she was parked.  She got down on all fours to discover our Eddiekins.  He had ridden in to town on the exhaust system.  How he didn't fall in twelve miles is beyond us.  From that day on, he become a store cat.  We figured that was destiny or something.

Our employee, nicknamed Becker, even trained him to wear a harness when he went outside.  She was afraid he would run off.  I knew he wouldn't.  We had the secret weapon.  It seems that Eddie is quite fond of catnip and it was growing in our flower garden.  He wouldn't have left for anything.

He was not very happy when we closed the store and he was forced into retirement.  He was so ticked off that he resolved to let our mouse population grow .... and grow.

Two summers ago, he disappeared for about three weeks.  When he finally came home, his feet were sooty and slightly burned.  Our neighbors down the road two miles had a fire in their pasture and he had evidently been in the area and crossed the burn spot while it was still hot.  That had to take another life.

Here's a picture of Eddie in his garden.  Yes, his garden.  He is quite sure it is his.  We even put a statue up in honor of him.  The fat cat pair.  

  

Do you notice his goofy ear?  He had an absess that we had a heck of a time treating and getting healed.  I finally lanced it and it shot all over our bathroom wall.  However, his ear hasn't stood up straight since then.  Gives him character.

 

This is Eddie under the influence of catnip.

 

Now his favorite place is in the middle of my bed or else in the middle of my mariner's compass quilt blocks.  A couple of days ago Mardell caught him with one in his mouth.  He was carrying it off somewhere.