Somewhere around January of 1992, shortly after we had gotten married, three little kittens showed up at our house. They were all affectionate and friendly and started hanging out at our place.

We don't know who they belonged to, but clearly their owners were not taking good care of them. Their eyes got all runny, and they were left out in the rain and cold. We, and when I say "we" I mean "Sue", started feeding them and tried to build some sort of cover for them to get out of the weather.

Eventually, we just sort of adopted, or "stole", if you prefer, the one we called "Bert". (We are regretful to this day that we didn't adopt all three.) When we left the lake, Bert came with us. He became Sue's one and only.

Bert was a wonderful cat, friend to people and other cats, too. Some of the pictures below will show that.

Bert developed some sort of tumor, and in spite of our best efforts to fight it, we lost him on December 10, 2003. He was about twelve years old.