Many years ago (in the 1980s) when we were still living in Dix Hills, Long Island we had a cat called Ginger. Then I was transferred to Switzerland and the cat went with us. Five years later we moved to France. The cat went with us. Eventually in 1998 we came back to New York and, of course, the cat came with us. Eventually Ginger passed away at a pretty ripe old age. The house seemed empty without her (this was before we got a dog) so we decided to go to the local ASPCA to find another cat. I liked a small long haired calico female, but my wife preferred a large male white shorthair. We couldn’t decide so we decided to take both.

For some reason my wife wanted to call the white cat Lester, but our elder daughter said that he didn’t look like a Lester – he looked like a Sammy. So we decided to name him Samson, although we always called him Sammy. Not surprisingly we decided to call the calico Delilah.

Sammy was certainly not lacking in personality. The very first day we had him we couldn’t find him in the house, eventually discovering him in the unfinished ceiling of our laundry room. He endeared himself to the people building our new kitchen by going up onto the roof and lying there watching them – with half of him overhanging. He would disappear for days and neighbors some distance away told us that they had seen him wandering around. He seemed to like a good fight and on occasion would come back covered in blood (particularly noticeable because he was pure white) – and with a look on his face that appeared to say “you should have seen the other guy”.

Although we didn’t know it when this picture was taken he wasn’t to be with us much longer. You can see in the picture that he’s rather ‘pear shaped’. It turned out that this was a result of fluid accumulation resulting from a failing hear and we lost him not too long afterward. We still have the great memories though.