So you might recognize above and below the "elegant and petite" rag doll Mae West from Dead Reckoning, initially found on the Co-op dock wandering around by Steve, and ultimately to become Steve and Joe's pet aboard the Hard Times. Now passed on as of a couple of years ago in "real life," she's actually endowed with new, bright and positive, literary existence breathed into her furry, autumn colored frame, as she was our own dear fur ball Mama Cat.
For our family Mama was a special, sweet, and very intelligent feline. She was caring, even bringing pinecones up on our front porch by the marsh daily, followed by a steady meowing until her children, Bubba and Sissy, would come to have play time with her. She also suffered no fools or difficult canines in her yard either, at once running after them, chasing them, or gathering her band of progeny (the aforementioned Bubba & Sissy) to make short work of the larger intruder(s)!
On many a foray onto our dock by the tidal creek, she accompanied me and our family for salty-scented jaunts. Once she even jumped right off the dock and into the pluff mud while going after a marsh hen, which had her looking like a golem, or some muddy, chocolatey looking apparition, green eyes glowing! It took my wife quite a while to wash her off. I wasn't in attendance that afternoon, was at work, but I can imagine the relative tumult very easily in my mind's eye as described to me.
Mama and her daughter Sissy also rode shotgun on our golf cart as we tooled around the yard picking up sticks and cutting palm trees. Sometimes they rode in the bed in the back, other times right up front sitting beside us. They also liked to climb the trees all around the yard, by the side marsh, and in the back by the dock.
Now she lives on as Mae West, a happy resident of Canaan's Crossing, enjoying her own brand of adventures!