My sister called this week to tell me that she had to put her nineteen year old cat, Chin-Lee, to sleep. It's unbelievable that he'd been around since 1985...the Soviet Union was still an Evil Empire, New Coke came out followed closely by Coke Classic, the Titanic was located, we watched Breakfast Club and Back to the Future while listening to Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas and USA for Africa's We Are The World...and I was a lifeguard and freshman in college. Chin-Lee was a great cat. One of the five fastest land animals in his youth and one of the orneriest cats in his old age.

One of the funniest stories was one time when my sister got Chin-Lee a new cat pan. He proceeded to stand in it, stare at my sister, put his butt over the edge and poop on the carpet...making it abundantly clear that he didn't approve of the new pan. This continued until my sister retrieved the old pan from the garbage. Eventually, she solved the dilemma by putting old filthy poop-filled litter in the new pan and slowly changing out the old litter for new over the course of a few days. Chin-Lee will certainly be missed.