This good-looking young guy is named Marconi. He’s the youngest of the four kitties who allow us to inhabit their house. One day, he showed up at the back door of the Citadel Little Rock Radio Center, home of Arkansas’ largest radio group and the place where I work to support my writing habit. Since he was hanging around at a bunch of radio stations, it seemed only right that he be named after Guglielmo Marconi, the man who is known as “the Father of Radio” (he was the first man to transmit information wirelessly over long distances — more or less the inventor of wireless communication).

There’s something about having a cat show up on your doorstep that makes the “cat people” rise to the surface of any organization, the way cream rises in raw milk. Soon, folks were leaving him food and water, which of course made him a regular fixture around the back porch. One of our salespeople had a standing arrangement for discount spaying and neutering with a vet she used to work for, and several staffers chipped in to have Marconi “broken” and get him his first round of shots. A couple of our night and weekend guys were secretly taking him inside on cold nights and keeping him in one of the bathrooms. He really became part of the family.
     
At first, I thought Marconi he was feral because he wasn’t particularly sociable and seemed to be somewhat of a “traveling man.” Over the course of a few weeks, he became more trusting and even let a few of us pet him as he sunned himself behind the building. I saw something in Marconi. I was starting to think that he wasn’t really a feral cat. I noticed that he tried to come inside the building a few times, and he was much more sociable than most truly feral cats. The real clincher was the day that I saw Marconi playing with a live mouse in the grass. Feral cats do not play with their food. I decided that Marconi must have been someone’s lost, run away, or abandoned house cat. He could manage outside on his own, but it wasn’t his natural habitat.
     
Everyone could see that Marconi and I had developed a special bond, and I was frequently asked not if but when I was going to take him home. Our cats were strictly indoor kitties, I was leery of trying to bring this maybe-semi-feral cat into our home. We had three females at the time, but we also had an empty space that had been occupied by another yellow boy named Buddy, who had been with me for over 15 years and had died just a few months before. I’ve always believed that people don’t adopt cats. Cats adopt people, and Marconi had adopted me. He worked his way into a special place in my heart, and one day I finally knew that He wanted to come home with me. I gave him what he wanted, and today he is firmly and fully in command of the Case household.
     
Marconi never had any complaints until the day he heard about Larry the Garden Cat. Marco was sitting on the back of my chair as I was browsing the website of KTHV-TV, Channel 11 (“Today’s THV”), the CBS affiliate in Little Rock. THV has an outdoor weather set that they call “The Weather Garden.” One of the residents of the Weather Garden is a yellow cat named Larry, whose story is not unlike Marconi’s, but with a video twist. Larry’s become somewhat of a celebrity, with frequent appearances on THV’s morning show and weekend weather. I haven’t seen him as much on the evening news; the night crew must be dog people. Larry’s got his own corner of the THV web site, a blog, and even an on-air contest – the “11 Larry Look-Alikes Contest.”
     
I was browsing the THV website one day, with Marconi sitting on the back of my chair (not unlike the first picture above), and when I came to Larry’s web page, Marconi perked up and growled just enough to get my attention. I asked him what his problem was, and he responded with indignation and just a hint of jealousy. Ths discussion went like this:

“That Larry guy starts hangs around a TV station and now he’s a TV star with his own web page, and a blog, and a cool T-shirt with his picture. I was hanging around at a radio station, and what did I get? A radio show? Noooo.  A web page or a blog? Noooo. Not even a stinkin’ t-shirt. All I got was neutered.”

“Well, Marco, “ I replied, “It’s going to be 100 degrees outside today, and Larry has to live outside while you live in this nice, air-conditioned house. And, when it thunders, Larry can’t run downstairs and hide under the rug like you can. Are you sure you’d rather be Larry?”

Marconi thought for a moment and purred, “No, I’m good.”

Marconi does look a lot like Larry, so he wanted to enter the 11 Larry Look-Alikes contest. And, he won. As one of the eleven winners, he gets one year of heartworm and flea preventative treatment, sixteen pounds of high-class cat food, one full checkup from Dr. Bob, the THV Morning show’s resident veterinarian, and a Larry the Garden Cat tee-shirt. Marco decided to donate most of his winnings to Helping Hands for Little Paws, an all-volunteer animal rescue organization that rescued two of his three feline housemates.

But, Marconi wants that tee-shirt!