Countdown to the launch of "The Real" Kracker Cat Blog: Four days!

Due to an unfortunate series of events that beset me as a child, I grew up believing myself to be a despiser of cats. After I married, five children came to Sunflower and I, and when my two youngest, both daughters, would see someone giving away kittens in the parking lot of the local grocery store, they would beg, "Please, Daddy! Let us take home a kitten!"

With a smile, a tilt of the head and the bat of an eye, Tryskuit and Nabysko could charm just about anything they wanted out of me, but towards cats, my heart was hard. "No!" I would deny them, "Dogs are fine, dogs are good, but let just one thing be understood: in my house, there are no cats allowed!"

And then on a hot July day in Alaska, in the year 1991, a skinny kitten stepped out of the woods behind our house - quite literally, he stepped out of a dream and came to me, to beg for my ham. He relished the ham, but he did not care for the pickle, nor the mustard.

That cat stayed, and more followed. These are the Kracker Cats, and in this blog, the stories of all will be told. These will be happy stories, humourous stories, frustrating stories, sad stories, tragic stories. Readers - you who love cats - you will laugh, and you will cry!

To see all the Kracker Cats, both the original and contemporary, scroll down.

I travel a great deal, mostly in Alaska, but I wander into many other places as well. As my children grew, I was gone from home as much as not, sometimes more. When I was home, I would tell my children bedtime stories. By the time Kaboodle appeared at our house, the boys had outgrown these stories but my daughters still thrived on them.

Now, they insisted that every story that I tell be about a cat. So I made up some wonderful ones, right on the spot, and I was always as curious as they were to see how these stories would turn out.

Then one day as I was about to climb into my airplane and fly off to a village in the Alaska bush, Nabysko, the youngest, looked up at me and said, "Daddy! Write us a cat story while you are gone!"

So I did. Not long after, I happened upon a cat. I took its picture. I inquired about its history. When I returned home, I showed the picture to the girls, and told them what I had learned about the cat's history.

Ever since, wherever I go, I try to find and photograph a cat, and learn what I can about its history.

Hence, "Cats Met Along The Way." And always I keep in mind the wise admonition of Persimon Munk:

"Every cat has a story."

Charlie Chaplain, above, chosen at random, is just one of the hundreds of cats that I have met along the way, in every region of Alaska, 24 states, DC, four Canadian provinces, England, Russia and India.

And I will be meeting more, in many other places.

As my children grew, Sunflower was forever scolding me about all these lies that I told them. "You should write these stories down!" she insisted. I ignored this advice, but then, one summer, I decided to write down a few of the tails about cats that I had told to Tryskuit and Nabysko.

These are the stories that will appear in this section of the blog.

Above is an image, created by my talented niece, Amber Swallow, when she was still in high school, to help illustrate a story about Art, a cat who tried to fly his Catabria airplane over Denali.

If any of you southerners are confused by this word, "Denali," it is the name of the mountain that so many well-intentioned folk who don't know any better mistakenly call "Mt. Mc... Mt. McK... Mt. Mck... in... in.. le.." Oh, hell! I can't even say it! I'm not talking about a hamburger here! I'm talking about the highest mountain in North America, the mountain that rises higher vertically over the surrounding terrain than does any other mountain in the world.

I'm talking about Denali.