The first sentence is killer. It drew me in immediately. I quite enjoyed this tender story of a beloved pet.

The story could use some work in the spelling and grammar, and the following sentence should be clarified:
“He chases him down the hall trying to kill the belt flying from his robe.”

It’s hard to tell who is chasing whom.

@cthulhuburger: I will rewrite the sentence “A chase ensues, the belt to my fathers robe, the mortal enemy.

But I don’t see any spelling/grammer errors. Please point them out, its the Ficly Way. I do appreciate your input though. Thank you.

Ahh! I will point them out. Punctuation always goes inside the quote marks. As in “Good luck.” In paragraph 5, “fathers” should be “father’s” since father owns it. In paragraph 2, a comma would work just as well as a semicolon. In paragraph 3, there should be a comma after “life left” (inside the quotes!)

Okay, that’s my nit-picky grammar. That aside, I really enjoyed this story. Especially the last line, that made me smile. As did the title. I love my cat… I feel like I would love this cat too :)

@Someday….Thank you, I stared at it too long. Plus, I have a hard time with this small Ficly font. I went a different route and minimized the punctuation. Hope it works. Your fresh eyes really helped.

I can’t wait to tell you about my rooster, Pretty Boy. I rescued him too.

Did the sex of the cat change halfway thru the story? Or is that part of the story? Cause for the first 5 paragraphs it is “he” and “him” and then it switches to “she” and “her”. A little confusing at the end but maybe it is what you were going for. The sex change just seems to need a little more explanation, ie, your dad likes female cats but not male.

@smdasilva: @smd.

Yes, the cat’s sex is an underlying theme, maybe too much for a small story. It’s strange how some things are called “she” like a battle ship and some things are called “he” or “em”. I love this subject, its very interesting to me and this factual life moment is when I became interested in the dynamics of using “she” and “he” as adjectives and modifiers. The cat was a “Mr.” when my dad saw “it”. I did not know the sex when I found “it”. And “he” turned into a "she’ when “it” took on the role of nurse. We never knew the the sex of Mister and we had Mister for 5 years.

I have a friend in Seattle who can not go to dog parks because she can’t refrain from calling EVERY dog a “she”, it pisses the owner off.

But, I will work on the sex issue, it is very confusing and I tried to make up for it in the title.

It is a fun story, once I understood it. The overall style, a sort of half-told, disjointed feel to it, made for a tricky read. I’m not sure it’s bad or good at this point, but it makes for a challenging read, which I think is reflected in some of the other comments. I think the present tense adds to the confusion, especially given that the story takes place over what sounds like years, which in my mind doesn’t work for a use of present tense.

So, lovely tale of how a semi-unwanted vagrant cat found it’s place, but wound up a bit too stylized for my tastes, for what that’s worth, especially since I do the same thing from time to time.

Thanks THX! Your input is greatly valued. I rewrote the story and it IS much better, thanks to you.

Please keep at me, I welcome it.

Ah yes, a question of Grey and Gray. One is American the other British. But, when it comes to color swatches, they are vastly different. And since the use of grey in my story is an adjective, not a noun, it is pertaining to the color of the cat, not a Gray Russian cat but -a grey Russian cat.
So much studying for such a short story.
Thanks for all of your help on punctuation and tense.
http://www.greyorgray.com/