My Boy.

After 15 amazing years, I lost my best friend today.

It’s hard to put into words just how crushed I feel right now, but I’m happy that his pain and suffering is over. He fought off a rare blood cancer that was expected to end his life after 2-3 months, and being the bad ass that he is, he beat the odds and managed to last a year more than that.

My heart will forever be scarred by this, but I’m sure he’s out there hanging out with his mama and sister in the great beyond. They’ll show him the ropes, and he’ll be the center of attention there just as he was here on Earth.

I miss him so much already. I can’t explain how much I appreciate the love he brought to me, our family, and our friends over the years. It’s going to be hard to not miss his presence at the cat dishes each morning, and his warm nuzzle against my chest each night, and it will sting to not see him trailing behind his brother as he runs to the door to greet me when I get home each night. He never hurt a soul, and never missed an opportunity to make a friend, even with his pesky little sister who was so jealous of the attention he got.

These last few days have been trying on my soul, but I know that sharing a love with him for the last 15 years was more than I ever deserved, and I hope that it is with the same love that we said goodbye to each other today. He will forever live on in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved him.

Wampa can rest now, his work here is done. I’m a better person because of him, and he taught me more about life than I could ever know, and he deserves every bit of praise he ever received. He was with me through every struggle I had to endure, and I know his love and presence got me through it all. I still feel him with me as I write this, and I with this huge sense of loss, I feel such a sense of love that I can’t thank him enough for. They broke the mold after they made that boy. Take him lord, but don’t take him lightly.

While Wampa has spawned a lot of poetry and prose from my own hand over the years, I think HP Lovecraft might have written it best:

The ancient garden seems at night
a deeper gloom to bear,
as if some silent shadow's blight
were hov'ring in the air.

With hidden griefs the grasses sway,
unable quite to word them
remembering from yesterday
the little paws that stirred them.

WAMPA MOORE
The King of all Cats
1995 - 2010

"We All Got Our Own Ways Of Livin'"

One of my favorite movies is Sam Peckinpah’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” from 1970. It’s not a very famous movie by any means, but I love it. It’s a quirky revenge-Western that has musical and comedy elements as well as a very touching love story, and it’s all loosely based on elements of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

It tells the story of Cable Hogue, a down on his luck tramp who is left to die by his former partners in the desert. Upon asking for the Lords help, he ends up stumbling upon a spring on the main road between two far away towns. Eventhough he’s not the sharpest cookie in the deck, he becomes an entrepreneur, setting up the only waystation between the two towns, providing water and food for passing stagecoaches. From there, the story just gets better. He falls in love with a prostitute, partners up with a preacher with adulterous predilections, and comes to find out who he really is as a person.

This was Sam Peckinpah’s first movie to follow his groundbreaking “The Wild Bunch”, and it was a commercial and critical flop because it strayed so far away from the violence and bravado that he was known for. Peckinpah had pigeonholed himself into being a violent director, so to follow up his biggest hit with a romantic comedy seemed like career suicide. Regardless of its reception, it’s definitely my favorite Peckinpah film, and Peckinpah himself frequently referred to it as his favorite as well.

What’s interesting to me about this film is that it has apparently influenced a suprising number of musicians over the years. Not only did Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval cover the films centerpiece song “Butterfly Mornings”, but John Cale did a song called “Cable Hogue”, and the band Calexico did a great song called “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”. I have linked both here, and have also linked the “Butterfly Mornings” scene from the original film.

Calexico “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” – While not directly related to the movie in any way, they do an awesome spaghetti Western video for this song:


John Cale “Cable Hogue” – This song also has nothing to do with the original film, but it is about two bandits/bank robbers who are in love with each other. I absolutely love this song:


“Butterfly Mornings” by Jason Robards (one of my favorite actors) and Stella Stevens – Imagine walking into the theater in 1970 to see Peckinpah’s next big violent shoot-em-up, and seeing this: