Sid Vicious, the cat, not the bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, was the Real Change office cat from February 1996 to May 2010, when Real Change moved out of its original space in Belltown to head to Pioneer Square. After living more than three years in retirement, he passed away quietly in his sleep after a brief illness, in the early morning of July 27. The whole Real Change community, especially those who recall Sid from the Belltown years, is in mourning. Because I was his primary caregiver most of his life, it fell to me to tell about the cat we all miss so much.
Sid arrived unexpectedly from an act of reciprocity. A vendor gave spare cigarettes to a poor elderly woman regularly, and he always asked jokingly, “When will you give me something back?” One day, she put a cross-eyed fur ball in his hand.
The vendor brought the fur ball to Real Change to unload it. Timothy Harris, our director and founder, quickly assessed that the fur ball was a feline and decided that the fur ball should be the shop cat that all good shops need. At that time, Real Change had only one other steady employee. She was the energetic ozula sioux, who worked the vendor desk selling papers to vendors. She suffered from capitalization intolerance but could take care of a cat. I recall she was the first to authoritatively announce it was a boy cat.
ozula held a contest to name him. My suggestion, Road Kill By and By, or Roadie, based on our proximity to Second Avenue, lost. So did all the suggestions of all the vendors and the other volunteers. The contest was ozula’s; ozula won with her own entry, “sid vicious.” She eventually gave in and allowed us to capitalize it.
Sid Vicious was an immediate hit with vendors and volunteers. When vendors walked in to get papers, they’d say, “Where’s Sid?” They’d beg us to track him down and bring him out. We had to start thinking about controlling his snacks. Any leftover food the vendors had was liable to wind up inside Sid.
Sid enjoyed all the attention but soon showed the gift for special empathy that cats tend to have. If a vendor was having an especially bad day, Sid knew and would hang out with that vendor to offer sympathy. Usually he hated being held, but if you needed sympathy, he would tolerate it for a reasonable period of time.
Speaking of tolerance, Sid lived up to his name when it came to dogs, which he did NOT tolerate. Even when he was still able to be held in one hand, I witnessed him attack a full-grown Rottweiler. In all his years at Real Change, I only remember him putting up with three dogs out of the hundreds that passed through.
My relationship with Sid began as an overnight companion. I’d work late and get to hang out with Sid after hours. He slept next to me. He followed me to and from the bathroom and the kitchen all night. We bonded.
After a year or so, ozula left to be a bass guitar player in a rock band (seriously), and another primary caregiver was needed. Who else but the bondee? My one requirement was that other arrangements be made concerning the litter box. Therefore, in the years following, every vendor who applied more than a few times to do office chores for extra papers came to know Sid’s litter box intimately.
We all have special memories of Sid. One time Sid wandered out on the Second Avenue sidewalk, and someone shut the front door, not knowing he was outside, just as a fire truck came by with siren blasting. Sid tried to enter through the mail slot. He got both front legs through, but his head was too big.
He had problems with spatial relations and physics. For a couple of years I had a bird, a green singing finch, in a cage in the front window. The bird never showed any fear of Sid, even as Sid plotted for hours each day to raid the cage. One time he leapt off a file cabinet, snagged the bottom of the cage and hung there swaying back and forth. The bird was unfazed. Sid had no clue how safe the bird was.
Sid never had another living cat companion. We were afraid of what he’d do to another cat in his territory. But someone once left a plush toy that looked like a Siamese cat in the office. Her colors were almost the same as Sid’s, and he claimed her and made frequent mad passionate love with her, everywhere in the office. We called her, naturally, Nancy. She lasted 10 days, when Tim made another executive decision and exiled her on the grounds that we were not going to launder her every week.
Early on, Sid was inducted into the vendor program as vendor number 007. Given his personality it should come as no surprise that he has often been suspended for misconduct. On one occasion, he was caught running through the office with a shopping bag about his neck, which, based on the guilty look on his face, clearly was not his. Investigation determined the shopping bag belonged to Tara Moss, head of the vendor program, and its contents were catnip and catnip toys intended for her cat at home. Stealing in the office, use of a controlled substance in the office: No papers for a month.
When Real Change moved in 2010, the new lease didn’t allow overnight pets, so Sid had to retire as office cat. He spent his last three years with me and my wife, Anitra, improving his English vocabulary. In his last years he learned to talk back to TV news commentators just like us, saying “Muh-huh” and “Myeah, right” along with us.
We will all miss him.