In 1975, Saturday morning cartoons featured a partially live action show from Filmation called “The Secret Lives Of Waldo Kitty”. The star of the show, Waldo, is shown in his live action form in the photo above.
Based on “The Secret Lives of Walter Mitty”, Waldo Kitty delighted my sister and me as we watched it on our black and white television set in our mobile home sitting in the middle of a cattle pasture.
Shortly after the premiere of this show we adopted a kitten and promptly named him Waldo, as he very much resembled the live action star of his namesake television show. Waldo was a part of the family, and treated as the “king cat” amongst the number of cats to come and go in our household, for many years. I believe Waldo moved on to his great reward in 1989.
He was a big cat. We didn’t get him fixed until we was six or so years old, so he had this nifty bass-voice “meow” when he decided to speak. A couple of times he disappeared for a week or two at a time. Months later there’d be kittens all over the place from the ladies that swooned over Waldo and he’d feel smug. After he was fixed his voice stayed low and he napped a lot. He’s the only cat that would be allowed to stay inside at night; the others would sleep in the garage. Dad would leave the garage door open a small gap so the cats could get in from the Great Lakes snowbelt we lived in.
Waldo took a strong liking to my sister and while he’d lay around with me, if my sister was in the room he’d relocate himself near her. I was fine with that. I laid claim to one of the cats in his harem, namely a long haired black cat we called Cinders, and their offspring “Half Pint” who had the markings of both Waldo and Cinders. Looking back they probably weren’t related but they looked the part so we went with it.
Cinders liked to chew on the strings of Christmas lights I put all over the house and greenery at the appropriate time of year. She actually chewed through the wires on more than one occasion. I remember her shorting out a brand new string of 35 lights purchased at the Rite Aid for $1.99. She had a kitten we named Leo until Leo had kittens and then she became Leona. I mistakenly ran over her tail with the car and it hung limp for a few weeks and then it just fell off. She survived just fine with just a stump of a tail and the vet didn’t find anything wrong after it literally fell off her body.
Truman reminds me of Waldo in attitude. Maybe it’s a ginger cat sort of thing. He enjoys my company on his terms and he’s always grateful for food and treats, but sometimes he wants to relax in close proximity, not near me.
I guess all us gingers are alike.
