Remembering Marvin Grey

Somehow I just knew and had a strong feeling the day would come this year... Marvin Grey passed at 14 years old yesterday. He is a Russian Blue cat. Was a silent meower, had a speech impediment, he could not purr or meow. He was the last of the bunch to pass on.

Marvin technically was not my cat but he was became most attached and bonded to me. My ex step mom named him Marvin, and my sister and I came up with his middle name of Grey. Marvin was Marvin grey because he wasn't cool enough to be Marvin Gay.


He waltzed into our lives when I was ending my freshman year in high school when I was 14. Earlier in the day my dad and sister scared off this cat that was lingering in the backyard.  The back sliding screen door was open for the dogs to go out. Later on that evening my dog was acting strangely and he kept on wandering between the garage and laundry room. The dog food container was in the laundry room. This dog was pretty low energy like me and when he was focused or riled up something was amiss.

After wandering back and fourth I noticed this small grey blob on the laundry shelf and shouted to my sister who was upstairs, "Oh my god Dannica there's a rat in the house!!" Somehow I got her to come down the stairs. Thats pretty hard to do when you are the younger sister.
I left the room and she ended up coming down with her dog and pulled it off the shelf and proclaimed the grey blob wasn't a rat but a kitten.


We kept Marvin for 3 days and then gave him to our step mom because we didn't know how to take care of cats. It was hilarious during that time he would try to get close to Monte who was the furrier dog, and he wasn't having it. It freaked him out.  At that time we trained the dogs to chase cats because they were a local pest problem. When we all moved in the same house that was a nightmare to get all the dogs and cats acclimated to each other.




Marvin was an asshole, but a lovable one. He would make me so mad because he liked to lay on my on my stuff and even my Wacom tablets too...which are $500 dollars!! Also I am allergic to dust and he would roll on the ground outside and make himself nice and dusty and proceed to rub my face, which would make my face break out in an instant rash. It started out as a joke that he hated but I would hold him like a baby to the point he eventually liked to be held that way.

At times I was able to tolerate him because he acted like a dog. When he was happy he would drool, when we had dogs he'd hang out with the dogs, get into the dog food, his life revolved around food.  He was smart for a cat he learned how to open the back screen door by head butting it.

Marvin was feisty and would get in fights, One time he got into a fight and lost to the neighbor's cats who happened to be our Veterinarian.  That was pretty embarrassing, because he was an instigator. Another time he started a fight and then fled and the opposing cat bit him in the butt-cheek. That was a major pain because we had to put hot compresses and squeeze his booty twice a day for a week.


One fight that was life altering was he somehow escaped at night and got into a fight with a skunk and hit his head pretty hard while escaping. The layers of his left eye scrambled. This was around the time when my ex step mom dumped both of her cats on me to take care of, regardless of how I felt. I paid more than $400 to get his eye removed. Which was the less expensive option compared to reconstructive eye surgery that wasn't guaranteed to work.

At one point I'd sleep with all 3 of them on my bed. I had to arrange their section of the bed. Worst part was when one would step on another in a sleep state and get in a sleep confused scared battle and wake me up.  Monte liked to sleep on the pillows, and I would place my head near his stomach, Claudia on the sides but she tended to roll and Marvin at the foot of the bed, If I moved the fuzzy blanket Marvin I could direct where he would sleep. 

Its his fault and Claudia's fault I cannot stand the smell of skunks. If I smell a whiff the memory of that foul smell comes up full blown, regardless how far I am.  3 times in my life that I was up close and personal to the smell, I have a overall bad sense of smell, and when I can smell it I know its bad.
One time we had to put tomato juice on the white dog and she was a shade of pink for like a month. Twice he was skunked, TWICE. I nicknamed him Mr. Kitty and he would respond to it.




He always loved to be outside and in his final years lived in a hole under my dad's house and got fed when he wanted. He was my first and last cat. I would never get another cat again, I was never much into cats, but Marvin Grey was a special cat. He passed right by the Paz de Cristo stone. May he rest in peace.