24" X 32", acrylic on canvas Indra was a cat that I adopted while living in Tampa. He just showed up one day along with two other cat's at the door to my studio. When I moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania I took Indra along, and my wife followed a few months later with our other three cats and our dog. Indra loved being outside, and even in the worst snowstorms insisted on going out, sometimes staying out all night. When we got ready to move to New York I knew that Indra was going to be a problem because we would no longer be able let him go outdoors, and whenever he was forced to stay inside he would do as much damage to the furniture as possible until he got his way. Fortunately (at least at the time I thought so) a neighber who lived right behind us in Bethlehem agreed to take Indra so he could stay in his familiar surroundings. We hated to leave him behind, but thought it was for the best. We discovered a couple of years later that the neighbor had moved away and left Indra there to fend for himself. I tried several times to catch Indra so we could take him to New York, but he would never let me get close to him. We found out from talking to many of our old neighbors that Indra was being fed by several people and he even came inside their houses on occasion. I always felt extemely guilty about leaving him behind, and I always asked about him whenever I visited the neighborhood. About a year ago I was doing some work on the house where we used to live in Bethlehem (my wife's mother owns the property), and I was staying at the house on the weekends while I worked. Indra showed up at the door one night, and I let him in. By this time he was about 19 years old and had a lot of physical problems from many years of living outdoors on his own. I fed him and he seemed content to stay in the house. My mother in law would feed him during the week and I would stay with him on the weekends. He was extremely affectionate and would sit on my lap every time I sat down. We took him to our vet to get him checked out. We planned to try to introduce him to our cats in New York when the work was completed on the house, but we wanted to make sure that he didn't have any diseases that he could pass on. He did have some problems, and we had to treat him for a couple of months before the vet would let us take him to New York. He was very near to being cured when I painted this painting, and I really thought that we make up for those years of neglect and make him comfortable during whatever time he had left. I saw this as the third new stage in his life. Unfortunately he developed trouble breathing and the vet told us that he had cancer that had spread to his lungs. He never made it to New York with us, and so, although it's not the one I wanted for him he has moved on to that third life after-all.
