Tommy Tunes Johnson
Animal Stories from All-Creatures.org

FROM Eileen Weintraub and Mark Johnson, Help Animals India
December 2014

Tommy Tunes Johnson

Tommy Tunes Johnson, who would have been 20 in early 2015, passed away peacefully on this winter solstice morning. The night before he received White Tara blessings from The Karmapa via live webcast from Bodhgaya.

He was a mascot of Help Animals India and always advocated on behalf of his brethren half a world away such as in below video.

Tommy Tunes (aka Tuners), named by Mark,  was a kitten of the about 20 feral cats I trapped at Lincoln Park in W. Seattle. It took a whole summer to do this, people were feeding them but that was all so I knew that if I left any cats there, even if fixed, more would be dumped. They all went to sanctuary. Tuner mewed when he got in the trap instead of hissing on auspicious Guru Rinpoche Day. When he got home he met the other ferals and learned that when people came to the house you hid. I thought if he got placed he might get lost as a semi-feral so we kept him, adding to our others. He was the only kitten I kept since I was a teenager and never had kittens myself, that is to say never allowed a female cat I had to get pregnant.

He bonded to all the other cats and loved them fiercely but they all died before him and the last a few years ago so he was used to being King of this Castle. A year ago he accepted  Mitzi (our recent rescue). He was a gourmet and loved vegetables of all types and particularly what we were eating interested him.

Aptly nicknamed Tuners he always had a lot to say such as in the above photo!


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