So first off, you should know that as a kid, I never had a pet. My Mom is allergic to cats and neither of my parents are really into animals (my Mom once showed my Dad a picture of a Koala Bear and asked him “Phil, what animal is that?” and he responded after a long pause “Emu?”), so I never had that bond that kids often develop with a pet. Actually my folks did get a black dog named Buddy when I was in 2nd grade and we had him for about a week, but he kept pissing on everything and fucking shit up and they didn’t have the patience to deal with him so they gave him back to the shelter.

But I never had a cat. I never even really thought about animals to be honest. People would talk about them and obsess over them, and I just never really got it. I figured it was just something that I wasn’t into. Like, a lot of people like Star Wars, but I just never understood the appeal. Like, yeah I get it, the special effects look cool and they’re killing aliens and shit, but I still don’t care. Cats, same thing. They’re little and furry and they do stupid things, but I didn’t care. I put cats in the Star Wars category.

But then I ended up moving in with a girl who I had been dating for about a year, and she was really into cats. When I visited her in her hometown of Chicago, she would take me to her Mom’s house and show me her fat orange cat that she had had her entire life. She’d make me pet him, show me the tricks he could do (most cats don’t really do tricks, but if you held up a treat, this cat would do all kinds of weird shit) and talk about him at length. I didn’t care. She’d be talking about cats, and I’d be thinking about poker, BMX… really I would be thinking about anything, because pretty much everything was more interesting to me than cats at the time.

One day after we’d been living together for a few months she was leaving our apartment for work and heard some meowing upstairs. She walked up the stairs and found a tiny grey cat, skinny as could be walking around in the empty apartment upstairs. The cat was only about 4 months old we’d later learn. She brought it down to the apartment, called in late to work and then bought the cat some food and water. I was just annoyed. I didn’t really care that there was a cat there, but I knew somehow I’d be roped into paying for food, vet bills, etc. It didn’t help that the cat had been discovered at 9 in the morning and I was still trying to sleep, which was difficult because the cat kept trying to chew on my toes.

Regardless, she was set on keeping the cat and I didn’t really care. She named her Olive after a brief 8 hour stint of calling her Brooklyne, because of her green eyes. For the first few days she just annoyed me. She’d lay in front of my computer monitor while I was trying to work, try to eat my food while I ate and basically just bug me all the time. But eventually I fell for her and found myself obsessively watching her go about her normal every day tasks. The whole cat thing finally made sense to me.

A few months later, we found ourselves in the market for another cat. Olive’s life was astoundingly boring and although I’m sure she was fine with it, it was almost kind of depressing that she didn’t have a friend to play with. So we went to an animal shelter in Williamsburg to look for a kitten. We wanted a tiny little kitten, and we didn’t realize at the time that if you want a kitten, going to an animal shelter isn’t a great idea, this one at least was almost all older cats, at least a few years old. My girlfriend wasn’t into it. She wanted a kitten, something tiny, and most of the cats at the shelter were big fatso’s. I didn’t really understand how serious a decision getting a cat is, so I was being kind of flippant about the whole thing and wanted to get a cat regardless. One cat in particular stood out to me. His name was Stewie and he was a big fat white cat that would try to nibble on your fingers when you put them near his cage. I didn’t know why, but I wanted him. My ex begrudgingly agreed. We paid his 100 dollar adoption fee and took him home.

Olive wasn’t happy, at all. We tried to slowly bring them together but it was a bad scene, whenever she’d get near him she’d swat at him and attack him. We had to keep them separated for a long time and they’d fight constantly even when we eventually started letting them hang out all the time. We changed Stewie’s name to Tony, reasoning that he looked like a big fat brick of cocaine and that Tony is a name you often associate with coke and gangsterism (Tony Montana, Tony Soprano, Tony Yayo), despite the fact that neither of us did coke. I still don’t, her, uh…

The thing about Tony that made him so different from Olive was that he was mean. Olive wasn’t the most cuddley cat… she was clearly a little mentally scarred from her days spent on the streets, but she’d curl up next to you and snuggle, and no matter how long and hard you rubbed her belly she wouldn’t bite you or hit you. Tony on the other hand, was not okay with having his tummy, back or tail touched. If you touched any part of him aside from his head he would start blasting away at you with his ultra-powerful hind legs, and biting you. If that didn’twork, he’s jump up and run away. He slowly warmed up to us, but he has always been pretty mean. He’s significantly nicer to me than he is to most people, but he is a cat where you really have to know his boundaries and not try to push it. If you treat him good and don’t touch him in places where he doesn’t like to be touched, he’ll warm up to you and you’ll wake up to him snuggling in your lap in the morning.

We eventually got another cat, Luna, above, who I never really bonded with. She’s cool I guess. She was another stray that my ex and I captured in a cardboard box after my ex saw her walking up and down our block over and over for a period of a few days. I was opposed to getting a third cat, but she forced the issue and I ended up just dealing with it. The only thing I can really say about Luna that I liked was that she was absolutely in love with Tony and they would cuddle constantly while Olive brooded in the corner like the jaded lesbian that she painted herself as.

We lived together for a year and got 3 cats during that time period. Good idea right? Wrong. When I eventually dumped her, what to do with the cats became as important an issue as the fact that I had just broken her heart. I ended up moving in with my friend Brendan right away and he is allergic to cats, so there wasn’t an option for me to take one (it was just assumed that I would take Tony since he was “mine” and the other 2 were hers), so she moved out and got a place with her friends in Bushwick and housed all 3 beasts. She wasn’t stoked, and the fact that she was totally broke didn’t help matters.

So began the year long period in my life where I paid cat child support. People have told me they thought this idea was hilarious, but I never really thought it seemed that weird. Cat litter and food can be expensive, so I ended up giving her 50 bucks a month to pay for it. We had a pretty tense relationship after the break up that would mostly consist of me riding my bike to her apartment, giving her 50 dollars and then her trying to convince me to sleep with her or just telling me stories about other dudes she had slept with in an attempt to anger me (the angering me part worked, the sleeping with me part didn’t).

But then, she decided to move. She wasn’t happy in NYC and her Father was dealing with some health conditions, so she left town and left Tony at my apartment. Luckily my sister Sarah who lives in Salem, MA has a cat of her own and offered to take Tony off my hands for a while since my roommate is still allergic and my traveling schedule makes handling a cat difficult. Here’s Tony with his current brother, Charlie. They are in love:

Over the years I’ve made a variety of shirts representing Tony:

Here’s the original incarnation. I wanted to print up a bunch of cheap, basic TCU shirts to give away while we were on Megatour. Aaron Burto did the design for me (I’m pretty sure it took about 5 minutes) and we didn’t end up giving away most of them, we gave away some but at some point during the hell that was Megatour we kinda forgot about it and I ended up selling them through the web store and they sold really well.

Next came this Raiders rip-off that I thought was pretty funny. This was honestly one of the slowest selling TCU shirts though even though I personally thought it was cool. I guess that as funny as I thought it was, it was still pretty ugly.

Here’s the most recent Tony-based shirt. I hit up Nick from Holeshot about doing a Come Up shirt and when he asked what I wanted it to look like, I just told him that I wanted Tony in it somewhere. He came up with the idea to place Tony in the jungle amongst his ancestors. I like this one and still wear it pretty frequently, and it sold pretty well. I almost want to make more in another colorway, but I’m not sure what colors would work.

Finally we have the Lotek x TCU shoe which is in the works. Rich proposed this idea to me about a year ago and I was super into it. He asked what color I wanted it to be, and I said I didn’t care I just wanted Tony on the insole. Harrison Boyce actually ended up drawing up the color scheme for it and from what I’ve seen, it looks really good. The photo above is just a sample but if all goes well they should be dropping in March with some corresponding Lotek x TCU shirts to go with.

Some people might ask what reason I could possibly have to put Tony on so many shirt designs and to have essentially crafted him into The Come Up’s mascot. Really I just like his attitude. He keeps to himself and has a hard exterior, but every once in a while he lets a little bit of loving shine through. He’s clearly got trust issues and is very cautious about letting anyone get too close to him. His years on the streets did a number on him. He reminds me of myself a lot, which is why I think I took to him so much.

Anyway, that’s why I like cats.