In honor of Hubcap, I'd like to humiliate myself publicly by posting a song I wrote about him some 10 years ago. This is a song I 4-tracked, playing all the instruments. I barely knew how to use the equipment and had a lot of trouble hearing the playback while recording, especially while doing the drums, so the result is a song that only accidentally keeps the beat for any length of time. There's a section about 75% of the way through where the rhythm is supposed to change from 4/4 to 3/4 for several measures which totally does not work, and the recovery is just embarrassing. But I still like the song for its meticulous notation of Hubcap's habits at the time. Also of note is how much I feared he would die, with no fewer than 3 lines referring to my insecurity over his mortality. Here's the song (remember it's 10 years old, recorded on a 4track and copied onto cassettes, then copied to computer at some point), and the lyrics with full notation:

Hubcap

Who's walking on my head?
Who takes up half the bed?¹
Who's hanging on the screen?²
Who's looks like he's on ephedrine?³

Hubcap⁴

Eats from a can
You can scratch my hand
You can bite my knee
Just don't die on me⁵

Hubcap falls on the floor
Gets the boot and begs for more⁶
Slams into the front storm door⁷
Takes abuse but he never seems to get sore

Who always wants to get fed?⁸
Who's a quadruped?
Who at the door always stalls?⁹
Who fears all creatures both great and small?¹⁰

Hubcap

Asleep on his back¹¹
Dry heaves and hacks¹²
He's loyal true
Better friend than you¹³

Locked out of my house at night
Hubcap thinks that it's all right
Follows me to Diana's place
In Amy's bed he's sleeping on my face¹⁴

Hubcap can't say why
Hubcap I thought you'd die
Hubcap You death-defied¹⁵
Aw Hubcap

Hubcap falls onto the floor
Gets the boot and begs for more
Knocks his head on the front storm door
Takes abuse but he never seems to get sore

¹Hubcap enjoyed stepping on my face to wake me up; additionally he always found a way to situate himself in the bed so I had very little actual mattress to sleep on

²To let us know he wanted to come back inside, he would jump onto the screen door and hang there until somebody noticed him

³In his younger days he liked to run around in a panic, but to my knowledge he eschewed all drugs except catnip

⁴The name "Hubcap": I like hubcaps in general, I have a sort of hubcap collection, and Hubcap seemed like a good name for a cat: I found him on the street, after all

⁵The first death mention, I honestly can't remember why I was so paranoid about his health, he probably just had a cold or something and I freaked out; the occasion of the song seems to coincide with Hubcap's successful bout with illness

⁶"The Boot": Former housemate Al discovered that the young Hubcap enjoyed getting his belly rubbed with the sole of his heavy Timberland-style boot; Hubcap would walk into the kitchen, flop onto the floor, and Al would basically mop the floor with him

⁷In colder months, the screen door was replaced with a glass panel; Hubcap couldn't remember this and would jump at the door with nothing to hang onto

⁸Up until his death, the act of getting fed was a major preoccupation (even more so than actually eating, he'd often walk off without eating anything)

⁹Like many cats, he would beg to go outside but upon opening the door would just peer out into the yard indecisively

¹⁰He was deathly frightened of other animals, like chipmunks or birds, and would run and hide when he saw any; later in life, he tolerated their presence

¹¹In warm weather he could position himself with all four legs up in the air, and would stay that way for a long time

¹²Hairballs were a persistent recurring digestive issue

¹³Shades of my growing need to distance myself from humans and surround myself with animals that can't tell me how I've disappointed them

¹⁴One of my favorite Hubcap anecdotes: One night I came home very late and very drunk. I forgot my keys and my housemates were definitely asleep, the only way I could get in was to pound on the door to wake them up. I already felt like a doofus, and I had been feeling like the house loser at the time, so I couldn't bring myself to wake anybody up. Hubcap came up to me on the porch; he too was locked out. I figured my friend Diana would still be awake since I had just seen her at the bar, and her house was nearby. I started down the street. I made it a block or so when I realized that Hubcap was following me. I figured he'd be out of his element and stick close to home, but there he was, trailing me by a few yards. So I started beckoning to him, and he kept following me. Diana's house wasn't all that far, but it was a good hike, especially for a normally-territorial cat. But he kept following. I got to Diana's house, and indeed, she was still awake. Even better, her roommate Amy was out of town so she said I could sleep in her room. With a little cajoling, Hubcap also came inside and he went to bed with me. Hubcap slept on my head most of the night. In the morning we got up and went home together.

¹⁵Again, I don't recall the supposedly "death-defying" incident Hubcap survived, but he would manage to evade the Reaper for at least another decade after the composition of this song