Creative Cat Owes It All to Her Human

You could say that life for Pat Portfolio, 42, and his celebrity alley cat is a happy mishmash.

For instance, years back Portfolio was the first person in California to get a 7-digit license plate, and the state held a parade for him in Sacramento to celebrate the occasion.

The plate reads “ASONG4U.” Of course, he is an aspiring songwriter.

He once ran a dating service for creative people, whatever that means. Later he managed a health food store--of course he is a vegetarian--and he now works as a free-lance writer of jingles and advertising, in addition to songs.

One of his songs, titled “Paradise of Your Mind” is about a drug experience, “and that’s funny because I don’t do drugs,” he said. “I don’t even take aspirins.”

In his drive to “make a living by being creative” he once walked into a radio station and told them, “I could do better work than what they had, and they gave me a job writing jingles for them.”

Of course, he is bright. He has teaching credentials and taught a gifted students class in high school and once penned a letter to the editor of a newspaper noting that, socially, the mentally gifted are left-handed persons trying to cope in a right-handed world.

“I didn’t follow the pattern of society even when I was going to school in New Jersey,” said Portfolio, who now lives in Huntington Beach. “I wrote a science fiction story for my final science exam in college.”

But above all this, his gray-toned, 5-year-old cat is the center of his life. If he ever found a woman as intriguing as the cat he named Gracyn, Portfolio says, he would marry her. He has been divorced for 10 years.

For sure, Gracyn is an ordinary alley cat. Except she just won a $10,000 contest sponsored by Ralston Purina Co. for its new Special Dinner gourmet dry cat foods, out-lasting thousands of other cat entries. The company plans to run Gracyn’s picture on the new dinner packages.

“The company asked me to write why I thought Gracyn was a Special Dinners cat,” he said, “and I did a good job on that. I write things like that for a living.”

In addition, the company is giving him a free week’s trip to Colorado for two. “I’m looking for someone to come along,” he said.

“Gracyn’s an incredibly intelligent cat,” said Portfolio, who found the stray outside a recording studio late one night. “It was as if she was waiting for me, and I knew I had to have this cat,” he said.

But the $10,000 is just the beginning. Portfolio recently received a letter from Tidy Cat 3, which makes cat box litter, telling him Gracyn is one of 12 cats selected to appear on its 1990 calendar.

One of the 12 will be named winner of the grand prize of $5,000.

Portfolio, who bemoans the fact he had the cat spayed, said Gracyn’s success isn’t only because of her looks.

“She’s really a very smart cat who knows what she wants and finds ways to get it,” he said. “When she wants me to wake up, she knocks everything off my chest of drawers just to get my attention.”

Portfolio wrote a novelty song called “I Like Cats”--featuring Kitty and the Catatonics--and has had a measure of success with it as a single record.

But just in case, he wrote a sequel called “I Hate Cats.”

St. Patrick’s Day surely is Daniel J. Callahan’s day.

He is as Irish as they come and has a love affair with his heritage. For instance, he lives on Donegal Lane in the Connemara-by the-Sea (named after a quaint Irish town) development in San Juan Capistrano.

Callahan, 39, an attorney, credits kissing the Blarney Stone as the reason for part of his success since the stone gave him the “gift of gab.” Five years ago, he incorporated his law firm on St. Patrick’s Day.

The decor of his Irvine office, including the carpet, is green.

His recreation room is patterned after an Irish pub complete with a dart board.

And the Callahans named their daughter Caitlin (Gaelic for Kathleen). His wife Mary, 31, is due to give birth to a son May 1. They will name him Patrick.

“I love being Irish,” said Callahan, who often says to attorney challengers, “Do you feel lucky?”

Being Irish, he said, “was the best gift my parents ever gave me.”

Acknowledgments--Soroptimist International of Orange named Carl Bergstrom of the Orange Sunrise Rotary Club as its Man of the Year at the group’s annual fashion show. Afterward, Bergstrom joined others in modeling fashionable clothing. Proceeds benefited the Orange County Sexual Assault Network.