08/14/2023
So in true me fashion, something wild happened over the weekend, and now I have a new little family member. 🥹
This is probs going to be a long-ass post with a sh*tload of pics. I got ADHD, and background information is helpful. 😂
As some may know already, recently one of my best friends, Dusty, passed away. Him and I got very close very fast and had the weirdest damn friendship. 😂 He started calling me Daddy because someone else said it jokingly, and I started calling him Lil Nugget because I swear back then 97% of the snaps I got from him were of him smoking w**d. The other 3% was a pretty solid split of either him showing me where sirens where coming from or yelling “Do a burnout you pussy!” at someone. 😂 Somehow both nicknames stuck, and we built a family of friends, and while we may all have 72 different nicknames for each other we all knew Dusty was Lil Nugget.
The first time I actually met Dusty in real life was at the drift track in ND. I got a “Happy Fathers Day Daddy” and a lil present😂 I handed him my backup camera and we were absolutely inseparable after that. He quickly became my second shooter for my automotive photography business when I first went full-time after covid. Out of the 29 drift events and 35 total sessions I did that year after going full-time, Dusty was there for a solid 83% of ‘em. Any time there was an ND event, if we weren’t camping at the track together, Dusty came to stay at my apartment. He had my spare keys for…well they’re probably in a duffel bag with a bunch of other random things of his still actually. Dusty absolutely loveeeed my cats Hermione and Rosie. Eventually Dusty got his own cat a couple years later and while trying to brainstorm names together over Snapchat, we landed on Bud…because well Lil Nugget and Bud just seemed to fit together, and he responded to Bud right away. Dusty absolutely adoredddd the absolute hell out of Bud.
Since Dusty’s passing, many of us who were close to him have had some random little weird things happen to us, usually when we’re talking about him. Often times it’s with lights. Turning random lights off, flickering lights, check engine lights, etc. We’re all certain he’s taking his ghost role pretty serious 😂
Following Dusty’s funeral, was ND’s 10k. The event Dusty and I looked forward to every year, like most others do as well, but 10K was our babyyyy. We prepped like none other for this event every year making sure we had our drivers list, tweaking our workflow to maximize our time so we could still go hang out with everyone at the end of the night too without absolutely hating ourselves for the amount of images we’d have to go through later on. Hell, Dusty’s the reason I ever had an in-person conversation with my last ex…surprise surprise, it was at a 10K 😂
This year 10K was different. We didn’t have Dusty there with us. We did, however, have a little memorial ceremony between brackets for Dusty, and we’re so grateful to the track staff for allowing us to have those few moments, as well as the banner for him that’s displayed along the sweeper and for allowing us to sell merch to help his family with his expenses. At the end of 10K as we were making our good-bye-for-now rounds, Sara, and I found ourselves talking how many shirts were left over, and if we should do another order of them or not. Immediately I told her we should do a run of HIVIS shirts (and a black shirt edition of it as well because I know not everyone wants a highlighter yellow shirt😂), with Adam’s little graffiti-style Dusty on the front, and Dusty’s classic “Do a burnout you pussy” on the back with his logo below. Sara was like yeeeep yes.
I messaged Adam asking if he’d be down to collaborate and let us use his design for the fronts, and sent back a mock-up of the back that I made quick while driving back into town from the track. Adam gave us his blessing; Sara got in touch with everyone else to make sure it got everyone’s blessing first, and we got the go-ahead. By the next night, Do a Burnout You P***y shirts were available for pre-order on Jason’s website for us.
Fast forward to this past weekend, another ND drift weekend. Sara gets out to the track and before her kiddo is even out of his seat she tells me “I have something to show you” and pulls out a HIVIS Do a Burnout You P***y shirt. 🥹 Seeing that go from a conversation of an idea in my head to a tangible in my hands was a surreal moment, and I know Dusty would have been so fu***ng hyped for these shirts because we were always trying to get teams to do HIVIS prints for us to wear on-track. We finally got em, Lil Nugget. Your team shirts. The track allowed us to set up a lil merch booth yet again on Saturday, and we put out the new shirts.
Saturday evening I went back into town for a few hours, and when I came back out to the track, the first thing said to me while getting out of my car was “There’s a cat!” Immediately my interest is captured. 😂 I will never not try to befriend a cat. I got told it was over by the fire, so I promptly made my way over there in search of it. After a while, Belle appeared with a kitten in her arms. I’m almost certain I had to bribe Belle to pass the kitten to me, but cool aunt perks-we got the kitten passed. 🥹 This kitten was immediately the sweetest lil love bug, and passed out on my shoulder. Absolutely SO sweet. We were all certain she had to be someone’s. We decided if she got along with Kyle’s cat, she’d hang out with him for the evening, and if not I’d take her and see if she’s chipped. After some convincing, I let Kyle hold her and he flipped this cat on her back and started rubbing her belly, and she just was ✨about it✨. Max relax. Kyle somehow got talked into putting her down, she ran off, pretty sure I mildly threatened Kyle (semi-sorry?). But Kyle was like “if it’s meant to be, she’ll come back around.” After a while I decided it was late and I was ready to leave, so I walked back over towards our campsite. Right away again it was “the cat’s back.” And I was confused. Krystal and Kaene told me they had seen it back around and that it was across the road because people over there were feeding it.
Now I’m not one to walk up to strangers really in general, let alone at night😂 but I was willing to deal with that anxiety to see about this damn cat. Krystal and Kaene offered to walk over with me but I was like “I got this” 😂 and walked over. I went for a random small-talk starter before letting these guys know I was really just there because “a little birdy told me the kitty is over here because y’all have been feeding her” and they let me know that she had been, but they hadn’t seen her in a bit and figured she ran off. I said “where’s the cat?” and she came running from the dark and straight to me. After kneeling on the ground petting her for a bit, I picked her up and carried her back over to camp with me to try to call Kyle.
Kyle and I had a pretty firm agreement before I handed her off to him again before walking back to his truck to see how introductions would go. If they don’t get along, she’s going with me. We walked back over to his truck, we tried introducing them in the dark and we weren’t mega fans of that. Kyle went to turn on his cab lights, and I look up to just a flashing strobe of a cab light. 😂 He got the light steady, we tried introducing them again, and she still wasn’t about it, so Kyle handed her back down to me saying “Yep, she’s yours.” and gave me a can of wet cat food to make it through the night. So I walked back over to camp, said goodnight to everyone, and started making my way back to town trying to figure out what in the world to do with a cat after midnight. 😂
I called a friend, figured out a litterbox situation, went and got their keys, ran to their house to get late-night cat supplies, met up with them to drop their keys back off again, and then we were on our way to get settled. I started calling her Lil Nugget, and she responded immediately to it.
She slept in bed with me all night. Cuddled up with me in the morning. Literally could cry over how sweet this dang baby is. Next morning I took her back out to the track with me for a little bit so everyone could see her again before leaving. We all got a little attached a lil bit fast😂 After spending a couple hours searching through fb groups for lost/missing cats in the area and not having any that looked like her, I let the others know I’d be taking her to the vet to check for a microchip, because obviously that’s the right thing to do first, but if she wasn’t chipped then I’d be keeping her. She was completely unphased by drift cars starting right next to my car and everything too. Perfect lil track kitty.🥹
Night two, I got her a collar, a couple toys, and a small bag of food. I didn’t want to over-commit and buy her all the fun things with the risk of her not actually staying long-term. I learned she can open a dominos pizza box. 😂 But after that was put away, she was back in bed passed out and purring away.
We went to the vet earlier to check for a microchip, and very much to my surprise, no chip. They asked if I wanted to keep her, and it was the fastest YES in my damn life. I was ready to fight a vet tech to keep this cat if it came down to it😂😂 (the staff were all super nice, so we were good lol).
Lil Nugget is officially part of the family now.💚
She will need to get her shots, spayed, and chipped, so I’ll be making her appointments for those.
If you’d like to help contribute towards her vet bills for those, my venmo is @ Coyote-Cate . Anything in excess of her initial vet bills will be forwarded to the @ Team Dusty venmo to help his family with his expenses.
