In The Trenches Productions
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Judith Drake
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Judith "Well-Over-60-&-Lovin’-It" Drake has been in  ‘Show Biz’ for 45 years, crossing paths with the likes of Mary Martin, Betty Grable, Cher & Calista Flockhart along the way, been a wife to Mr. Whipple and screamed for T-Mobile. Her priority now is as a producer with In The Trenches Productions, the first entertainment network for women over 40 on the web.

                                             ODE TO BUCKY
Judith Drake

Christmas of 1985 a family on a crowded street in NYC adopted a little gray and white kitten from a shelter in Long Island. A couple of months after Xmas, they lost interest. It was cold and wet in that dirty, trash strewn alley that ran the length of the block. Other cats were out there...frequently. This one, after a particularly bad rainstorm, came up on our window sill at the other end of the alley...pushed out the half screen and came in.  He was so dirty we thought he was black. He had a tag on, so we called the shelter and found the number for the people who had adopted him...they lived at the other end of the alley, and when I called said "that cat walked out of here on his own and we're not coming to get him. He's vicious! He jumps at our little girls' legs when she runs!" 

His story? "They named me Garfield for gosh sakes...do I look like a Garfield?? And they have a small person who has no idea how to have fun...I try and run with her and she screams! What's a cat to do??"  And so he walked up and down the alley of over 80 windows and found the laziest, chubbiest people he could (who happened to have jazz music playing at the time), said "my kinda place!" and came on in. 

He promptly cleaned himself up to his lovely gray and white, was re-christened Bucky after many couragous Buckys (Buck Owens, Bucky Dent, etc.), and took on the job of taking care of an actress and a writer. He was at his place in his favorite cardboard box, on a chair next to the writer punctually whenever he started to work...writers frequently need a soft head to pat while thinking, he understood.

And he was always there to purr contemplative and calming thoughts to the actress on her many unsuccessful returns from auditions. -He became a great baseball fan, and even won them tickets to the Mets with one of his superior snapshots..him on a Mets shirt under a Mets hat. And he climbed into a smooshy little box and sat under their seats all the way to L.A. wherever that was. And was very happy to arrive at a new home with lots of windows and birds and squirrels to keep an eye on, but quickly got back to work tending to the writer and the actress.

Until, after 16 years, his liver and anemia told him it was time to leave...and after all, he had gotten the writer almost to the end of a final re-write of his opus, and the actress into a fairly successful career, and so he could go peacefully now. But..he will be missed.