The memory is vivid in Lee Cunningham's heart and mind. Taking a spin in her brand-new 1965 Mustang convertible, she drove the Lakeshore Boulevard/Shoreline Circle loop, stopping to chat with one friend, waving and calling out to another. By the time she drove back to her house at Harold Drive and Wendy Lane, a group of 35 friends had followed her home for a cocktail party.

"That's how friendly the town was. We all knew each other," said Cunningham, who came to Incline Village in 1964.

There were only about 1,200 people in Incline in the days before Boise-Cascade began developing the community in 1969.

"Almost every one of them was in real estate in one form or another. The town was so small," she said.

Cunningham, reflecting from her lakefront porch at the Crystal Bay Cove condominiums, came to Nevada to get divorced in 1964. She landed in Lake Tahoe because it was preferable to Las Vegas or Reno.

"I said, 'I can't live in Las Vegas for six weeks. I'd be too depressed," she said.

Her attorney's secretary had heard of a new hotel built near some golf courses on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, so Cunningham went to the Sierra-Tahoe Hotel (now the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe) and ended up staying in the hotel for a year.

It was a shock to her friends in New York.

"New Yorkers don't think you can go anywhere else. The world stops when you get to the Mississippi River," she laughed.

A third-generation New Yorker, Cunningham has fond memories of growing up in the city until she came out here in her 30s.

Her grandfather was a 13th generation baker from Prussia with a red-handled moustache. He died from "too gay a life," she said.

Her father had died, so her mother raised her and her sister in her grandmother's home. To make ends meet, her mother started a day care, but with a love of music and dance, she began teaching the children how to play the piano and dance. When the parents found out she was giving their children piano lessons, it turned into the "Flora D. Cunningham School of Music."

"We were the stars of the music school," Cunningham said of she and her sister, Doris.

Her mother charged 50 cents a lesson to 250 students.

"She never figured out if she made a profit of not. I think I take after her," Cunningham said.

As a child, Cunningham remembers the sewing machine going all night as her mother made costumes for the music school to perform in their "Broadway Babes" productions. Cunningham was a tap dancer, ballerina, acrobat and singer.

"She was an excellent teacher. Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach. She was excellent," she said.

Her mother didn't believe in children working around the house, so Cunningham admits she is a horrible housekeeper now.

"If I don't have a maid, I'm lost," she said.

Cunningham grew up in New York City, married and began looking for a career. She made a try at movies, and her one scene was wearing a big hat and yelling out "taxi" in the movie, "Taxi" with Dan Dailey.

However, she became a real estate broker through a friend who renovated brownstones in New York.

"I bought a little apartment building and 25 years later sold it for seven times what we paid for it," she said.

Thinking of what that is worth now, she says, "My one word of advice - don't sell."

She sold the apartment building and she has sold six of the eight houses she built on Harold Drive and Wendy Way in Incline Village.

"Don't sell," she whispers.

She remembers trying to finance those Harold Drive houses when Crystal Bay Development Company still owned Incline Village and the economy was terrible.

"I did get financing because the bank who backed the contractors had to collect from them before auditors arrived. So they gave me the mortgages so I could pay the contractors. That's the only reason we all came out OK," she laughed.

Cunningham sold real estate for many years in Incline Village. She has sold seven condominiums in Crystal Bay Cove, where she bought her own condo in 1972.

"I only sold one of these for over $100,000," she notes, now they are worth about $2 million each.

She recalls turning down an offer to buy a lot on the Championship Golf Course for $20,000.

"Hindsight is 20/20," she says.

Though she may not have had the foresight to invest in more properties, Cunningham is satisfied with her life in Tahoe.

"I've had this for 35 years now, how could anyone complain?" she said.

"This" is a panoramic view overlooking Lake Tahoe, with a buoy just below her and the bright sunny sky above. Scampering around her legs are cute little kittens and a mother cat that acts more like man's best friend, a dog, than a feline.

Her condo has become a cattery, and it houses champion Burmese cats. Her cats, Princess Aussie and Solo (which are short for their real names) have been Triple Champions for Best Blue Burmese for more years than she can count.

She has a male cat as well and she breeds the females to have two litters a year, which she then sells to people all over the nation.

This summer, both cats had litters, July 9 and July 28, so her home has become overcome by kittens. Kitten playgrounds, kitten houses, even kitty pillows for comfort.

They are a joy to Cunningham.

After two divorces early in her life, when Cunningham turned 40, she realized she wasn't going to have children.

"But I wanted contact with birth," she said, so she determined to raise puppies.

However, the puppies weren't practical and she found Burmese cats, which act just like dogs.

"They fetch, they come to you when you call," she said.

The Burmese are so rare that after she sold the first litter, she decided to keep on breeding them.

"All my cats are champions," she said, pointing out the features of a champion Burmese - golden eyes, stocky body, round head.

The income from her cats isn't limited to selling the litters.

Her cats became very ill in 1975, and she had to keep them warm or they would die. A heat pad wouldn't work because it would get too hot for them, so she changed hot water bottles every two hours for the cats.

"Have you ever tried to keep kittens on a hot water bottle?" she asked.

They survived, and she got an idea for a new business.

After two years of development and travel, she produced her first intensive care system for animals. It is a container which keeps animals warm safely through a hot water system.

"By 1977, the first one was made and it like giving birth," she said, recalling the work it took to obtain a patent and produce it.

Called ThermoCare, she sells about 200 a year. Since 1977, she has added to the product and it can humidify, nebulize, medicate, administer oxygen, and transport animals. She mostly sells the systems to veterinarians and researchers at universities. However, some people have purchased them for home use as well.

Costing between $860 and $1598, they are not really built for home use, "unless it is someone who can afford to buy anything for their pets."She did get an order recently from a man who was housing his pet in a veterinarian hospital for $400 a day. He asked her to ship it from her Incline shop overnight, just to save him money.

Besides her business, which she runs from her home, and her kittens, which she loves dearly, Cunningham said she has many friends in Incline Village - mostly members of the Incline Golf Club who grandfathered her into the club even though she can't play very well, she jokes.

"Golfers are great people," she said.

Her best game was 108 on 18 holes at the Mountain Course.

"I'm as bad at skiing as I am at golf," she said. "I just like doing it."

Cunningham doesn't know everyone in Incline Village like she used to, she admits. She remembers distinctly the first day a clerk at Raley's asked her for identification - an indication of how big Incline Village had grown.

She still loves the community, even though she is thinking of possibly selling her lakefront condo and moving to Reno.

Yet, with a twinkle in her eye, she recalls one lesson she has learned from a long life: "Don't sell."