Cult ’60s folk singer-songwriter Norma Tanega has died, The New York Times reports. According to her lawyer, Alfred Shine, she passed away at her home in Claremont, California on 12/29 after a battle with colon cancer. She was 80.

Norma Cecilia Tanega was born in Vallejo, California and grew up in Long Beach. Her father, Tomas, was a Navy bandmaster and musician, and Tanega began taking classical piano lessons at age nine. As a teenager, she wrote poetry, ran her school’s art gallery and exhibited paintings at Long Beach’s Public Library and Municipal Art Center, and continued playing piano. At 17, she went to Scripps College on a scholarship and went on to earn a master’s in fine arts from Claremont Graduate School.

After spending a summer backpacking around Europe, Tanega moved to New York City and became involved in the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. While working a summer job as a camp counselor in the Catskills, she was discovered by producer Herb Bernstein; he introduced her to the Four Seasons songwriter Bob Crewe, who signed her to his New Voice record label in 1965.

Tanega’s first single and only hit, “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog,” reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became an international success, inspiring covers from contemporary artists like Barry McGuire, the T-Bones, Art Blakey, and the Crusaders. The song’s popularity earned her appearances on American Bandstand and Where The Action Is and a spot on a nationwide tour with Gene Pitney, Bobby Goldsboro, Chad And Jeremy, and the McCoys.

After releasing her debut album, also called Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, in 1966, Tanega toured England, where she met the singer Dusty Springfield. The two entered into a romantic relationship and lived together in London for five years, during which Tanega helped write songs like “No Stranger Am I,” “The Colour Of Your Eyes,” and “Earthbound Gypsy” for Springfield. In 1971, she released her second and final solo album, I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile, for the British division of RCA Records.

When Tanega’s relationship with Springfield ended, she moved back to Claremont, taking jobs teaching music and English as a second language at local public schools and becoming an adjunct professor of art at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She continued painting and became interested in experimental music, playing earthenware instruments with Scripps ceramics professor Brian Ransom’s Ceramic Ensemble in the 1980s.

Over the next few decades, she performed in various musical projects including Hybrid Vigor, the Latin Lizards, and Baboonz. Her early work has been covered by Thee Oh Sees, Dr. Hook, Yo La Tengo, and They Might Be Giants, and she was reintroduced to a larger audience in 2015 when her song “You’re Dead” was used in the opening credits of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s great vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows. Revisit her work below.