Today I lost a dear friend whom I shall never forget.
He was named Troubles.
He was only a cat but that seems so insulting as he was so much more than a mere animal.
He was my friend for nearly fifteen of my nearly thirty-eight years.
He and I were a team and a damned good one, too.
He and I endured a lot of hard times together.
He and I shared some amazing times together, too.
He had been suffering in recent months from a recurrence of an oral cancer he had surgically removed a few years ago.
His prognosis then was that he would quite possibly experience a recurrence which turned out tragically prophetic.
He was a real trooper through to the end even fighting going into the cat carrier and then fighting being taken out of it at the vet's office.
He died peacefully on the table as I caressed him and talked to him comfortingly but I doubt he heard me as he was heavily sedated.
He was buried beneath the window to my bedroom where I lived most of his life at mom's house.
He was positioned next to and facing the grave of the only other cat he ever really befriended and for whom he was the only other cat she befriended and that is my cat Sammy.
He and she were effectively boyfriend and girlfriend and had they not been neutered and spayed I'm certain they would have mated at every opportunity.
He was one of the coolest cats I ever met and steady as can be which was comforting.
He outlived his entire clan and was the last of his line.
He was a beautiful gray color with white paws and with short hair on an average-sized frame with luminous yellow-green eyes.
He had a high-pitched cry which made him seem less tomcatish and more kittenish.
He had a habit of not liking to have you approach him directly but wait for him to come up to you when he'd show you his side and arch his back expecting you to rub it.
He was sort of the patriarch of the entire collection of cats living with mom.
He was pretty much at the top of the pecking order until recently when the long-haired, red-headed, crazy Scotsman of a cat Willy started finally pushing him aside as top cat.
He will be sorely missed.
He has already left a vacuum in mom's house as I can feel the relative emptiness there caused by his absence.
He was the sort of cat that one has the privilege of knowning once in a lifetime.
He was Troubles but certainly no troubles.
Kim - I feel your loss as my boyfriend and I are truly "cat" people.
ReplyDeleteI think Troubles spirit is no longer troubled...I have the teenage kitten of a feral cat that sounds like he is channeling your cat...but I think he has more white!
When you and your Mom are ready - we need to find homes for a litter of kittens (from the same feral mother) - drop me a line.
Robyn Hawk
Yes, calling a beloved pet just an animal is blasphemy. They are people of a furry species and just as loved as the human kind, and in as many ways.
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