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. . . benchmark our lives by the cats with which we shared our lives.
Cleo was an Abyssinian whose owners were going to 'take her to the pound because she kept having kittens'.
She was the runt of her original litter, never grew larger than a six month old kitten, and lived with me for five years through moves back and forth between two different Caribbean islands.
When I landed in Northern California after a particularly bad year of hurricanes, she went with me and thrived.
When I returned to the islands five months later, I left her with my roommate David, a tortured genius who loved very little in life. He did love Cleo, and she was ok with staying.
I visited a year later and tried to take her back, but David said, "I don't think I can do that".
He was abusing crystal meth. I returned to the islands. He died four months later of a drug induced heart attack, and Cleo went to live with his mother.
That was 1997, I never caught up with her again, she could still be alive somewhere in Santa Rosa.
She was a great cat. I'm sure yours was, too, Carol. My condolences.
