Letters to the Editor
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Those of us with memorable cats . . .
. . . 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.
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Jolie
Sad and beautiful and just the way it happens. Thank you, Carol Lay.
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Jolie
This was heart-rending...not only about Jolie but the unpredictability of life, its strange twists and turns....very well done...thanks to Ms. Lay.
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All cats go to heaven
Very moving, Carol. Those of us who have and love cats know how you feel. Jolie was lucky to have someone so loving take care of her.
As for that teenage boy who tried to run her over: he will never be worth as much as one cat's whisker.
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I tell people they don't know the half of it
My cat was a stray kitten at the county landfill when he bummed a ride home in the undercarriage of my neighbors pickup truck. I offered the little guy some tuna and the deal was done. It was right after my father died, a long tough battle with COPD.
The cat lived with us for 12 wonderful years, defending our home against other stray cats, and he loved to be outside. He also was very loving, a big fan of lap time, and his place to sleep on my single bed was always in the middle.
Carol is correct, cats find us when we need something to lift our souls. When people say, oh the cat is just looking for a free meal, I tell them they don't know the half of it.
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Thanks, Carol!
My sympathies to you on your loss of Jolie, and thank you for reminding me how much the cats who owned me have always been there when the only drug that could dull my pain was a warm and purring hunk of fur.
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a remembrance of cats past..........
my parents had a cat named Dusty back in the 1970's, the cat is long gone by now but I still remember it well; this cat was part Siamese, part Persian, part horse and part something weird: it eventually grew to be 20 pounds heavy and 36 inches long (from end of tail to tip of nose), it enjoyed galloping around in the house (sounding like a herd of wild horses while doing so), it craved the salty water in which green olives are packed (and it would stagger away almost in a drunken stupor after slurping up this water), it preferred to be vacuumed than to be combed (every time that Mom ran the fabric cleaning tool over this beast, she wondered if "Candid Camera" had staged the moment);
when my friend, Janis, lost her cat (Cromwell) to disease a few years ago, I sent Janis a sympathy card....other people thought that I was nuts to send a sympathy card just for a cat but I knew how much Cromwell had meant to Janis and it did help Janis to survive....Janis now has three cats;
my sister Janet had a cat named Chessie (derived from that picture of the kitten on the side of railroad boxcars....the Chessie system of rail car suspensions); Chessie was a Persian cat that was Janet's constant companion while my sister was studying for her Ph.D. in economics; when Janet was accepted by an Ivy League school for a economics faculty position, Chessie went with her; when a hurricane sideswiped that school and flooded my sister's house, Chessie was the last item that Janet carried from the house;
Chessie passed away a few years ago and Janet, now a tenured associate professor, has two new cats
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Shortly before I got the job
I am now working at I had an abnormal EKG at a doctor visit. The follow up tests would have cost more than I could ever have been able to afford, so I had to wait three months for the benefits from my new job to kick in, and in the meantime was very depressed because I thought I must be dying. Every day I would come home from work and sit in a chair and watch t.v. and feel bleak and very sorry for myself. The one nice thing that happened was that whenever I did this my cat Spud would climb up on my chest and lie down and look me in the eyes and purr. He had never done this before. We would just stay there and blink at each other, because that is cat language for "I think you are very cool." When I finally got my benefits and had the tests, it turned out I was all right, and my mood improved and Spud decided I would be okay on my own, so he stopped comforting me. We are still the best of friends though. I know he will be there for me when I need him, and I am always there for him. He is a very handsome black and brown tabby but not at all vain. He is seventeen years old, and his whiskers are starting to droop and he is developing cataracts. He is otherwise in excellent health and can jump as high as he ever could, though, since his vision is impaired, he sometimes misses. He still likes to be chased around the house. I think he is very cool.