About 10 years ago, on one of the days my best friend and her kids came over for dinner, her and I were chattering away, laughing and drinking good wine while I cooked. Just as we had started on the second bottle April said, "Shhhh, I hear a cat." So I listened intently with her for a few minutes and heard nothing. Looking at her with skeptical eyebrows, I pronounced that she was cut off from the vino and promptly took away her glass.
We went on with the talking and laughing, and then got around to the eating. When dinner was finishing up and we were all sitting around the table being fat, I heard her phantom cat outside the window by the kitchen table. After a few seconds of her saying, "I told you so!" (and yes she really said that, quite loudly and with great emphasis) I opened the front door and there sat this beautiful charcoal grey and white cat with luminous yellow-green eyes. He was malnourished to the point of starvation and while giving him water and some tuna, I noticed that he had been fixed. Then I noticed that he'd also been front declawed (which I just don't understand), and that could only mean one thing: he had either been someone's pet and gotten lost, or he had been someone's pet and been abandoned. And that is when my heart broke and I knew without a doubt that he was going to be moving in.
I named him Osiris, but after about a week I had begun calling him Beebee, a bastardized from of Baby. And about a week after that it was the only name he would respond to. I became his Human and he became my Cat.
Over the past few months Beebee had doing poorly, with what ailment I do not know. I did not have enough money outright to bring him to a vet for tests and I wasn't able to find a vet who would make payment arrangements. This morning when I woke up and tended to him I saw that his health had deteriorated rapidly in the past 48 hours. I made one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make.
At approximately 8pm this November 3rd, 2010, Beebee died. Though I sit here and remember all of the joy and love that he brought to my life, and think of how happy and content he was, I cannot stop the pain in my chest...as though someone is squeezing my heart in a vice.
