Goodbye, Kitty
Five months ago today, on March 31, we pumped Sammy full of poison, putting my precious kitty out of his aged misery. This month, August, he would have turned nineteen years old, though we don't know the exact date of his birth. He was only six weeks old when we got him in October of 1986; he was so tiny as his little claws dug into my mom's old puffy gray parka, the first time I ever saw him. He was communal property of the whole family, but I named him Sam on the ride back to our house in our now long-gone 1979 Oldsmobile stationwagon. Later, his full name would be determined as Samuel Bubbles Sink Cat Wilson. In my youth, I named most of my possessions after myself, the most notable and hilarious example being a large hard plastic shark I named Michael Patrick Donut Shark.

Until I left for college, feeding Sam as one of my chores, but we weren't especially close. He was a bastard. I loved him, but he wasn't a cuddly kind of cat. My brother and sister and I always said that the blackness of Sammy's heart was revealed by the fact that he only liked to snuggle on our father's lap. Sam, whose fur was white with gray patches, was the great white hunter. When he first started going outside, we had rabbits living under our deck. Shortly thereafter, we didn't have rabbits. We had mice behind the garage. Then we didn't have mice. He killed shrews and birds and brought them to the back door as offerings. He always liked to eat grass, though he would inevitably throw up later, leaving the undigested blades in a puddle of liquid on the kitchen floor or the family room carpet. He was so aggressive that as soon as he was old enough he had him declawed, even his rear paws. Even so he picked fights with every cat in the neighborhood, almost all of whom were bigger than him (he was incredibly slender, no matter how much we fed him), and almost always won. They'd limp away and he'd return to the house with a fully intact coat of fur. The Mountain was the youngest and for a very long time the smallest of us kids; so, Sam bit him the most. Visitors always tried to pet the cute kitty and many got bit for their trouble; we tried to warn people, but they wouldn't believe us until after Sam struck.

He was neutered as soon as he was old enough, but that didn't stop him from having a long-time romance with the Mountain's fuzzy slippers. I learned about sex by asking why he was always mounting the slippers and ramming his pelvis into them.

By the time I returned home, Sammy was an old, old kitty. He still wanted to go outside all the time, but eventually we realized that though his spirit was willing, his flesh was too weak to cut it out there in the rough-and-tumble world of the backyard. He and I spent a lot of time together and it soon became the most natural feeling I the world for him to jump up on my lap and try to steal my cheese. Aftyer I'd quickly devour it, he's settle down on my legs and fall asleep. It was a good relationship. I didn't want to disturb him and he didn't want me to leave the plush green chair in front of the living room TV. Slowly but surely his advanced years started to wear on him; first he developed a heart murmur and then his kidneys started to shut down. His muscle mass disappeared, making his slender frame seem gaunt, despite a diet of veterinarian-recommended diet of high-calorie kitten food and medicinal food for his kidneys. One day he just laid down and didn't get back up again, not really. He could stand, but he was unable to raise his head. His neck muscles were too weak. He'd always hated his carrier; so, I gently laid him in an open-topped cardboard box lined with towels and Mom and I drove him to the vet's. He died as soon as the poison hit his veins, a sign of how close to death he'd already been, the doctor told us. Three of my four grandparents are dead, but I haven't cried like that any other time in my life. Water flowed from my eyes as if from a hose and my whole body shuddered. Thank Bog Mom drove, because I never would have gotten home alive; I couldn't see through the tears. April 2005 was the worst month of my entire life.

I loved Sammy more than I've loved all but a handful of people in my whole life, my family included. Goodbye, Sammy, I love you.