A good life - Kitty (1993-2009)

It was a sad day today – I had to put down my cat, Kitty. Its a funny story about the name, my brother couldn’t come up with a name for him and ended up calling him Kitty. He had a couple in those days, one called Hermie (now gone as well) and Billy (sill alive in New York), both girls.

Kitty was always a people cat, talking to people, asking about what they were doing. Sometimes he would watch my brother or me play video games, I always figured cause he wanted the attention.

I remember him escaping the house on my once back in the states. I was in San Francisco at the time but would occasionally spend the weekends in Davis, about an hour and a half outside of SF. One Sunday night I decided at 2 or 3 in the morning to get some gas for my drive back to SF. Somewhere between my leaving the house and returning he escaped through the garage door as he usually did but I didn’t see it happen and I was very tired. The next morning at 6, I realized he wasn’t there. And seeing that I need to hit the road for SF, I called my brother’s then girlfriend (my brother was in San Diego for business) and asked her if she could help find him. But before I left that morning I remember hearing a dog barking up a tree as if a cat was perched in it. As it turned out when my brother returned Tuesday evening it took him a couple minutes to find him using the ‘can of tuna’ technique. Kitty zipped out a few seconds later looking feral, hungry and a little cold. Well, he was out there for two days.

He was never really a good navigator, often getting lost in our neighborhood and when found often taunted me to ‘try and catch him’. He was strong in those days and could easily scale the 7 foot backyard fence. In the last couple of days though he could hardily jump onto my bed without help.

I’ll remember the early mornings trying to wake me up by ear marking my favorite books. I wanted to believe he was reading them whilst I was out because he only biting into the corners of the books that I thought were good. I’ll also remember him taking up the real estate on my bed before I wanted to go to sleep or when he would sleep between my legs before I passed out facing up and some how maneuver to the backs of my legs when I ended up on my front in the morning. 

I’ve never really felt so close to an animal or felt this way about losing someone or something but I guess this is how it feels. I think he’s doing good now, chewing on the grass somewhere, scaling huge fences and bouncing off walls with his speed. I’ll miss you K-dude.