Patches, My Cat

I have a pet. Not here with in Toronto, but back home in Calgary. Patches the Cat. She is the family cat, and according to our best guesses, she is 19 old. Might be 20, nobody can really nail it down. I love that cat - still do. But, as it tends to go with existence, it must end, and my beloved kitty is seeing some sickness now. Apprantly, she had a stroke of some sorts. I felt much more sad by it than I was hoping I would. It's amazing what your pet can do for you.

I lived in many houses in a couple of cities. I went to 6 schools in 12 years and had a constant revolving door of friends and acquaintances. All this change, and the only constant was my family and my cat, Patches. Everywhere I went, there she was. Always waiting for me to come home. A great temperment with me, too. I can remember crying and she would come into my room and sit next to me, and in some bizarre act of nature, actually make me feel better. As if to say "Brett, you better stop crying. The girls will never think it's cool and I'm pretty hungry, so let's get off the floor and feed me and let me out". That's why I always loved my cat - similar priorities.

She is so much more than a cat, too. Something like a younger sibling I never had, but she wasn't a human, thus explaining my grand affection for her. I would worry for her when she wasn't home, ward off other cats, do her homework. It was, and is, a great relationship.

I guess I just wanted to write this while she still lives. That somehow, however it does work, she can cosmically know I care, that it's ok, and if she needs to go and hang out in the next life, that's cool. I always feared that I could never value things when they were here. That by some dimented twist of fate, all things were doomed to be under-appreciated in life. But this is not the story here. This is the story of a boy, his cat, and how they both help add to one another, and how even though all things die, some things never go away.