Hello Kitties

They were my children's furry playmates, companions of their games and patient listeners to bed time stories.

We adopted Poem from the SPCA. A sweet calico turtle shell girl of gentle nature and soft meows. Friendly and motherly, she would lick the face of any cat that came close to her, somehow she knew how to be a queen without acting strong, all the cats respected her. She was the same with us humans, didn't really have a favorite and would curl up on anyone's lap when we were watching TV.

White Socks came a couple of years later, he was a skinny and hungry tuxedo stray looking for a place to belong. He didn't mind not to be the alpha male, he didn't bother to fight Tom for the top position of the family cathood. He was loving and easygoing, he used to move his tail twitching it like a rattle snake.

He got attached to my son and pretty much moved into his room. He learned to climb the ladder of the loft bed and slept there every night.

Time went by and my children grew up, during those years several cats came and went from our lives. Tom died and we adopted Skittle from some friends whose house burnt to the ground. Both Poem and White Socks accepted her as their little sister but she became White Socks' playmate... Actually his bully since she had shared her early days with a puppy and got used to playing rough.

We moved to a new house that came with a cat, Mishifu, a solid black girl that belonged to the previous owners of the house but choose to stay with us instead of following her previous family to the new house they built adjacent to ours.

Poem and White Socks had no problem adopting a new sister, but Skittle and Mishifu haven't learned to get along even after six years living together.

My kitties grew old, little by little they began sleeping longer hours, lost weight and became slower. White Socks began protesting Skittle's attacks, he made it clear that he wasn't enjoying her games anymore.

Poem got dental problems and oral surgery when she was around fourteen or fifteen years old. Though it helped her, she was left with bad breath for the rest of her life.

But they were still in good health.

Nevertheless, we came to the realization that our time with them was nearing and got ready to say goodbye, or so we thought.

One day in April 2021 White Socks stopped eating, he lost even more weight and seem to be always cold. There was nothing else to do other than trying to make him feel loved and comfortable.

I knew it was time to let him go and informed my family, by those days all of them were working away from home. My son asked to wait and let him see his kitty one more time.

I made the appointment for next day after my son's arrival. He got home and had to dig a grave for his beloved cat, he dug it in the yard very close to his bed, separated only by the wall.

On April 20th, 2021, I met my children at the vet's office. They had been planning a trip before we knew that that would be our kitty's last day.

It was a sunny day and the sky was bright and blue, in contrast to the shadows that covered our hearts.

Thanks to the still in place COVID restrictions, only one person was allowed to be with White Socks at his last moments. We agreed that my son should be the one to hold him to the end. My daughter and I waited in the parking lot with our eyes full of tears and hugging each other.

Few minutes later my son came out of the office, holding a little box with the body of our boy. We hugged each other tightly holding the box and cried for a long time... It wasn't easy to think that, after seventeen or so years, White Socks wouldn't be with us any more.

My kids hit the road on their way to Vancouver, and I headed home with the box holding my baby on the passenger seat. I talked to him all the way, thanked him for the years of unconditional love he gave us, and asked him to let me know when he was with Tom.

Once I got home, I took my boy out of the box, his body and tail were limp. I set him in the hole and covered his body with dirt, then planted an iris plant on his grave.

One month later I had a dream in which my children were still little and we were still living in the house at the bottom of the hill. We went to the deck but instead of the familiar long and steeped driveway flanked on both sides by evergreens and cherry trees, there was a tropical forest of bright trees no taller than the level of the deck, in which several dozens of cats of all colours and sizes were doing all sorts of cat activities. Some were chasing each other, others were grooming themselves under a sunny spot, others were sleeping lazily on branches or on the ground.

Then I saw a grey cat coming from the right side of the inexistent driveway, we made eye contact and I knew it was Tom. Seconds later a lustrous tuxedo came running and jumped to Tom's back biting the scruff of his neck, he too made eye contact with me and I knew he was White Socks showing me that, after crossing Rainbow Bridge, he finally was friends with Tom.

I woke up happy to know that my cats are together in such a beautiful place.

In November of that same year, we adopted another tuxedo, Ella, an adult female that had no trouble adopting my son as her human and moving into his room.

My son says that one night he felt and heard a cat purring by his side, he thought it was Ella but then he opened his eyes and saw her sleeping on the windowsill, about 5 feet away from his bed.

Another time Ella was beside his head and he felt something walking by his feet and saw Ella perking up her ears and following something invisible with her eyes, then a book that had been leaning against the wall fell for no apparent reason.

Fast-forward to late May 2022, Poem began loosing weight and missing the litter box, she would go to the basement and would began meowing in a sorrowful and loud way, it made me think that she didn't know were she was and couldn't find her way around the house. Then she scared me badly a couple of times in which she was sleeping and woke up shaking and trashing in a strange way, once she fell into the water bowl and another time she fell off the deck's stairwell. This made me decide that it was time to let her go before she got worse.

I called the vet's office and, the dreaded day I fed her a can of her favorite wet food, brushed her thinning coat under the sunshine and hugged her many more times. She entered the carrier without complaining and sat happily at my side on the way to the vet's.

Once there she fought angrily when my daughter wrapped her in a blanket, probably thinking that we were trying to clip her claws, then they injected a sedative but had problems finding a good vein to inject the final solution since her old little veins would collapse every time the needle enter. They took her to a back room to inject her directly into the heart.

Then they brought her to us and I drove home and buried her beside White Socks. It was June 22nd, 2022, just four months short of the 23rd anniversary since we adopted her.

I asked her to let me know when she is with her siblings. So far I haven't seen her with Tom and Socks, but I have dreamed of her, every time she is healthy and looks happy, sometimes I have been aware that she is dead and am afraid to touch her and see her disappear, but I have been able to feel her soft fur too.

One day I was napping and heard Poem's soft purring ending on a whistling sound, I woke up and even smelled a whiff of her bad breath.

I don't know if these were only dreams or if my kitties came to visit, but it was nice to see them again... I just hope that Skittle, Ella, Mishifu and Monkey, will get along one day, even if I'm not there to see them.

Thanks for reading.