Our Cat

Some people think there are two kinds of people. Cat and dog people. I am tempted to say there are two kinds of people: people who think there are two kinds of people and people who know there are not.

I have never liked the idea of dog and cat people. I have never had a moment in my life without a dog, and only rare moments without a cat.  I have also had wonderful members of my family who were ponies, sheep, and donkeys, and I have had meaningful exchanges with whales and dolphins. I have kept chickens and enjoyed their antics.  So deciding on feline versus canine is altogether too limiting.

This is all a preamble to sharing the sad news that our family cat of 15 years passed away today.  She was being lovingly cared for by the Sidney Beacon Cat Hospital. A wonderful doctor and a cat loving cat sitter who got to know her when I was at the Copenhagen climate meeting, were making sure she got lots of TLC. I left for the opening of Parliament and feel that I let her down.

She was a wonderful cat.  My daughter at age 5 picked her out of a box of kittens up for adoption at the SPCA.  She was one of the brightest kittens. Not too skittish --  sensible, even as a wee thing.  My daughter picked her up and she snuggled into her arms.  Victoria Cate looked at me with such joy and said, "This is the happiest day of my life".

She took a while coming up with the perfect name, but settled on Rosie Ameila Isabelle Odette.  We agreed her name would be 'Rosie'. I had an old dog at the time who ignored her, but when the old dog passed away, we got a new puppy, and Rosie trained her. We were living in Halifax that year while I was teaching at Dalhousie University, and Rosie had to be an indoor cat due to all the traffic on Cobourg Road.  She adjusted to it in ways that cats are not supposed to adjust. Back and forth from Nova Scotia to Ottawa to British Columbia.  She had a wonderful way of extending her paw to stroke my cheek.    True, she sometimes got excited and gave me a hard bite to the knuckles as I was falling asleep. She would purr up a storm.

My best friend just gave me a lint brush because I always seemed to have white cat fur on all my dark clothes.  I suppose it is not sensible to have a pussy cat adhering herself to all my dark clothes, sitting on the page of the newspaper I most want to read, jumping up on my pillow in the night.

I just know I will be missing her for a very long time.