Velvet

Thursday, January 31, 2019

A few weeks ago I said farewell to my sweet black kitty. She was 15 years old, we should have had more time together. She had been suffering with lymphoma and was nearly weightless, skinny as a rail and unlikely to hold on much longer. During the thin and thick of our relationship, our lives changed significantly. To me, goodby was as if pieces of my past were fading.

Velvet was a tiny kitten in 2003, a year when I was active with a Southern California organization that rescued and rehabilitated stray cats. Velvet wasn’t a rescue of mine, but when her “then-person” adopted a second kitty, it was from me. Velvet was petite and slender, with striking green eyes that were an exception to her otherwise solid black. Her person had an eye for design and adopted a nearly all-black rescue. This one, healing from an injury, needed more help from me. That’s how her adopter and I became friends and when I first met Velvet.

A couple of years later, I moved to Central Oregon, and eventually, Velvet’s mom decided to do the same. She purchased a home in an adjoining neighborhood, brought her cats, and adopted a couple of dogs. Before long, she and I, busy with our own interests and activities began to drift in different directions. Gradually, in some years that passed we barely were in touch.

Several years ago, my friend called to explain that she was in the process of moving away and asked if I could keep ten-year-old Velvet for a couple of months until she could return for her cat. Long story short, she neither returned nor left a trace as to her whereabouts.

Velvet had been an inside-only cat (the best way to ensure a feline’s welfare). Now, for months, she watched my inside-outside cat, Maxwell, enter and exit. Velvet slowly began spending more time near a slider that opens to an outside small deck. One day, when I opened that door Velvet slipped outside. She tiptoed around and stretched before sinking to her belly, to soak and doze in warm sunshine.

Gradually, I let her outside more. She rarely left the safety of the small deck, and if she did, stayed nearby and returned at my call. I carefully watched her, for unlike Maxwell, she was new to predatory birds, territorial cats, and in general, things that go bump in the night.

While outside, she peered steadily into places critters might crawl, or she simply slept in the sun. While inside, she sat on my lap, padded after me, slept on my bed. Velvet was a reminder of my cat rescue days and her first mom. She kept real those early days in Bend and helping a friend find a house and pets. Almost inconceivably, I lost track of that friend, and oddly, a little proof of that history lived with me.

For the last third of her life Velvet shared my home. My tears of goodbye recalled poignantly the years of our meandering relationship, and also, my double loss.

Dear Readers, enjoy today, with hugs for pets and friends. Diana