It all started on a rainy October afternoon in 1993. The goatmother had gone to look at a litter of feral kittens that had been trapped and then put up for adoption. There were three, two males and a female, but one in particular 'spoke' to her. Literally. One of the kittens, though mistrustful of human beings, was quite vocal about everything. That was all it took, and so Fu, whose name supposedly meant 'Tiger' in some Chinese dialect, came to live with the goatmother and the goatfather. He was so afraid that the goatmother stayed up and held him all night long. He never quite lost his wariness, and for the longest time the only chance anyone had to touch him was when they were lying flat in bed.He was quite a character, really. He had a penchant for eating very strange things. He ate the goatmother's dried flower arrangement. In desperation, she finally threw out the dried flowers and replaced them with plastic flowers. Fu ate the plastic flowers. He ate them and then he threw them up. He ate the carpet...and then he threw that up. Actually he ate quite a lot of things that he threw up. Nonetheless, the family loved him, and eventually he got to where he would jump up on the goatmother's lap, or by the goatfather, and purr away.
Fu left us today. We knew it was coming. After all, he was 15 years old. We knew it was coming...but we weren't prepared. I guess you never are. St. Francis of Assisi said, "All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle." And so we know that our Fu lives on someplace...where he is well...and young...and unburdened. Just maybe life isn't all about the Peanuts.
2 comments:
Marigold, I am so sorry about Fu. He was beautiful and a very lucky cat to have such a wonderful life with you. And you were lucky to have him.
You probably should have left out a bowl of Peanuts. He would have left the plastic flowers alone.
oh dear. we miss our old friends worst of all.
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