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| Buddy |
I often referred to him as my little Energizer Buddy because, at 22 years old, he kept going and going and going. Well, a week ago today, his batteries ran down for the last time.
I remember the day he arrived in our lives.
It was
Valentine’s Day 1994 and my husband Ray was on his knees in our Jacksonville,
Florida driveway, hacking down an oleander bush because every time he pruned
it, he broke out in a nasty rash. Beside him, watching with great interest, was
a tabby."Who's your buddy?" I asked, never once thinking that question would not only name the cat, but also launch a relationship that would surpass all the other pets I've had in my life.
We had a lot
of stray cats because a feral tabby mother I called Angel, even though she wasn’t,
had littered in our small patio home neighborhood with one batch of kittens
after another. Live traps were useless because Angel simply disappeared when I
set one. After 6 litters, she produced a one-eyed kitten, and then she had a
bad miscarriage, forcing me to get super creative.
Angel was feral, but she was
no fool. I grilled her a salmon steak with butter, left it inside a large
walk-in dog cage positioned beside my sliding doorwall. The aroma lured her
inside, and while she ate, I reached through the door to silently close the
cage. When she finished her meal…she was trapped. Finally!
I know for a
fact Buddy was Angel’s son. I clearly recall him among a litter of eight,
dropped on our doorstep Christmas Eve 1991. We came home after midnight to find
this furry batch of tiny kittens sleeping on our doormat. “Is someone playing a
joke?” Ray shouted, scattering the kittens. Angel was notorious for bringing me
her kittens to take care of when she was ready to return to her carefree, hoochie-mama
lifestyle. That night she took back her kittens, but a week later they were in
my backyard and they were mine, for a while.
