A Tangled Web

The handsome boy on the left passed away today, and it has me thinking about how strangely entwined our lives become.

Booger came to be Heidi's pet via a long and strange chain of events that started in the fall of '99. It was a time of major change in my life, and without the help of friends like Heidi, I never would have made it through.

I won't bog you down with all of the details, but Booger originally came into my life as a scrawny little juvenile boy as a temporary thing. Heidi, Wil, and I had just recently signed a lease together on an apartment that didn't allow pets. My friend, Mary, was in the process of moving and had to find somewhere to house her 4 kitties while she looked for a new place. Being the suckers we are for wayward hairballs, they somehow all came to live with us.

Anyone who has ever tried harboring 4 curious cats AND hide them from public knowledge can only imagine how much fun this was.

Through whatever turn of events, all but one of the four ended up permanently finding a place with us. Hulk became mine and Wil's, and despite the fact that Hulk and Hogan (hey! I didn't name them!) were littermates, it was Booger and Hogan that were inseperable, and so Heidi kept them. The fourth, in case you were wondering, stayed with Mary.

Fast forward a few years...

We lost our Hulk, the scrawniest of the four, just last year to renal failure. I've never quite been able to come to terms with the fact that a cat of such young age could have such profound kidney disease. He was the sweetest of cats- gentle, soulful, loud in that way that only a siamese mix can be.

Hogan is the same, only about 3 times the size of our Hulk.

Both Booger and Hogan lived a royal life at Casa de Heidi and Tom. Having no children to spoil, the cats got all the doting and affection they could stand, and have always been a source of constant joy to them. I'm not trying to paint a portrait of my friends as "the crazy cat people" or anything. Honestly, they're quite normal. But they do have several framed pictures of their boys adorning the walls, and even a ceramic figurine of the two of them snuggled together.

It was quite a shock to me this afternoon when Heidi called to tell me she had found him dead on the back porch. Up until now, he was the epitome of health. No warning signs at all.

What really sucks is that Tom is out of town on business, and she's there to sort through it all alone.

I spent some time with her tonight, but I'm terribly inadequate at consoling the grief-stricken. I did my best, though. And she was probably more than happy to see me leave.

And so, tomorrow I will take Booger to the clinic with me and have him set up for cremation. It may not be much, and it may be a bit gruesome, but I'm honored to be able to do at least that much for her, and for him.

You see, out of all the friends that have wandered in and out of my life, there are only two that have remained consistently there- Heidi and Mary. Sometimes I wonder if the strange and convoluted saga of our lives, and the intertwining lives of the cats, might have played a larger part in that than we consciously realize.

May our sweet little Booger rest in peace.