Wow props to all who have felt the furry snuggle and lost. My deepest condolences.
Cat Story for Cat People who Love Cats:
For three years I worked at a used book store that was in a strip mall with a vet clinic, and I remember near the start of my long run working there, that the first time I got keys and the alarm code, that when I came to the back door of the store to unlock it for the first time in my career, in ran this orange cat. I freak, thinking "Oh, god, I've only opened the door and I've already screwed up." I go into the store, and the cat is totally laying in the middle of the large, 8 foot x 12 foot comic bin, glancing at me all casually. He is ugly, old, and has clumps of fur missing. So I go to one side of the bin and of course he casually shifts out of reach, then to the other, and again he shifts. I continue with my frantic attempts to get him, then realize it's well past opening time, so I open up the shop. The cat continues to lie on the bin of comics, gazing at me, looking very relaxed. Finally my co-worker saunters in about an hour late, glances at the cat and says "Oh, Thomas is here." It turns out that Thomas the cat is 19 years old and belongs to the vet clinic, and he regularly escapes and gets locked out over night, or even over the weekend. The clinic has several other cats that have no interest in escaping, but not Thomas.
So at my job at the bookstore, maybe two or three times a week Thomas escapes from the vet clinic and saunters down the sidewalk, and waits patiently for a customer or one of us to come and open our door, and in he comes. Even though my boss is allergic to cats, he can't resist Thomas' charms, he ends up petting him and sneezing at the same time. My boss mutters "damn cat," but then I catch him smiling at Thomas as he drinks water out of the bowl we always have out for him on the counter. He is allowed to vistit whenever he likes. The clinic tries everything to stop him from his wandering, naturally fearing for his safety, they put a shock collar on him, and discover that he is a masochist - he intentionally shocks himself over and over again, swerving in and out of the door repeatedly for the fun of it. Since the collar does nothing to keep him in, and seems to instead incourage him to hand out by the door nearly tripping people, they take it off. He insists on being carried as I shelve books, licking my neck with a very rough tounge. He eats my Pringles. He knocks books over. For three years, Thomas is almost always around. His fur falls out more and more, and he even tugs chunks of it out when he gets bored. He has such a paunch-belly that more than one customer asks me "Is that cat going to have kittens?" "No, he's a boy." One weekend - a long weekend - the vet clinic locks Thomas out, so we keep in the back room, and he eats my co-workers A & W leftovers, bun, lettuce and all, knocks over more books, and takes a big dump on the floor that leaves a perminant orange stain that I could never get rid of no matter how hard I scrubbed.
I moved on to bigger and better things career-wise, but still visted the old store, and often still, Thomas would be there, and he'd remember me and come for rubs.
Recently, I was reading the paper -rarely if ever is there any pet obituaries, but that day, because there was a very long one, it caught my eye. It read "Thomas the cat, 25 years old," and had an exceptionally long tribute that thanked me and several other staff members at the bookstore personally. It turns out that Thomas had been abandoned at the clinic at the age of 15. He was old and needed some expensive treatment. The clinic had assumed, that at his age, that if they welcomed him into the clinic as an in-store-pet, that he wouldn't be around for long. Instead he stuck around for 10 years. Apparently, he was also known to the staff of the Domino's Pizza that was also part of the strip mall, though they were supposedly not giving him food. I cried when I read about Thomas' life of misadventure turned good. He had found a home for himself, even if an unconventional one, among the soft-hearted merchants of a strip mall. I remember him smuggly gazing at me from the comic files, knowing that he had it made, and some silly girl wasn't going to bother him.
The last time I stopped by the old book store, which is always a cluttered mess, I noticed that a special place had been cleared, and there framed on the wall was Thomas' obituary in a frame, with my old bosses writting over top "An old friend..." My old boss saw me looking at it, and muttered under his breath, one last time for good measure, "damn cat."
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Topic: I miss my cat. (Read 13306 times)