Bye-Bye Buddy - Guest Article

I met Jana Jones, the About.com guide to Hotels, Resorts and Inns, at About.com's "The Red Ball" event in Las Vegas. In the four days we were there, we talked several times, and the conversation came around to cats, as it always does among cat lovers. Jana told me about Buddy, whom she had recently lost, and about the pain she and her daughter were experiencing. I asked if she would be willing to write a feature article about Buddy. She agreed, and I'm very happy to present it. Here, then, is Jana's memorial to Buddy:

Bye-Bye Buddy It broke my heart to see her little shoulders shake as she tried to concentrate on her homework, seated at the old gray desk in the livingroom.For days I had gone to the two shelters nearest our apartment in search of Beans, her missing cat. Grandpa had come to visit and Beans had somehow managed to scoot out without our knowledge. She was gone, gone, gone, and Zavi, my daughter, was heartbroken. She and her aunt Olga had put up posters all around our neighborhood, with 4"x6" glossy photos, in both English and Spanish. We got a couple of calls, but mostly the photos were taken off the posters, and my daughter, 12 years old, was griefstruck. After six agonizing weeks I decided it was time to replace Beans. A local vet had an abandoned Persian, approximately three years old, who had been rescued and neutered. Was I interested? The woman who had rescued him was very particular, I was told, so I would have to meet her for an "interview." If she decided that we were suitable, we could have him for a small fee. Zavi and I drove to the vet's office, and were introduced to this huge, orangy-beige animal with quarter-sized copper eyes. He was skittish. He hid under a chair. I had my doubts, serious doubts, about an animal that was so beautiful but that had been abandoned. He must have had some serious psychological problems to have been left adrift. Zavi, on the other hand, saw an animal in need of love and care, of a permanent home that only she could give him. He became our cat, and we named him Buddy. Buddy's first months with us were harrowing, and I doubted that we would ever have a satisfactory relationship with him. Who had so damaged the soul of this creature, so that he hid, and skittled under furniture and was so terrified of people? Feet. He hated feet. If we walked in a certain way he would arch his back and move away from us, growling in fear. We used to joke that he wasn't a Persian at all; he had just been kicked in the face so many times that he resembled one. It wasn't funny, of course, but he did take an extrardinary amount of patience and care. Zavi worked hard to bond with Buddy, holding him and brushing him, cooing to him, letting him know that he was safe and loved. After a bit of time it seemed to be working. He wouldn't jump away from her, he allowed her to hold him. He looked for her, he actually went to greet her when she came home from school. Just as this was happening I got transferred from Los Angeles to Raleigh, NC. We moved our belongings and our Buddy, settled into an apartment complex. Buddy felt safe with Zavi. He knew he was ok. Then Zavi went back to California to visit her grandparents and Buddy was left with me for a week. I had never heard of "the scalds" before, so I assumed that I was somehow killing my daughter's cat. While she was gone and I was away at work, Buddy graced our home with bloody diarrhea. Not everywhere, but in specific places. Places that smelled like Zavi. In her shoes. On her pillow. In an outline around where she slept, on her bed. Not only was it gross beyond belief, it was terrifying to me. Our new vet explained to me that it was caused by stress; that Zavi being gone caused Buddy to feel abandoned again. But she also had more bad news. Buddy had a heart murmur. It was quite serious, she thought, a weakening of one wall in Buddy's heart. He would not live to be "an old cat," she said, and told me that he had maybe two years, maximum.

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