It’s not enough to say Chewy died and that I am heartbroken. I have to say more about him. He was a large black, longish haired domestic cat, a bit more than 8 years old when we met him in a cage at the Humane Society in Fort Myers. He had been in that cage for 15 months, dropped off by a family leaving the area, who couldn’t bother taking him along and, I have to ask, what kind of people do this? There should be a test everyone takes before they are allowed to have animals or, I dare say, children.

Most people do not want an older cat. As with children, they all want babies or kittens, so the time passed and Chewy stayed in the cage. The facility does give them outside time in an enclosure, but basically the animals are kept penned up.

We were put in a large room with several different cats that we pointed to and they were taken out of their cages and brought to us so we could interact with them. But, pretty as these cats were, they were not interested in us all that much. You may have heard that when you go to adopt an animal, you do not do the choosing, they do. I returned to the room with the cages and saw this beautiful, large black cat. I walked up to his cage and he meowed and pressed his face against the bars and tried to put a paw through. I called Ed. I guess the resemblance to Sniffy was a factor. Ed said “Let’s take him.”

So we went through the paperwork with the people on the desk. One very personable volunteer came by and said, “Someone’s adopting our Chewy?” He had become a fixture but it was not his home. She was very happy for him. And because we were taking a hard-to-adopt older animal, we got a discount on the fee.

Ed and I were there looking for a companion for Brunswick, after losing Sniff, who was also a large, black domestic cat, but with tuxedo marks. We had lost him to cancer a few months before and finally got ourselves to the shelter. Brunswick was not doing well without another cat around. He was acting out and showing other symptoms of depression. Although Chewy wasn’t the perfect match for Brunz in that he was not as active and wasn’t as playful, having him around was a comfort to Brunz and he quieted down.

Chewy was not immediately at home with us – he was not at all convinced he had been rescued. He would sit on a low table next to the love seat where I sat, and stay with me as I watched TV. But if I petted him, he would get up and move around, like he couldn’t bear it, like he couldn’t believe it. It took him more than a year to get quiet and feel loved. That is the way with animals who have been abandoned, who are not “with” people they can count on, who will be there today and tomorrow too.

Chewy followed me around and gradually took to following Ed too. He bonded with me first – perhaps his first person was also female. Animals do, sometimes, have gender preferences. Eventually he made the total transition to being our cat, our sweet boy, our joy.

I had a photo but it got lost as we changed computers – not everything got transferred. I should have taken more pix, but I just didn’t think of it. I checked a post I had on Blogster, dated Sept. 17, 2007 and it was supposed to have a photo of Chewy. The photo was missing, as were others I had included on that same blog post. I submitted a query on Blogster’s site.

The same is true of posts on MyBloggers – the photos from early posts just disappear.

All three cats have been in shelters. Brunswick was fostered by a woman for a time because he had pneumonia. When he was better, he was returned to the shelter. I can just imagine how he felt, perhaps thinking he had a home, and suddenly he is back in the shelter population where (in this particular shelter) the cats run free and attack the food all at once and he was too weak to get his share. After we got him, he was crazy – I referred to him as the bipolar kitty. He wouldn’t eat unless someone sat with him to protect him from predators.

Max was taken from a shelter by Dottie, a woman Ed shared volunteer duties with for a time at the local Chamber of Commerce. She got ill and made her daughter in law, here from Ohio to care for her in her last days,promise not to give Max back to a shelter. The d.i.l. had to go back to Ohio and we took Max with the thought we would find a home for him. But Brunswick and he got to playing together and we decided to keep him.

Because all three had been traumatized by the shelter experience, and Max had lost his human so soon after being rescued, we stopped going away overnight. We wouldn’t board them either because they wouldn’t know if we were abandoning them. But we think it was a fair trade because we loved them so much. The few times we left, we got someone to stay in the house with them.

We took Chewy yesterday to a pet crematorium in the little cat bed he had died in. We left it there for them to throw out. Other animals will avoid an item like that and in any case, we couldn’t bear to have it and be reminded. While we did the preliminaries in their office, I stood by the bed on a credenza on the side and petted his lifeless form. I couldn’t bear to let him go. But finally we tore ourselves away. They will call us next week and we will pick up the ashes. We chose a carved box and I will put it with the two tins, one each for Scratch and Sniff. We didn’t get to choose the containers for our other two cats because the cremations were taken care of by the vets in each case. I would have chosen nicer ones but we weren’t asked.

Meanwhile I threw out medication we had for Chewy, some we had just gotten a refill on but better to waste the money than run out if he still needed it. I threw out about 5 cans of refrigerated wet food. I had kept opening cans – if he didn’t like one, I’d open another. Anything to get him to eat.

I got up this morning at 6 in response to Max’s relentless urging. I opened a can of wet food and split it in two instead of in three and that very action depressed me. Doing things in twos instead of threes is a constant reminder that I am missing a member of my family. But we will not be getting another kitty to fill the void. Right now, and perhaps some of you have been through this, we have decided no more animals to love and lose. We just can’t handle it any more. We’ll do our best for the two we have and that’s it. But we’ve said that before.

We considered volunteering, at one time, at the Humane Society. But Ed got involved with the ombudsman program and we just had the one car. There is practically no public transportation down here. (A bus goes by now and then, I think on Thursdays.) Anyway, I don’t know how people do it. I’d bond with all the animals and go through hell if couldn’t adopt them all.

Anyway, the special hell I am feeling right now is enough to last me a while.

xx, Teal