At 11:24 AM EDT on March 21, 2023, in Nazareth, PA, my dear girl Ashes passed peacefully into eternity. We had been together 15 years, with never a cross word between us, a wonderfully close and affectionate relationship. I brought Ashes in off the West Philly streets in 2007, along with two of her kittens, one of the first beneficiaries of Leo’s Cat Rescue, which I ran with my friend John Mignone for over ten years.
On April 4, 2022, a dear feline friend, Emmett, passed away. Emmett was the daughter of Embers, my cat Ashes’ sister, and thus her niece and a close relation, part of our extended family. She was fur baby to my longtime friend, former landlord and cat rescue partner John Mignone, and is survived by her sister Maxine. Emmette passed of complications from failing kidneys due to hyperthyroidism.
Don’t you ever wonder how this all works? I know I do. After 15+ years of intense engagement with asteroids, I’m no closer to an answer, but sometimes I like to revel in how even the most mundane of mundane events can be reflected in the stars. On January 28th, two Biden-related stories made the news – a bridge in Pittsburgh, PA collapsed just hours before a presidential visit touting the need for repair of crumbling infrastructure; and the White House acquired a new furry occupant, a grey tabby cat with jade-green eyes named Willow.
It’s déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would have it. Less than four months ago I put down my rescue cat Charcoal, who had a cancerous tumor in his mouth, and now his companion Cleo follows him across the Rainbow Bridge, from the same complaint! Cleo and Charkey were very close, and she hasn’t been the same since his passing. Her eating habits had become erratic, and she was isolating more and more in the upper reaches of a storage unit in the laundry room that was their home. After a few initial forays into the spring sunshine of the garden, she refused to go out, and the weekend before her death, she stopped eating completely.
Frequent readers of this site will doubtless be familiar with my cat Ashes; my sweet-cranky Tortie has been with me 12 years, since I took her and her two kittens in from the street on Halloween 2007. Her children predeceased her, Hallows in 2012 and Samhain just last year, but despite some ongoing health issues and an unfortunate addiction to string, Ashes has held her own. As a stray, I’m not sure how old she is exactly, but at least 14, which puts her at about 73 in human terms, an age when mortality begins to assert itself, and even a simple health crisis can prove deadly.
Early on Friday, May 17th 2019, the sad news came of the death of Internet feline sensation Grumpy Cat, just seven years old. The Greats always go in threes, and Grumpy Cat was preceded into eternity that week by singer/actress Doris Day and comedian Tim Conway. Grumpy, whose given name was Tarder Sauce, actually passed on the 14th, following complications from a UTI infection. One of the most photographed felines in history, Grumpy Cat had 1.4 million Twitter followers, countless internet memes and merchandise, and a loyal fan base who will mourn her passing.
