Saying Goodbye

Fourteen years is not an extremely long life for a cat, but for a little barn cat that was born deformed in her front legs, it was a lot more than anyone expected.

At three days old, a neighbor found her in this awful condition and was ready to end her life, when I offered to take her.

For the first couple of weeks she lived in a large cardboard box and took fresh goat’s milk from an eye-dropper. Every couple of days for the next two months, I enlarged little soft plastic braces on her two front legs.

No matter what she had to endure, whenever I caressed her, she greeted my touches with a deep constant purr. Her spunk, courage and hope amazed me, so I named her Hope.

After some time, both legs improved, and if she wanted to, she could finally use one leg and foot to help her get around. But this little lady was no typical feline she had invented her own favorite way of going from point A to point B.

Hope would often walk ONLY using her back feet, stand straight up then jump like a kangaroo and land five to six feet away. It was fascinating to watch her land still standing.

You know how you look back on things in life and realize they happened for a reason. Well, Hope entering my life was one of those things. She never knew the word disabled or what being so implied, to her she was the same as everyone else in the house and enjoyed her life to the fullest.

Watching her, overcoming one obstacle after another, gave me the courage to face the increasing problems I was having with my own body. She made me realize that when we become ill, we do not become a disease, the disease is only a very small part of our physical body and has nothing to do with what makes us who we are.

Last week, while holding Hope on my lap, my little family gathered around for a final goodbye. We thanked her for giving so much to our lives.

After wiping away the tears, I felt an overwhelming need to share, I posted a message on one of my favorite Internet sites, (www.beastlycat.com ) titled “There’s another angel in heaven”.

Only another pet lover can understand this kind of loose, soon the message board filled up with the sweetest and most thoughtful words of sympathy. I never expected such a response, for the next two days I was flooded with e-mails and electronic sympathy cards.

The Internet is opening up a whole new world for those with four legged family members, it’s not only a great place to share stories, ideas and pictures, you can find all kinds of interesting sites dedicated to pets. There are facts about homeopathy www.altvetmed.com and pets, what is REALLY in that commercial pet food, information about de-clawing cats www.fatcat.com Almost anything you want to know is only a click away.

THERE’S ANOTHER ANGEL IN HEAVEN