my best friend

Ordinarily sparse, the kitten cages in the cat room at the Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota were full of kittens this visit. A scraggly-looking brown tabby with a giant head sat at the front of his cage, mewing plaintively and poking his huge paws between the bars, while his ink-black litter mate napped indifferently in the back. I stopped at the cage to tug at his paw, and he immediately purred, loudly and intensely, and his plaintive mew turned to a contended chirp. I was struck. This was my cat.

Castor and his brother, Pollux, came home to live with me in my little apartment on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. They followed me to an apartment on Lyndale Avenue, and finally to Seattle, where they settled in to Liberty House like it was built for them.

Knowing Castor as I do now, I know he wasn't unhappy in that cage in Golden Valley. He wasn't begging to be adopted, or clamoring to be let out; he simply couldn't understand why, in a room full people, he wasn't getting any attention. It was the only thing he really craved.

After four years of a beatific life, my best friend passed away yesterday. I don't believe in the afterlife, but if I'm wrong, I hope Castor's is a perpetual Indian Summer with plenty of falling leaves to chase, lots of squirrels to stalk, and a warm lap to nap in whenever he wants one.

I'll miss him.