So, I wrote a tribute to my cat Parker (May 1989- August 4th 2002), who died nine years ago last week. But after I posted it, blogger.com somehow ate it, apparently beyond retrieving. Luckily Janice, who knew him better than anyone but me (while fond of her he was always My Cat, just as she's Rigby's Favorite Person), got to see it before it was wiped out. So rather than go through re-creating it again I'll just say: rest in peace, Parker. You are not forgotten.
So, the post that blogger ate got saved in my reader, so I thought I would copy and paste it in here for you. :)
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So, on Thursday all day it felt like August 4th was some kind of anniversary, but I never cd think of why. The next morning when I woke up I knew: the day before had been the ninth anniversary of Parker's death. And therefore also the anniversary of Hastur's coming to live with us (her 'birthday', as it were) as a winsome and somewhat gooney kitten. Now that she's grown up into a willful and somewhat gooney cat -- the only cat I know who's shaped something like a pyramid when she sits down (wide at the base, narrower on top) -- I find it hard to believe that she's now crossing over that border into 'older cat' territory. Even Feanor, who joined us half a year later (right around the time the TWO TOWERS movie came out), isn't as young as he used to be, and as for Rigby, our amazing springy cat, now thirteen, spends an awful lot of her time sleeping under lamps.
Also known as The Cat Who Bit People, Parker himself was thirteen, having come to live with me as a a gangly kitten (his previous owners having first trained him to be an attack cat and then put him out to live in the parking lot of their apartment complex) the same month that I finally moved into an apartment where I cd have cats (another memorable month, May 1989, being when I stopped teaching at Marquette after almost eight years). Janice managed to establish good relations with him, after a somewhat shaky start, not least by introducing him to turkey legs the first time she cat-sat him for me, but he remained My Cat in the same way that Rigby attached herself to Janice.
I've always liked cats with strong personalities, and that description fit Parker to a 't'. One of the smartest cats I've ever known, his decline was sudden and horrific, but most of my memories of him are of better times. I still keep his photo in my office and his ashes on our mantle. Gone but not forgotten; rest in peace.
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Thank you so much, CNB. I'd posted it, then clicked on View and confirmed that it was there, then exited back to another post I'd been working on, when I got an error message. When I checked, the Parker post had vanished. Much appreciation for yr good services.
ReplyDelete--John R.