The first time I saw Patch, she was a six-week old, scruffy cat sitting in a cardboard box. It was a hot Sunday afternoon in July, 1994. We had been in Jarratt, VA a little over a week and the Owen family offered us two kittens from a recent litter from their farm.
From the first, Patch's personality was the dominant of the two (the other cat, Hobbes - and you can guess where we got that name - died in October, 2004 after a long illness). Loud, insistent to the point of being demanding, a Diva among cats, she earned her name for the orange Patch over her right eye (she was a tortoise-shell calico, and the rest of her was gray).
She wasn't the best mouser in the world, to be sure.
She ate a tiny bit of mackerel with her meals every day of her life, including her last day.
When we had goose for Christmas a few years back, I gave her a small taste, which we always figured was the high point of her culinary life.
She lived in three parsonages in two states, never exactly happy at having to move, but always adjusting after a day or two.
Last night, after a typical day, she left us after fifteen years of companionship. Well right up to the (quite literal) last minute, she spent her last afternoon and evening demanding her dinner (as usual), lying on my wife as she was stretched out on the couch reading, and keeping the dog at bay with a combination of stares-down and the occasional smack on his muzzle. Then, she collapsed. Lisa and I sat and petted her, and my hand was on her when she breathed her last. We all gathered around her, crying and saying our last goodbyes. This afternoon, I buried her in our little garden in the side yard.
Fifteen years is a long life for a cat, and Patch's had that added element of robust health right up the very end. These last couple years, Lisa and I both commented that she just didn't seem to age, her personality not really changing all that much. She just lived, and despite an outward diffidence toward us and the other animals that shared her space, she loved, and was loved, deeply. It is less than 24 hours since her very sudden death, and both my wife and I find ourselves looking for her. At 5 pm, I wondered why she wasn't coming around to demand, quite vocally, her dinner, and then remembered why, and was sad all over again.
She was a singular individual, even among that most singular species, the domestic cat. More than a pet, she was a part of our family, with Lisa and me from just after our first wedding anniversary until now.
It is an end of an era for our family, and we are all sad. Yet we also celebrate the life of our beloved family member, and give thanks for all the years we shared home and life together.
