One Last Call

Sam left this world today unexpectedly, but certainly not unloved, after a brief illness. His kidneys shut-down and the numbers were so far off the charts that the vet couldn’t offer any solution other than that I could take him home for a few days, and hope for a miracle I suppose.
As of this morning he had all ready stopped eating, and was drinking tremendous amounts of water, and looked so bad. There was no way I could bear bringing him home to suffer. So I said my goodbyes and held him while he went to sleep.

I have created a video which contains several raw photos that I have taken of him and our family over the years and I’d love to share it with you here:
The rescue date shown in the video was a mistake on my part when I made that slide, as Sam was a part of a litter of kittens that we welcomed into our home in May of 1998.

Sam leaves behind his blood siblings; Big Bob, Little Bob, Cody, Simon, Chloe and his nearly identical twin, E.T.
He goes to the Rainbow Bridge to be reunited with Squeek and Thomas; blood siblings that passed before him.

Sam (the bored one in the photo above that you might remember from my gallery) and his “evil twin”, E.T. have always been a controversial pair in our family, often misunderstood, even by myself. Both the boys were always loving as kittens, but neither of them would, for many years, just climb in my lap, or lay down with me at night without nipping and pawing at my face. This often forced me to ban them both from a spot on the sofa on many occasions.
Sam mellowed as time went by, and became quite predictable with his bedtime habit of going to the bend in my leg, and kneading the blanket until he was satisfied, and then he would lay down in the bend of my leg and go to sleep.

In his younger day, Sam was quite active and involved with our rabbits. As a couple of the photos in the video show, he and Bernie, one of our first dwarf rabbits, were great friends, and seeing them together was a common occurrence.

Sam eventually became my personal assistant in the laundry room. Hence my ability to keep up with him, despite the large family of furs that we have.
All our furs have a very special place in this family, despite their numbers, and Sam’s place did become “the utility room”, right on top of the washing machine or the dryer and neither one of us got much rest on wash day.

Another thing that singled both Sam and his brother out from the rest of the family was their nightly “calls”. Over the years, again, Sam seemed to mellow and his habit of walking down the hall from the back of the house calling out with this strange call seemed to decline. E.T. still does it. Both had a distinctive call though, and today, while we were on the way to the vet would be the last time I’d hear Sam’s voice call, and chortle in that tone of his that I will never forget.

He loved milk jug rings, furry mice and the occasional go with one of the dog’s large stuffed bones. Otherwise, he wasn’t much of a toy kind of guy, preferring to spend most of his evenings either perched on the washing machine looking out the back door waiting for the feral Tom cat to come knocking, or he would often lay on the floor at the back door, so he would be ready when that crazy old Tom stuck his paw under our storm door.

Sam will be greatly missed. I’ve learned over the past couple years that even if you are blessed to be owned by “multiple pets” nothing can prepare you to loose even the first one. They all have a special place in your heart, and your home and although someone may quickly move in on their turf once they pass; when you glance out of the corner of your eye you see them there for a lifetime.

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Tags:

cats, danceswithcats, death, dwccreations, friends, loss, pets and writing