To you Sherlock, esteemed and exalted chair of our Pretty Shitty Kitty Committee.  The Duke of Dander, King of Klaw, Earl of Underfoot, apostolic and universal Lord of Late-Nite 40-Decibel Grooming and Indigestion:

I didn’t want to love you.  I know what bringing a young tom cat like you into the house means.  It means sleep deprivation.  Sneezing and Albuterol.  Ghastly hairballs, delivered almost as punctuation.  It means broken vases and $1,500 Thomasville chairs shredded into blooming onions.  I didn’t want to trip over you every goddamn morning of my life because somehow all cats are innately giddy at the potential for a broken human collarbone in the audacity of a cold winter morning, at the top of a rickety stairwell if possible.  Nope, just like so many other things in the brain of a dysfunctional man, I didn’t want it.  But I got it anyway.

And that wasn’t enough for you, young boy.  You had your orders.  You came in with your bunkmate Abraham, a matted, morbidly obese British Shorthair with a weird nubby tail and glaring halitosis that spent two weeks under the bed when the both of you arrived.  That was not your style. On that very first night, it was as if you said to yourself, “The bald one, with the glasses and odd gate.  I shall make it my mission in this household to appear from nowhere, nightly, suddenly, airborne, and crush this man’s testicles.”  And so mote it be.  Every single night thereafter no bedtime passed without you abruptly galloping in from some other room and pouncing, unapologetically, on my left nut.  Always the left one.  It was like Groundhog Day for my poor manhood.

Everyone who ever laid eyes on your crazy ass said you were the most handsome cat they’d ever seen. A real The Hustler-era Paul Newman.  The confident ice blue eyes, your coat the perfect set of stripes, boots of white cotton from which translucent arcs of death protracted at will, a perfect grey heart practically airbrushed on your chest, amplifying your motor like the soundbox of an old Victrola, and in hindsight perhaps a sign.  Your shelter name was “Rambo” because butting your head on cheeks and chins was your calling card, endlessly, and that never went away even when you were sick.  Most animals, when they’re dying, you can see it on their faces.  But you, the light never left your eyes, not once.  Not one time.

Lately it was hard to hold you because things were going from bad to worse.  You couldn’t control your body and you were starting to shelter in smaller spaces.  And yet, last night, when both of us knew it would be your last, you wanted to be on the back porch when evening came, the humidity lifted and those soothing winds came from the Northwest.  I got to rock you in my arms one last time, for almost an hour, singing “Love of My Life” over and over until you drifted into sleep.  That is, until a doorbell rang on the TV, the dog barked, and away you leapt, using my left nut as a springboard.

You were the James Dean of cats.  Too fast to live, too young to die.  Goodnight Shirley, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I’d do it all again for you, if only.