I’ve always been a dog person. When it came to polls or whatever that asked “Dogs or cats”, I’d always respond with a firm and definite “Dogs”.
I never really used to like cats all that much.
Then I started reading some of the pootie diaries.
I fell in love with LOLspeak. I loved coming in just for the pictures with the amazing captions.
At home, when I stayed with my mother, we had both dog and cat. Our dogs had long crossed the Bridge and we just had one cat—the one in the picture above. His sister had died some years earlier mysteriously, and was buried in our back yard.
Anyway, our cat for a while had a bad habit of leaving a damp spot on my bed whenever he would come into my room. Sometimes with me still in bed. I had taken to keeping my door closed all the time.
Sometime in the past year and a half, something changed. We became buddies. Perhaps it was my sister’s cat, who we took in for the last year of her life, and who would claw her way onto my bed to sleep with me. Perhaps it was loneliness as we shared the house after Mom started getting the cancer treatments that ultimately took her life a year and a half later. But my buddy would now come in bed and sleep as I was sleeping. He would be there for me to pet while he purred, as we kept each other company.
When it came time to sell Mom’s house, I couldn’t take him with me where I was going because of the landlord’s rules. When I took him to the vet for the medical exam for the no kill shelter, they told me he would never be accepted, and that any shelter would recommend putting him down.
It was the worst day of my life.
But a miracle happened. The vet called her husband and she wound up adopting him.
Even though he went to a good home, I still miss him a lot.
And thanks to our pootie queen, I was able to appreciate having a buddy when I needed it most.
And now, music to soothe the soul.
May flights of Angels Sing thee to thy rest. Weeping at the grave creates the Song. Alleluia.
Why these bitter words of the dying, O brethren,
which they utter as they go hence?
I am parted from my brethren.
All my friends do I abandon, and go hence.
But whither I go, that understand I not,
neither what shall become of me yonder;
only God who hath summoned me knoweth.
But make commemoration of me with the song:
Alleluia.
But whither now go the souls?
How dwell they now together there?
This mystery have I desired to learn,
but none can impart aright.
Do they call to mind their own people, as we do them?
Or have they forgotten all those who mourn them
and make the song:
Alleluia.
We go forth on the path eternal,
and as condemned, with downcast faces,
present ourselves before the only God eternal.
Where then is comeliness? Where then is wealth?
Where then is the glory of this world?
There shall none of these things aid us,
but only to say oft the psalm:
Alleluia.
If thou hast shown mercy unto man, O man,
that same mercy shall be shown thee there;
and if on an orphan thou hast shown compassion,
the same shall there deliver thee from want,
If in this life the naked thou hast clothed,
the same shall give thee shelter there,
and sing the psalm:
Alleluia.
Youth and the beauty of the body
fade at the hour of death,
and the tongue then burneth fiercely,
and the parched throat is inflamed.
The beauty of the eyes is quenched then,
the comeliness of the face all altered,
the shapeliness of the neck destroyed;
and the other parts have become numb,
nor often say:
Alleluia.
With ecstacy are we inflamed if we but hear
that there is light eternal yonder;
that there is Paradise,
wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth.
Let us all, also, Enter into Christ,
that all we may cry aloud thus unto God:
Alleluia.