Goodnight,
Sweet Butt-Head
 This
is Cuddles. He's a stray cat that wandered
into my life about five years ago and decided
to stay. He was insufferably adorable,
with a little sad-sack mew and a propensity
to head-butt
your leg if feeling ignored, which was
pretty much all the time. Among all of
my outside
moggies, a clowder of black cats otherwise
known as "The Horde", Cuddles
was the one who had the best chance at
snagging a forever home. I made the attempt
several times but he never took a shine
to prospective owners, deciding that I
was
much more to his liking. So he stayed.
Monday night someone killed Cuddles. The
evidence is clear that it wasn't a car
and it wasn't an animal attack, it was
at the hands of some charred, ragged wreck
of a human being. I have no doubt that
Cuddles head-butted the wrong leg at the
wrong time and he paid for it with his
life.
I found his body Tuesday morning in a vacant
lot not far from my house, only
feet from the spot where I suspect he was
born. In the shade of a nearby tree I opened
the
earth and commended him into its cradling
arms, his broken body swaddled in a soft
blue towel. A circle of small white stones
now stand sentry around the loamy
scar
of Cuddles'
final destination on his
strange
journey, a reminder to all that
whatever he took from this life he now
gives back.
I'm not sharing this story to
elicit karma or pity. I just wanted the
world
to know
that
Cuddles lived and that he mattered.
Before his light is forever extinguished
I needed
to celebrate the gift of joy he gave me,
if only this one last time.
Thank you sharing
his memory with me.
=Lefty=
|
