by Marilyn Armstrong
Big Guy marched into my heart and into our world at a cat show where his owner had his mother entered. There, in the midst of noise and chaos, with people swirling about, Big Guy, at six months old, simply walked up my arm, sat on my shoulder, and purred into my ear.
I couldn't take him home for almost two months after our first meeting. First, there was the money. He was a ruddy Somali and it wasn't easy, at that point, to come up with four hundred dollars. And I was getting married and going on a honeymoon, so we agreed to take him after our return.
When I went to get him, he was very sick. I guess I could have left him there, but I was sure he would die without better care than he was getting. As it turned out, he was even sicker than I realized. He never was, during his 10 years of life, entirely healthy. Sustained on an endless cycle of intra-muscular antibiotics, it was nothing short of a miracle that he lived as long as he did.
What a wonderful cat he was! He loved all things fuzzy - pipe cleaners, fuzzy hair bands, q-tips...and if you tossed them, he would fetch them back and wait in anticipation of another joyous scamper across the room. Upon "catching" the item, he would then wrestle with it as if it were alive, until finally, triumphant, it was sufficiently "dead" for the next toss.
In all his life, Big Guy lived within the home. We knew he yearned for the out-of-doors, but the city in which we lived was fraught with too many dangers. So he satisfied himself by finding patches of sunshine, lying in them until he coat was almost hot to the touch.
For all of his days, he never ceased to bring us joy. He was smart, too. In his never ending pursuit of the pipe cleaners he so loved, he learned where Garry kept the boxes of cleaners. One day, we came home after being away for some hours to find hundreds of pipe cleaners strewn from one end of the house to another. Mr. Big had seen where Garry went to get the pipe cleaners. He had opened the kitchen cabinet at the bottom, then climbed up inside the cabinet to the drawer, pushed open the drawer, located the pipe cleaners, opened the two boxes, and removed the contents. What a remarkable feat of deduction for a "mere" cat!
He was never ill-tempered, never nasty. A bottomless sweetness was his nature. He loved all creatures – humans, dogs, other cats, ferrets … even the fish in the tank were “his” pets. He purred his whole life through, as loving a creature as ever lived on this earth.
But there came a time when the antibiotics simply could not keep his infection under control. He became increasingly thin, less and less able to digest his food. And then, we knew, it was time to let him go.
Now, he is gone to the Bridge. Mr. Big, Big Guy, we have not replaced you. How could we ever find another like you? You were the best cat there could ever be, and so you shall be the last cat for us. I hope you are well now, finally, and full of joy. You are forever in our hearts.
Marilyn Armstrong, Uxbridge, Massachusetts, June 2001