Goodbye, Honey

This weekend was a very sad one for me.  I learned on Friday that my cat Honey had passed away.

(This post isn't really about creativity, but it is about how Honey taught my family not to make quick assumptions during her short stay in our lives.  Mostly it's about Honey though, so if you're not interested, don't read it.  This post is more for me.)

Almost exactly four years ago, I was walking across campus at my college when I was approached by a tiny little dark-brown cat who meowed at me so loudly that I had to stop.  After petting her for a while, I started walking to the Union again.  She followed me the whole way, begging me to stop again.

When we reached the Union, she left me alone for a bit--but only because she had disappeared into the garbage can and was vainly trying to scratch open a take-out box.  So, I bought her a turkey sandwich.

Grabbing it out of my hands, she wolfed down the turkey and the cheese and then went after the bread.  When she started on the lettuce, I decided to take her home, even though cats weren't allowed.

After sneaking her into my dorm and giving her some leftovers, a bath was the first order of business.  Surprisingly, she ended up not being brown at all... she was actually a very light orange!  However, my bathtub was quite brown after I was through washing her.

Eventually, Honey came home with me to Minnesota.  We already had a cat, Patches, and decided that Honey would be a perfect pet for my grandma. 

Honey was calm and incredibly friendly, and loved sitting on a lap while being petted.  Plus, my grandma missed her old dog very much, and we thought a kitten would be good for her. 

That's why I'll never forget our first visit with her to the vet.  My father and I took Honey there not long after she came back to Minnesota with me.  We wanted to find out how old she was, if she had any illnesses, and if she was likely to grow more.

When the vet came in though, the first words out of her mouth were "Oh! What a cute little old lady!"

Our jaws dropped.  Honey was so teeny, only about 4lbs, that we had been sure that she was just a baby.

"Oh no," explained the vet.  "Honey is at least 12 years old. Maybe older.  And she has arthritis."

So our plans to give Honey to my grandmother were shattered and Honey came to live with us.  And for the past four years, she was an amazing pet.

But most importantly, she taught us never to assume.  She wasn't young as we thought, nor was she the "Interim" cat that we were giving a home between Patches and our next kitten.

When Patches died not long after Honey came to live with us, we decided that Honey would be our in-between pet while we looked for a kitten. She needed a caring home, and we didn't want an empty house.   My father even called her "little Interim" for a while.

It didn't take Honey long to fix that.  She was simply so in love with our family that we couldn't help loving her back.

Honey always came running to meet us at the door, climbed the stairs to greet us every morning, was so friendly that she was almost a dog, and couldn't get enough of being around us.  She not only came when we called her name, she also unfailingly appeared whenever we opened the refrigerator door.

She wasn't perfect.  She begged, she successfully stole entire pork chops from the sink while they were being defrosted, she had an amazing ability to get dirty, and she liked to sleep on top of the oven when we were baking something.

But she was so sweet it was impossible to be mad at her, and it was impossible not to laugh while she carried a 1lb slab of meat (1/4 her body weight) all the way across the kitchen to her food dish.

So, at this point, I'm incredibly sad.  But I'm also happy because we did have a lot of time with her.  It's incredible she didn't die 4 years ago, and that she was able to become such a part of our family.

There isn't much more I could have wished for.

Comments

[Tammy Lenski]

Katie,

Please accept my sympathies for the loss of precious little Honey. It sounds like she was a spitfire on some ways and a gentle soul in others.

Honey was lucky she ran into just the right person on campus that day.

Thanks Tammy. I think I was lucky to run into her too.

[erin]

katie, i'm so sorry for you losing your kitty. what fun she sounds like. like you said, it's incredible that you got an extra four years out of her. bringing her into your loving home was no doubt a big contributor to that.

:-)

[kara]

Sorry for your loss. Just know she is over the rainbow with all our other loved companions.
She sounded special.

Thanks Kara, she was!

[Drew McLellan]

Katie,

I'm so sorry about Honey. Pets have an amazing way of weaving themselves around our hearts.

You were lucky to have found each other.

Drew

I agree that we were very lucky to find her. I'm sad now, but I'm happy that I had her for the amount of time I did.