You never know the importance of your words and which of them might be taken seriously.
I learned this from a good buddy of mine—a cat named Boo Boo. Boo Boo was not an ordinary cat. He was an eighteen-year-old grey tabby with a regal bearing, Jack Nicholson eyes, and an enormous head. All of him was enormous. I have a tradition of huge cats, but Boo Boo was the champ. He weighed a hardy twenty pounds.
Sadly, he’d developed arthritis, which bowed his front legs and made him trundle when he walked. He also suffered seizures of increasing intensity, and eventually lost his meow altogether. He took to purring loudly when he wanted to communicate, or he’d open his mouth and make a rasping sound—a sort of pantomime meow. He was my buddy and my shadow. He followed me as I gardened.
In his last year the seizures increased, but he didn’t seem to be suffering, despite all his maladies. He was always so affectionate that I couldn’t bear to put him down. I kept waiting for a sign that enough was enough.
His last seizure was in August out on our deck.
After his jerking stopped, I knelt to comfort him, and while I petted him I said, “You’ve got to help me out here, buddy; I don’t know what to do about you.”
After a few minutes he seemed fine. He shook himself off and went to drink out of the plant water. I went upstairs and hopped into the shower. While I was in the bathroom I heard a truck, but paid it no attention. My twenty-five-year-old son, Josh, had come racing home to gather some tools from our shop. In his haste he jumped out of the truck, left the motor running, and bolted into the shop. Tools in hand, he leaped back into the truck, put it in gear, and took off. Immediately, he hit something.
All I heard was “Oh my god. No!”
Boo Boo had lain down in front of the rear wheel on the passenger side of Josh’s truck. Josh hadn’t seen him. Josh took off his T-shirt, wrapped it around Boo Boo, and carried the injured animal to the cab of his truck. He raced to the vet with the cat in his lap.
When Josh got to the clinic he gently gathered Boo Boo in his arms and rushed in shirtless, his chest scratched and bleeding. Through tears he said to the receptionist, “You’ve got to save him, I ran over him.”
But it was too late. Boo Boo was dead.
The news crushed Josh. The entire staff gathered around him and the dead cat. They were so touched to see this young man weeping that they became tearful, too.
Josh brought the cat home to me wrapped in his bloody T-shirt. Boo Boo looked peaceful and was still warm to the touch. We laid him on the grass on the front lawn, both of us petting him and crying. I told Josh the whole story about Boo Boo’s last seizure and how I’d asked him to help me know what to do with him.
“Josh,” I said through my tears, “I’m convinced that he did help me out by lying under your truck.”
We cried together and eulogized Boo Boo until my husband came home. That night we buried our buddy. Josh made a stout wooden cross that I can still see from my front window.
I miss him of course. But to this day I maintain that it wasn’t an accident.
Friday Harbor, Washington