Down The Rabbit Hole

Saturday morning we got a call from our neighbor Mike, two doors down from us. He found Thomas under the deck in his backyard. He had died.

I pretty much knew that Thomas wasn’t going to come home. I had hoped, of course, but deep down I knew he was gone. It’s awful and I will miss him very much - but as I thought about it, I realized Thomas had a pretty good life.

He was a very sickly kitten. For the first two years of his life, he was pretty much constantly sick. He had digestive problems, skin infections and asthma. We carted him back and forth to the vet so many times, and the poor thing was miserable. He hated us, because every time we came near him it was to give him medicine or stuff him in his cat carrier for another vet trip. But about four years ago, all his illnesses cleared up and he stayed pretty healthy.

He could be the most annoying cat on the planet. He had the most god-awful, grating cry and would scream for hours and hours, for pretty much no reason. He was a horrible wuss, and he couldn’t wear a collar, because once we put one on him (with a bell) and the sound of the bell scared him so much he tried to “run” from it, and was horrified when it followed him! He hid in a closet for three days before finally getting the thing off. We never made him wear another one. Getting ahold of him to administer flea medication was like World War 3. You’d think we were skinning him alive. And clipping his nails? Forget it.

He would always keep the skittishness and a lot of the distrust of us because of all the medical stuff, but there were times that he wanted to be petted and cuddled. He had a great purr, more like a trill, and when you petted him, he squished his face into your leg and rubbed, writhing in total ecstasy. He loved being outside, napping in the sun and skulking around in the bushes. He loved to chase butterflies and grasshoppers in the yard and became quite a hunter. He adored our other cat, Cooper, and they would snuggle together and she would wash his head. I called him “my little lion” because of his great mane of grey fur, and more often than not, referred to him only by his nickname, Tommy Bean. When he was out at night, Hawk would “squeak” for him to come in, and Tommy would come running.

I will miss him every day, but I can think about him and the silly way his tongue stuck out sometimes, and his high, trilly purr and smile.