My story is of a cat, I called ‘BOX’. She always liked to get into boxes, when she was younger. I got her in front of a K-mart store in 1974, in Tallahassee, Florida.

She was a calico color and was a family member to the end. When my father would eat boiled peanuts on the bed, there was the cat joining him eating them. She would sleep underneath his underarm, curdled up, with a very much secured feeling on her face. She would sit on my mothers lap (mom has a big stomach, due to me being born; 10 pounds, 10 ounces) and stretch her paws around mom’s waist. In the summer of 1981, when noticed she was getting very thin, around her back legs. My parents took the cat to the vet and they came home in tears. They told me that the diagnosis was bad the cat had leukemia! We were given special medicine, to be fed by her with an eye dropper. I spoiled that cat with ice cream (with medicine) for the last week of her life).

Then something strange happened on her last day, before we took her to the vet to be put to sleep. On the night before, she slept at the foot of my parent’s bed, instead of by my father. She eventually made her way to my room and slept at the foot of my bed. When I went to go get her, and put her in the cardboard box and take her to the vet, she went crawling, in pain to try to get into the box, on her own. It was if she ‘knew’ that it would soon be over! My parents took her, to the vet and brought her back and I buried her in that cardboard box. I wrote a note, stating that losing her, was like the death of a sister and stuck it underneath her paws.

Mark, your right, we are the lucky ones indeed; to have our pets, to help us navigate through hard times and to provide comfort, when it seems most needed!

Vern from FL