Grief for a man, Betty, and a forlorn cat

Tonight, with your indulgence, I thought I’d share a story of grief that Betty, I, and a cat with a forgotten name shared a few years ago.

It was back in our beloved home on Linglestown Road when we got our first Yorkie, a little tyke I named Corky. Well, that rhymed. In many ways, little Clipper is a successor to Corky who was but the first of a run of our Britton Yorkies.

Little Corky was an absolute delight to have in the house, to put on his leash, and take for walks in our huge backyard. He seemed to be so proud to go outside with his daddy, his nose cocked up in the air as if he owned the world. My imagination, perhaps.

His best friend, besides his human parents, was one of our cats whose name I sadly forget. The most surprising part of their friendship was how protective the cat was of Corky. Corky slept in his dog-crate in the mud-room by the front door. The cat always crawled inside that crate to sleep with Corky. They were inseparable buds.

Then, Corky went to the vets to have his teeth cleaned. I was coming out of the shower when a tearful Betty came to me and said Corky had died on the operating table. His over-sized heart couldn’t take the Anastasia. Oh, that hurt us both. Before Corky, I had only one box of animal ashes, that for my dog Annie who had come with me from Texas. Now I had a new box, an extremely small box for a tiny little friend.

But human grief was nothing compared to one miserable cat. How do you console a relentlessly howling and crying creature standing by her buddy’s crate? Where is my friend? When is he coming home? When will you go and get him?

I forget how much later it was when we got Corey, a somewhat less than successful replacement for Corky. The cat knew immediately Corey was no Corky and showed no interest in the new dog. After one good sniffing, the cat snubbed the new puppy. It wasn’t much later the cat disappeared.

When we moved away from our home on Linglestown Road, I spread Corky and Annie’s ashes on the hill behind our enclosed porch, the hill I called “Annie’s Hill” as that was her dumping ground. So I left Corky at the only home he ever knew, the home where he was a treasured little friend to a Mom, Dad, and one devoted feline companion.