For Minnie

Minnie, one of the sweetest, happiest, most innately purr-prone cats ever to roam the planet's living rooms and linen closets, died on Sunday, at age fourteen. Having spent almost her entire life in the company of the remarkable Bea, she seemed heartbroken by Bea's departure last month, and her health declined. But she kept her bright, loving, perpetually kittenish spirit to the end. She joins Bea, Maulina, and Penelope (whom she never met but whose spirit she inherited) in the land of immense, immobile sunbeams.

Previously: Requiem for a great cat.