Requiescat in pace, Bemis

My cat Bemis died during the night.  She was old, she'd been obviously fading for awhile, and when she lost interest in cat treats I knew she wasn't going to be around much longer.  My own fear had been that I'd end up having to make the euthanasia trip to the veterinarian with her, but that didn't happen.  As it turned out, the cessation of begging for treats and the cessation of life in general was less than 24 hours.  She curled up in the cat condo sometime during the night, went to sleep, and never woke up. We should all be so lucky.

Bemis joined the household back in my grad school days.  She was born feral in my dissertation advisor's garage in Blacksburg, Virginia, and was apparently the only kitten in the litter that survived long enough to be live-trapped and placed for adoption.  We got her when she was barely six weeks old, but the feral ancestry still showed.  She was never a cuddly cat, hated being held, and tended to be more than a little paranoid.  For years she refused to walk across the middle of a room -- she'd hug the walls -- and on those occasions when she got to enjoy being an outdoors cat was never the type that would amble casually down the middle of a driveway.  She liked small, enclosed spaces, and was the only cat I've ever owned that I didn't have to fight with to get into a cat carrier -- or at least not much.   

She was generally a quiet cat and managed to be rather unnoticeable much of the time, although, like all cats, she had a knack for being annoying in small ways.  For awhile after we moved into this apartment I was convinced she was trying to kill me by always being underfoot as I stumbled down the stairs first thing in the morning.  She also possessed the domestic longhair's talent for depositing truly disgusting hairballs or puked up cat chow where you were guaranteed to step in it when you least expected it.

I had been hoping she'd make it to spring so she could exit this world from the farm in Michigan and not from Atlanta, but that didn't happen.  Goodbye, Bemis, I'm going to miss you.