In Loving Memory of a Great Cat

On November 4, 2009, I had to have the Humane Society put my wonderful cat Billie to sleep.

It wasn't because of the dilemma about needing to find her a home. I'd actually been able to retrieve her earlier that summer and bring her home to the S.R.O. I'd moved to after spending the previous winter in a shelter.

It was because she'd developed a very fast-acting cancer in her chest; one lung had collapsed and filled with fluid. She'd stopped eating about a week before Halloween, and I had no idea that she was mortally ill because she never complained. It still hurts me a lot to talk about the loss, but the long and the short of it is that I'm terribly grateful that I had those last few months with her in a relatively safe place. She passed quietly after a lethal injection at the Humane Society; their staff was amazingly sensitive and professional - which is MUCH more than I could say for the A.S.P.C.A., who I took her to just before Halloween.

Billie had a long and great life. I learned a lot from her - including at the end, about not giving up, and about grace and having a backbone.