Boggit died a year ago today. In that time I’ve had a great deal of life events – the girl cats, of course passed away after he did. The summer was a total … I dunno. I wish there was some word to describe how terrible it is when three of your feline friends die that was a pun that started with the word “cat” or something. But I also got married, helped get more good code delivered than ever before for work, added tens of thousands of lines of code to the next game I’m making and tried to learn something about photography. I have a picture of him in my wallet, I’ve told the story of how he died about a million times to a million people and my wife had our wedding cake decorated with our pets all around the edge. Boggit had a halo and when I saw it, well, who knew? I actually did cry at my own wedding.
I check the local cat rescue sites to see if there’s any like him, a male tuxedo cat that is also a domestic longhair. I have only ever picked out longhair cats, they are cats on the highest difficulty in terms of being presentable in public. I’m sure someone better at searching could find one two blocks from my home but I haven’t found one like him yet. Not that I am going to get another cat – we still have two dogs and two cats and that number really is the maximum, as far as ensuring that everyone gets attention – but it makes me happy to think of just how unique he was physically. I’m objectifying the hell out of you buddy, you are just that special.
I “saw” him in the corners of my eye for at least six weeks after he died. He visited in dreams for a while afterwards. I will say that as of about three months ago something changed and I don’t feel a wave of anger as soon as I remember any more. I do think about him but it’s slowly transitioning into me not being sad that he left but happy that he was here. He is the standard that I hold all other animals up to, if not life forms in general, and I think that’s just fine. There’s a picture of him in my wallet and I can print out as many as necessary when that picture gets beat up. I like that I see him for a second as I grab my ID behind his photograph before I buy a drink. That makes me happy.
I’ve taken thousands of pictures of the other cats and dogs. They will be well-documented. I think that as a less angry person I can talk about other things on this blog now. I think it will be okay.
