He was only a cat – a four footed, silky smooth bundle of gray fur with a purr like a Cummins diesel. We got him as a young adolescent from the Georgetown Animal Hospital where he had landed as a stray.
In his early days he was a high energy fellow who wanted to be an outdoor cat – not gonna happen, sorry Sammy. We took him out on a leash in the November gloom and he sorta disappeared at the end of his leather harness – gray on gray. He was a deadly hunter of birds and mice, if given the chance.
Sammy was never a bed sort of guy but he always liked to hang out where you were. In the mornings he’d come in to make sure you were awake and ready to serve breakfast. He was an expert at banging the handles on the dresser until someone got up (usually me.)
He hated car rides. My daughter and son-in-law traumatized him when we moved from Georgetown to the Valley in 2005. Sarah and Dave took him to Ottawa and it was a hair raising experience for everyone. Sammy was happy to get to Almonte at the end of it all, and he never went far for the next 10 years.
A couple of years ago he got sick with high thyroid issues and I had to give him pills twice a day. He was always a kind and patient fellow to having a pill stuffed down his throat. But kidney failure is a side effect of hyperthyroidism and there’s no cure for that. The past week his kidneys started to fail so – after 16 years – he slept away in our arms today.
Only a cat. But we are thankful tonight for the many ways Sammy enriched our lives.
He had a good run, poor guy. I think for as long as I live, I’ll remember the vigilant hunter version of Sammy. Like the time (I did not witness) where he stalked that poor mouse caught in the rubber boot in your garage. Or the glorious time I did actually see in person: when he caught that bird in your basement. I’ll always remember the displeased growls as you tried to pry his jaws open to let the bird free, and I’ll always remember him laying on the carpet afterward, licking his chops and looking pretty satisfied with himself, even if he’d only gotten a taste.