Every Christmas season growing up and still to this day Mom has always baked. We always bake sugar cookies and decorate them and of course we leave them for Santa...When I was in Kindergarten (so..about 6 years old) Mom sent Melissa and Jake to the grocery store to pick up more baking supplies on Christmas Eve. Melissa came home with an adorable little orange baby kitty. covered nontheless in fleas. I, loving Aladdin wanted to name our new kitty Jasmine. But Melissa decided on Abby and so we had an orange kitty named Abby.
Abby was the perfect Tabby. Perfect stripes, long funny tail and had the extra thumb. Abby was our adventure kitty who loved to lay between our Golden Retrievers legs and hang from his tail, hide in the bay window behind the plants and jump out at us, and would attack us as we walked down the staircases. Abby would divebomb into the blindes and cunningly figured out how to jump to open the garage door opener to get outside when locked in the garage during the day. Abby loved water and would sit on the bathtub when someone took a bath, or would chase the washcloth through the shower glass door.
Abby was thought to be a female for a good majority of his life...not until Melissa was physically shown Abby's goods many years later by a competent vet was it realized that Abby was really a male. But the name remaind and while she would call him Buddy he was always Abby to me.
Abby was adopted by no less than 3 other families during his lifetime. The most memorable was when he was renamed Moses and escaped the family to come home almost a year after he dissappeared. Then there was the time that he would come home with a coller when he hadnt left home with one and smelling like perfume of another lady and when Melissa found a Missing Cat Sign ironically in the same Albertsons where she found him....again, our Adventure kitty.
Abby loved the outdoors, loved to fight racoons, loved to bring home mice (including one memorable time where he was playing with it in the bathroom), and loved to explore even if meant getting stuck under the house. Abby loved human food. Yogurt, Pizza, Tuna, and his favorite...Turkey. If he knew you had Turkey in the fridge he would meow at the fridge door until you gave in. In the last couple years he learned to open the fridge and get in to get what he wanted. He loved Hula Skirts and Cat Nip. He had pet fish. He loved to watch the Animal Channel. He came running when you opened a can of wet cat food. He was an amazing snuggler. He had a happy Meow. And he loved his kitty life.
Abby was a unique, Darling, Hilarious, Snuggly, Fun, Sweet Cat. He lived a long, happy life. We all loved him. We all took care of him and watched him grow and laughed at his sense of humor. Because he definitely had a sense of humor. People may think Im crazy for talking about Abby like he was a human...but he was so apart of our lives..over HALF of my life. He was very much a dear member of our little family. He meant the world to Melissa. And he was the inspiration for my own orange kitty cat. I love Abby and ache that he is gone.
When the Lion King came out on VHS it was one of my favorite movies. When Rafiki holds Simba up and shows him to the animals, the song the Circle of Life is playing. Jake once held up Abby like Simba while standing on the couch. Its a fun moment we always talk about. And so, Abby has completed his Circle of Life. What an amazing life it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment