Silly

Silly, from the moment I saw you in the cage at the Rockbridge, VA, County SPCA, I knew we were meant to be together.  Because you were such a Silly Willie as a kitten, you got stuck with a name that didn't entirely fit your  adult status as royalty. You carried me through so many stages of my life during our ten years together that I feel you should have shared my college degree, my master's degree, my marriage license, my car miles as we moved from Virginia to New York to Pennsylvania to New York and finally to Maryland.  You accompanied me from teenagehood into adulthood.  You approved the man I would eventually marry and who would become your father by the very act of feeling so comfortable with him that you fit your entire kitten body across his forehead and fell asleep right there. I will never forget that image. During that difficult time when you and I had to move back to my parents and they would not allow  you to be an indoor cat, I will never forget your method of making sure they changed their minds.  The family you adopted down the street was so disappointed when they heard us walking down the street yelling, "Silly!!" at the top of our lungs, because in just the short time that you decided to boycott my parents' decision to leave you outside 24-hours a day, they had fallen in love with you.  Your method worked, and my parents reluctantly agreed that if you were going to run away if made to be an outdoor cat, then you'd just have to be allowed to stay indoors.  In the next year, you turned my non-cat-people parents into well, not cat lovers, but at least Silly lovers.

Silly, I am so sorry that there was nothing I could do at the end to prolong our time together.  I thought we'd have so many more years of you.  I am coming to terms with the fact that the best thing I could have done for you was to let you go to ease your suffering.  But now I am suffering from the loss of you.  I miss you so much, even though I know in some form you are still around.  I think of you as my angel cat, and I just know that if there's a heaven, you are up there continuing your reign as Queen Cat.  I love you, Silly.