Inigo 2003-2012

Today, I have no music for you, but instead a tribute to my good friend, and the greatest cat in the world, Inigo Montoya, who died last night at 8 years, 6 months - or about 50 in people terms.

Sheila and I took Inigo to the vet, and put him down, after trying for over a month to defeat his idiopathic chylothorax, which was filling his chest cavity with fluid and slowly suffocating him. As someone who is used to solving problems, it has been a damn hard time cycling through vets, and medicine and internet research and ultimately, coming up empty.

I can't really explain all the rage and grief I'm feeling, so I'm going to let Thomas Hardy do it for me in a poem that speaks deeply to me right now. If you get through that, then there are some recent pictures of Inigo from happier times that you might enjoy.

Hap
by Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Power fuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Me and my pal

Excited to play with his favourite stick

Playing with Vizzini when Vizzini was a kitten

On the deck

Battling carpet mice

Sitting on his favourite backpack (Sheila's)

With his old pal Othello, who died less than two years ago (see "Hap" above)

On my lap, where he spent a good portion of his very happy life.

See you, buddy. I hope if you ended up somewhere else, you're breathing easier.