Today was a hard day with a hard decision to make.

For a while, knowing that we’d be moving a lot in the next few years and all, we knew that three cats would be too many to have. Just too many. It’s hard to think about that, because we’ve raised them all from kittens and had them all since they were 2 months old.

With Wooster? He was staying no matter what. That little boy is a dopey baby. Best cat in the world. That meant it was either Cassie or Bella.

Bella we got back when Wooster was a little kitten in November 2005. I liked her at first sight because she was a little white kitten. I had an affinity for white cats because of my first cat, Freddy, growing up in Spring Hill. Bella, though, was different. She’s been special since day 1, because she’s a classic cat’s cat: give her what she wants, on her terms, when she wants it, and that’s all she needs. That’s not to say that she’s not loving, she loves to cuddle and come up and get her rubs, but she’s very content in finding her own hidey hole and just being quiet and not seen or heard for her naps.

Cassie we got back in November of 2006, so she’s the youngest of the kids. A rambunctious grey tabby, she won us over by being calm and cute. Completely unplanned, she became the newest addition to Clan Blam-Cohen. Bella never liked her, but Wooster got a lot more playful and the two of them were buddies. Cassie would come up to you whenever she felt like it for a little more attention here or there, and was more vocal about when she wanted attention. And the love you gave her, was the love she returned.

I’m not saying that Bella was mean, but she was always sort of the “odd cat out.” Maybe that’s what I love about her: that she fit in the way I always felt I fit in, between the cliques of the other two cats. She would chirp for attention, but only when she wanted it. And the rest of the time, would run away. She’d be content with me holding her, but not too much.

When you can only have two cats and you have three, it’s a hard thing to decide. Logic dictates that last in is the first out because they should adapt better, but with all of the moving we’ll be doing over the next few years, it’d be hard on Bella–who never adjusted well to moving. And then, there was the realization that I got Bella because I was missing Freddy. I just needed that white cat to fill the void to the one that I remembered. And that, is what I saw was clouding a lot of my decision. I loved her for what she was–loving but a standoffishly distant, primadonna princess–but I loved her for what I wanted her to be–another Freddy-cat.

She was the one that went today. Not too far, only to long time friends, but even still, it hurts. While they’ll be her new parents, and Sarah and I might still visit, I’ll miss my kid. That’s how it is when you have pets. You love them like they’re members of the family. And I’ll miss the cute little things that she does. I know she’s alive and well and in a great home, but there’s a hole in ours that Cassie and Wooster just don’t fill for me. Well, they do, but not in the way that Bella did.

Maybe someday Sarah and I will have another cat like her. Maybe not. You never can tell. But I’ll never stop loving white cats… even if I do like to wear black shirts…

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm by Adam and is filed under Homelife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.