Now Heidi and I are both early risers so waking me up was not the problem. It's just that, normally, we call each other between 9 and 9, like Mom taught us.
But it was well before 8 a.m. so an "uh oh" was in order.
Everyone in our family is an animal lover. We grew up with a succession of dogs and cats so even if we don't have pets of our own, we're well aware and appreciative of one another's, like our little girl Goldie pictured here.
So the news that Heidi and Terry's cat Tickle had died was sad indeed. Tickle was 17 years old, a little bit of a thing, nearly all black and when there were two other cats in the house, she ruled the roost despite being outweighed by the other felines.
She was a sweetie, a lap seeker if there ever was one. But Tickle had been showing her age for some time and on Monday, she had a stroke, probably more than one.
Just before Christmas, our sister-in-law Sandi lost one of her two cats, a yellow tom named Henry.
As any pet owner will tell you, our little friends leave gaping holes in our lives when they depart. They give us unconditional love under all circumstances. They give comfort in so many ways. (I remember on 9-11, I kept picking up our cats and holding them to my chest so I could feel them purr. It helped somehow.) They make us laugh.
But their life spans are so much shorter than ours.
And it hurts when they go.
So there's always the question when you lose a life companion like Henry or Tickle. Do you do it again? Do you make that commitment knowing that it will, eventually, involve a lot of tears?
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