Buffy Gets Memorialized

It is with great sadness that I bear the news that my dearest cat Buffy (whom neither I nor anyone in my immediate family named) passed away yesterday, December 30, 2009. You best know her from her appearance in David and the Roach: Part II, where I called her on her fairly impressive BAP. She was 8-10 years old at the time of her passing.

The circumstances of Buffy's death are mysterious and obscure. We suspect foul play.
What we know for certain follows:

• At 3:30 pm, Buffy was alive and well, eating food. In a surprising act of kindness, she left the food dish for Geordie (the other cat, pictured at some point below) to eat. Considering her general habit of starving Geordie, I was surprised. I went to the edge of the counter where she had walked to and told her how impressed I was with her decision.
• Around 4 pm I leave the house and watch The Bourne Supremacy with Lauren Wright.
• 5:45 pm: My mother comes home from work. After feeding the cats and only having one come to the dish, she looks around for the other one. She finds her on the living room rug behind the maroon ottoman, DEAD. She enters hysterics.
• 6:07 pm: Still in hysterics, my mother calls me to tell me that Buffy is, according to all circumstantial evidence, DEAD. Sadness overcomes me, and after waiting a sufficient amount of time for my grandmother to get to my house before I do so I don't have to deal with my mother's hysterics alone, I go home. Buffy has been placed in a purple towel inside of a cardboard box, and she is quite DEAD. I pet her one last time, and we carry her out to the garage.

On December 29, 2009, around 2:30 in the afternoon, Buffy was last photographed. Although she was high as a kite, I feel it is in the best interest of this investigation that these pictures be disclosed.

There's Buffy, her sable coat covered in the contents of AN ENTIRE BAG OF CATNIP. Not only did she open the drawer in which it was hidden and dump the whole bag out onto the kitchen floor, but she also decided she would get the best high from it by rolling around in it.


Here she is again, this time inhaling the narcotic herb nasally.


The drug's ill effects are evident in the sallow cheekbones and tripped-out eyes. The cat is, unfortunately, geeking out.


This cat is not Buffy. It is instead Geordie, the oldest cat alive, who has unwittingly caught some of the buzz as well, and is stumbling his way through the kitchen.


And this, the last known picture of Buffy before she was cut down in her prime.
Some might chock her death up to ODing on the catnip. The vet said it was a blood clot. I, however, say it was - in the words of William Shakespeare - "foul and most unnatural MURTHER."
Regardless, I feel a brief memorial of the life of Buffy is in order.

The Life and Times of Buffy the Cat
The first couple years of Buffy's life are filled with as much mystery and intrigue as her final hours; of these I know nothing. However, her owner soon discovered a cat allergy and sent her to us to live as a temporary arrangement. For the first few months of her life with us, she lived in my room. She was our only cat with claws, and her adamant use of these, combined with her ominous black-and-white coat, convinced me and my brother that she had some supernatural connection with and/or was Satan.

Her subsequent actions would prove this fact. I was convinced that with every 30-second stare-down she'd give strangers, she'd come up with at least 13 different ways to kill them. Friend and confidant Cullen Hanly, in fact, remembers this stare years later as the most he's ever felt his life to be in jeopardy. Twice she sought to enact these plans.

The first time, I was innocently passing between my laundry room and my kitchen through a narrow doorway. My dog, the beloved J.J., pulled up parallel to the doorway, and I pet him all friendly-like. Buffy, however, seized upon this display of affection, and, seeing me trapped on three sides, LEAPT from the kitchen counter on my left to the kitchen table on my right, nearly decapitating me. To avoid this assault, I lurched forward, nearly toppling over the unwitting hurdle that J.J. had become. I spent the next ten minutes hyperventilating and contemplating how I could possibly defend myself from this demonic mastermind. The second time, she knocked a lamp over and set the house on fire. NBD.

And yet, she wasn't so bad. Oft would she lie on the pool table and, since I was unable to play a game with a cat on the table (though twice I tried), I would roll a ball into her stomach, where she would trap it with her forepaws and kick the everliving crap out of it with her hindfeet. It amused me. I'm sure she loved it too. Also, despite her immortalized BAP, she was one of the best damn roach hunting cats I've ever seen and ever hope to see. Roaches trembled in her presence.
And in a way, those memories ensure that Buffy will never truly leave us. After all, my fingers are pretty scarred up from attempting to get the balls back from her, and her fur is going to be on that pool table forever. So much for a temporary arrangement...


Even though she still had some good years left in her, it's nice to think that she didn't have to do the normal cat-suffering, which generally includes 3-6 years of withering away to skeleton before dying, and she seemed to go pretty quickly and painlessly. Also she was stoned out of her mind for at least 5 of her final 28 hours, and who wouldn't want to go out that way?

And it's also nice to think of this:

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....