BC

The Babe and I have been away in London for the last couple of weeks.  I have about several hundred photos of all sorts of things to put up on the blog with all sorts of stories, but I have to let you know that BC died while I was on vacation. I thought that this might happen; the last thing I said to him before leaving was to tell him I loved him and that I expected him to be alive when I got back. He'd been losing weight for the last couple months and was fairly bony. He was also looking very much like an old guy. He was 14-1/2, which is fairly old for a cat. His mother, Willow, developed cancer at that age.

Susan phoned us Thursday the 12th. She'd been feeding all the cats and BC had been standing on the counter when he suddenly fell off and landed hard on the floor. He was gasping for breath and he couldn't get up on his own. She drove him to the vet immediately but he died en route within 5-10 minutes. Susan was very upset and I was more worried about her than BC. When she got there, the vet said that he'd died of either a stroke or a heart attack. It sounds like it was fairly quick, but I was very sorry that I couldn't be there with him given how glued to me he was.

The vet has his body and I'll pick him up in the next few days. I'd been thinking in September that he might die (though not quite like this; I figured he might just die in his sleep) and I had already decided that I was going to plant him here under the maple tree near his mother. I'd thought about burying him at the new house but it didn't feel right: he'd never lived there and I was sorta thinking that he wouldn't know where he was. It'll be better to keep him here and he'll be near Willow, too, which will be nice.

BC was a truly wonderful cat and I will miss him a lot.

BC