Found out...

...today via email from Bob---Shayla died. Made and makes me cry. i didn't even want that darned ole cat.
I come back from ten days up in Lost Park Wilderness huntin Wapiti w/ my old bow and there she wuz...in the arms of my wife, year nineteen and ninety-four.

"Someone had a box of kittens outside of Safeway and she looked like a sweet one." And over the next handful o' weeks, that black burl o' fur gave us a glimpse of parenthood. Unfortunately for Penny and i Shayla took a likin to me, especially my ears. She would come up on t' bed after many a protest of, "There is no way that cat's sleepin on this bed!" So there she were up on my neck w/ her cold little nose driven into my ear and those infant fresh needle claws kneading for my jugular.

Daze and daze of this, my lack of sleep rolled me nerves thinner-than-the-then paper thin bastards already were! One nyte she came up all loving and in went t' nose, i picked her up and lay her at the foot of the bed, then again and again. All three of us should B sleepin. So i tossed her to the end of the bed, and again, here she came and i'll be damned if i did not give up? Her nose went in, claws drew blood, literally and a velvety black cat scarf i wore. "There'll be time enuf to sleep when I'm dead, I guess."

Seventeen years later, thru many Colorado moovs, out smartin Coyote/Owl/Hawk, out foxin Fox, a divorce, eleven hundred miles North to Montana, three weeks in a 24' trailer by herself, to two different Yurts, sharing space w/ cats and dogs she feared/despised and a new marriage...she died around the love of Bob, who gave her moor than he gave any other cat in his entire Life, due to the compassion he know i had for her. He loved her too, in the end...she became such a sweet lap cat--on her terms of course. Thanks ain't even close as the closest horseshoe, for how much Bob helped me w/ her. And, Deborah as well, your gentile soul thru til her end and here i lay in a foreign land w/ tear in my eye. Sucks to bury any loved creature...Thank ya kindly.