Across the Tundra: In Remembrance of Sunny

Sunny's life, and my life with him, began on August 6th, 1999 in Armstrong, British Columbia Canada. I can't say that I know that I dreamed of him the exact day that he was born, but we were meant for each other, heart and soul. I dreamed of a little orange tabby kitten with a white tail tip following me home that precious night and the odd thing was, was that I didn't even very much like orange cats back then, yet I would learn that orange cats are in fact the very best. A month or so later, when Sunny was six weeks old Mom left home on a Saturday to go grocery shopping, going first to Armstrong's farmer's market. Approximately twenty minutes later, the phone rang and after some deliberation between my parents, my Dad told me to get in the truck with him and so I sat, with no idea of where I was going as we drove through our neighbourhood, through town... and to the farmer's market. There Mom was, a wriggling orange and white tabby kitten in her arms. My baby. She put him in my arms and he fell asleep and though he had other siblings, tortoiseshell sisters, he was all I saw. We drove back home in the truck, my kitten in my lap, the truck making its crazy rumbling noises, Sunny seeming just as happy as I was and I remember handing him off to Josh to bring inside the house, exhausted from so much excitement. I think I was in shock. Joyful shock, but shock nonetheless. I had a kitten, a cat and he was mine - all mine. A best friend to call my own, who would never leave me or abandon or ignore me like how some of my human ones had and how my brothers had for the larger part of my life up until then. (I was the distasteful younger sister you see.) I sorely needed Sunny and he loved me and that was what mattered, my little brother/son kitty.

We always kind of thought that Sunny thought that I was his mother, but maybe it was different from that. He was constantly following me, he slept and played with me (though he was never really a playful kitten - he was always a cuddler), he even crawled under the back of my nightgown when I was sleeping and sort of pretended to nurse off of the back of my neck - but I kind of think, that maybe while I became his mother, he also might have thought of me of just being one big litter mate of his, a big friend. We did everything together and I hated going to school, because then I would have to leave him and even though it was only temporary, I hated that. It took me a day to name Sunny, even though I had a long list of names. None of them sounded right and I was adamant that Sunny's name had to be absolutely perfect because it was going to shape his life, until my mother pointed out that Sunny was the best name for him, because sunny was his colour and sunny was his personality, so he was Sunny. Sunny has always been sunny, the light in my life. His middle name became Tiger, so that he would have a shred of bravery (yet I'm not sure if he ever gleaned anything from that, as he was not very brave at all I don't think until his new sisters started getting older, about ten years later.) I remember feeling tortured because the weekend after I got Sunny, we had to go on holiday to Takkakaw Falls and Takkakaw is no place for a kitten, so he had to stay at a family friend's house.

Sunny; forever my best friend, the greatest friend that a girl could ask for. Loyal, true and honest. Sunny; a saint and a guardian angel. A monk of peace in a past life. Sunny is the most peaceful individual that I have ever met. He never, ever got angry. He never hissed or growled. Sometimes he would get annoyed, but then he would ask you to stop what you were doing with a plaintive but polite "Meow!" or rarely, an attack of bite-bite-kick-kick that hurt, but which never lasted long. Never real aggression. Sunny is the quintessential good boy, good cat, good kid. He came when I called, even when I had been away for two weeks that first summer after he had been born.

I was terrified coming back from that trip, worrying that my feline friend had been taken from me forever, that a bear or a coyote had taken him or that he had been hit by a car. We had left the cats at our Lake Lot while we had been gone where we had been living at the time (it was summer and we always lived there in the summer) so there were a lot of things to worry about. Mamma Kitty and Smokey were both several years old and both were extremely smart, being experianced mousers, so we knew that they were definitely okay, but Sunny was only a yearling, an inexperianced teenager. I worried and worried on him during that trip and when we came back to do our head count and Sunny didn't come back from the field even after an hour, I was really anxious. We walked up and down the highway and canoed up and down the shore, calling and calling his name. I fell asleep crying that night and then sometime, perhaps around midnight, I was woken up by Sunny bumping his nose against my head; he was back! He had been looking for me and he had been extremely worried! I was so happy to see him that I think I cried some more and hugged him a lot and then he fell asleep with me, just like normal. Everyone was happy to see him home the next morning!

Sunny learned from that experiance. He learned that I would always come back when I left and up until now, I kept his trust in me magnificently. He was the most loyal cat in the world. I barely ever had to call his name more than a few times to get him to come running. He knew his name! Mamma Kitty would usually also come when I called Sunny and I think she knew her name as well as Sunny knew his, she was just jealous and wanted to get to me first before he could. Really though, I loved them both, just Sunny was my special guy. (I loved Smokey too of course, but my brother Josh was her special person, so she didn't care about me as much.) Poor Mamma Kitty didn't have a specific person that was all hers. She pretty much just loved everyone and got her pets that way.

From the time I proudly gave Sunny his teal plastic bowl and his purple collar, I was teaching him other tricks, other than 'come.' Sunny knew how to meow for his beloved wet cat food; I made him count, because I absolutely loved his cute, adorable meowing. At first he just had to meow five times to get his treat, then it was ten, then fifteen, then twenty, but never over twenty because any higher seemed pretty cruel. I loved his meow. I used to pass his food dish filled with good smelly wet kitty food over his head like he was one of the scanners at the grocery store that make noise and he would meow. Sometimes he would get frustrated and walk away, so I would tempt him with the food again and so he would meow, then finally I would reward him. Sunny was also a fanatic lover of cheese, especially cheddar, just like me and whenever we were cooking with cheese we liked to give him a shred of it, which he loved. He also loved most cat treats, but cheese was better, as was bread and pretty much anything else that was cooking; he wanted what we were eating, even though we rarely gave him more than a tidbit! I even taught him to stand on his hindquarters for a treat, but as he got older and heavier (as most fixed orange male tabbies are, he got quite fat and we couldn't really control it because we had three cats all eating out of each other's bowls) he was too lazy to stand on his hindquarters (maybe he couldn't actually manage it balance-wise) so he would just sit up and take the treat from my fingers with his paws. He was a very smart cat, though he never seemed to learn to tuck his tail out of the way of traffic when he was eating and we had to keep his bowls seperate from Smokey and Mamma Kitty's because he would eat from them otherwise.

Poor Sunny. Getting fixed was one of the worst experiances of his life I'm sure and seeing his rear end all red made me feel so awful for him and we were worried that the older cats would attack him, but they didn't. They never even swatted their kitten upstart! Mamma Kitty and Smokey were such good cats with him, even though Smokey was pretty keen to tell him off with a cuff and a hiss if she thought he was annoying. I'll also remember one time when we were teaching Sunny to go out on the tie out line lead which was clipped to my mom's clothes' line and Dad had to save him when he fell off of the deck over the railing, though thankfully he was wearing his harness and we saw him so he was pulled up quick. We never left him alone as a baby.

Sunny's eyes were born blue and we hoped they would stay blue, but instead they changed to a lovely shade of grey-green which was for a long time undescribable for us, until I read the standard for the Egyptian Mau breed and realized that they were called 'gooseberry green.' He was a beautiful cat anyway, all fire traced with brown and soft loving warm, buttery sunshine orange, with a cream banded tail and splashy white markings - and his paws! His paws were the cutest things ever! Pink paw pads! Pink! So cute! I loved his paws so much that I spent a lot of time just bothering them, feeling them until he yanked them free from my inquisitive and adoring hands.

One of Sunny's problems, besides being decidedly chubby, was that he had prolific feline acne. For those who don't know, cats have a sebaceous gland all over their body that is constantly exuding oils containing scent - this is why cats rub their bodies against things; they are marking them with their scent. However, when cats encounter items such as greasy plastic food bowls and such, dirt can get into their already oily pores and give them acne, just like humans, only theirs appears as black dirt right next to their skin. I didn't know that it was acne and I didn't know how to look it up. It certainly wasn't harming him any, but seeing the 'dirt' bothered me, so I broke into a rather obsessive compulsive, monkeyish habit of picking out the dirt and thus the 'infected' hairs that the dirt was stuck to. Since this dirt often came in large patches, usually on Sunny's chin but also on his back, butt and at the base of his tail, I regret to say that because of me there were often patches missing out of his pelt in summer time when the dirt got the worst. Pulling out bits of his hair actually did get rid of the dirt eventually and looking back I really wish I knew how on Earth he got acne on his rump since most cats just have it on their chins from their plastic or metal dishes. I hate to say it, but this grooming of Sunny was something which I actually liked doing, even though it sometimes made him meow unhappily, I was pleased whenever he was clean of acne and I had a creepy habit of running my fingers through his fur to see if he had any more. (I'm a terrible parent this way yeah? But I got rid of his dirt the only way I knew how to and that's what counted.) I'm sorry Sunny.

Sunny was a wuss with animals that he didn't know and he really didn't like dogs. When he was quite young still, the neighbours next door got some kittens and I remember him being quite worried when he was confronted by them. One day, he got so worried when they startled him, that he actually had a fecal accident on our front door - yes, on the door. It was disgusting. One year, a few days before we were packing up to leave the Lake Lot for the year to go back to school, Sunny got bitten by something; we never found out what it was. It could have been another cat, or a small dog like a terrier or a raccoon or mink or a gopher snake. Anyway, the bite was right on the dock of his tail and so a few days later, when we were driving home (an activity Sunny always found extremely stressful, panting, hyperventilating and crying the entire journey) I had him by the collar in my lap and suddenly, about a quarter of the way back to Armstrong, probably less, his tail started bleeding all over the place. We nursed him through the rest of the journey, mopping up the blood with what we could until we got him into the bathroom at home, where we first rinsed his poor butt off, cut away the surrounding fur, then we started working hard again to try to get his dock to stop bleeding. We actually didn't have any idea that he was injured until he started bleeding then. We didn't take him to the vet; my Mom grew up on a farm, so she knew what to do, so me and my brother Josh were her assistants, my job being mainly to calm the poor kitty down, because he was panicking and cry-meowing a lot. Eventually Smokey came into the bathroom to figure out what the fuss was and I think that may have been one of the few times that she outright showed us her compassion for her fat little brother. She was two years older than Sunny and that day, she treated him like he was her kitten, licking his face and I think telling him that he was alright, that he was going to be fine because she was meowing almost as much as he was meowing. That day Smokey showed us that at heart she really cared, despite her usual hisses and swats that she took at him. (She had not been fond of getting a new brother at two years old.) I sang to him because he had always liked that and the poor boy healed without ever getting a foul whiff of a vet clinic. Except for once when my mom got Smokey antibiotics, we always healed our kitties this way; with love, kindness, old fashioned proven knowledge and common sense. They always got better.

After his incident being bitten by whatever-that-was, Sunny didn't like having the dock of his tail touched anymore. You could run your hand along his tail, but you couldn't really scratch it at the base or else he would complain with a "MEOW!" I don't think it really hurt him anymore, he was just leery of having his butt grabbed again by a monster. Who can blame him? I still scratched him gently there because it was an itchy place, but I was always keen to his body language, so I knew when to stop before he had a chance to complain or threaten a deserved nip at me.

Sunny wasn't a hunter. Mamma Kitty was an uber warrior, defending her territory with great might and ferocity while taking on the most fearsome of feline prey - such as pheasants, hummingbirds and catching bats on wing, leaping into the air like a serval to bat them down. Smokey was a good huntress too, but she wasn't as driven as Mamma Kitty was to prove her feline superiority and badassery. She learned well from her mother and caught lots of birds and shrews. (We always complained to the cats to stop catching these things, to catch the damn sparrows which are introduced to North America, not native and the bloody cowbirds that are too lazy to raise their own young, but our mousers rarely listened of course. They caught what was easy and yes, they did eat their kills, though we did have many occasions where we found small dead presents on our doorsteps and nearly everyday during the summer we had to take a shovel and fling what remained of their catches out into the back weed patch, because they wouldn't touch them after about a day. Neither Smokey nor Mamma Kitty seemed to realize that we weren't eating their precious gifts, but we felt guilty so we tried to let them know that we appreciated their thoughtfulness.)

Sunny wasn't a hunter, but as I've said, he's pretty damn smart. I think the reason he didn't hunt was not because he didn't want to eat small dead animal, because as a kitten he stole a shrew right out of Smokey's mouth - she was crossing the front yard, glorious prize in her mouth, victorious and Sunny came whipping across the lawn out of nowhere, a little orange blur, grabbed her present from her jaws and dashed off with it at super high kitten speed before she could do anything about it. This incident still makes me laugh and I will always be proud of Sunny for his epic shrew theft. Sunny wanted to play with and eat dead animal. He knew it was food; he had seen Smokey and Mamma Kitty eat mice and birds, so he knew that small animals were good things, but the thing was, Sunny wasn't altogether sure how to catch them himself and I don't think Mamma Kitty was willing to teach him, seeing as he wasn't her baby. Smokey was her blood daughter, but Sunny to her was just an upstart that she had somehow been saddled with in her family, not that she didn't love him. So, Sunny didn't know how to hunt. I think he could have learned if he was really determined, but the thing was, he lived with two uber mousers, so why bother? If he wanted mouse, he could just steal it from Smokey or Mamma. Why catch something yourself, when you can have somebody else do it for you and when there's a bowl of kibble in the kitchen sitting out for you that you don't have to go through any effort at all to kill? See, Sunny was smart.

In actuality, I think it's pretty possible that Sunny did know how to hunt, or at least the mechanics of such. We might never of seen him bring a kill in, but it's possible that he did catch things occasionally when he went on his prowlings in the weed patch, but that he just didn't really know what to do with those things once he caught them. He definitely caught and ate grasshoppers and he always dreamed of catching a duck, bird calling them as he tried to sneak up across the grass of the rock dock. A few years ago, when we first moved to our new house, his final home, there were mice in the house. We were painting my room purple at the time, so I was sleeping out in the living room where it was cool (it was summer) and I was woken in the middle of the night to a sound - I got up and there was Sunny, with a mouse in his mouth! I anxiously yelped that Sunny caught it and Mom came out to see and we were on tenterhooks waiting for him to do something, hoping he wouldn't drop it as he meowed around his mouthful at us in confusion, asking us what he should do.

"Don't drop it Sunny! Don't drop it!" I remember us urging. "Keep hold of it! Take it outside and drop it there! Don't drop it Sunny! Keep holding it! Good boy!"

Smokey came up and added her two cents by hissing at him and smacking him across the face. I think she probably said something along the lines of "Just kill it you moron!" to him.

Sunny had no idea how to do that though and he couldn't hold the mouse forever, so as he opened his mouth to ask us for a better explanaition of how this mouse killing thing was done, he dropped it. Me and Mom rushed to try to help him catch it again, going through the cupboards, opening them, but it was all in vain. In the end, all I could do later was reward him with a ID tag shaped like a mouse, as a medal of honour for his tremendous hunting skills. The real mouse, in turn, decided that living in a house full of highly talented mousers was not conducive to its health and was never seen again. Given that we never smelled any bad rotting animal smells, I'm pretty sure it and its friends moved out and that it didn't die from its injuries at Sunny's harmless but sharp teeth. I have to say that if I was a mouse, I would find being held my cat's unskilled jaws pretty traumatizing too, though it's damn lucky that it wasn't Smokey that caught it. Smokey didn't help try to catch it again. I think she was in a bit of a tiff, maybe over being woken up by Sunny and me.

Sunny had several favourite things. His number one favourite thing was me, then my mom, then cheese, then his soft red-white-and-brown rug in the kitchen which was exactly Sunny-sized which he liked to lay on with all of his paws tucked under so that it looked like he didn't have any, then brown cardboard yougurt boxes (which fit his rump so perfectly), then laying on soft chairs like ones that Dad was fond of (Dad wasn't fond of Sunny's fur) and as a kitten, his absolute favourite toy was a piece of folded paper tied in a string which kind of looked like a fly or a moth, which he absolutely loved to bat around.

Sunny was a very happy cat and one of the things he would do, was flop when you were petting him to get belly rubs. He liked belly rubs. He also liked rolling in the dirt, though not quite so much as Mamma Kitty liked rolling in the dirt and he liked sitting on chairs, but especially on laps. He wasn't the kind of cat who liked being held, or being petted too much; he liked you to stay there and stroke his ears until your bladder started to explode. Often, he preferred it if you didn't move at all, if you just kept a hand on him. He also really liked it if me and Mom were sitting close together, because then he could be on my lap while reaching his right paw over to Mom's knee, a behaviour of his that I called 'reaching out to the world.' He would purr and purr until he fell asleep and I know that I was probably his most favourite thing to sleep on. I was very obliging, until his weight started cutting off my circulation. Then I could only go being a lap for so long. At night, he slept on my legs and it was comfy warm! (Until after puberty, when I started moving around too much for him... then he still slept with me, but I don't think he liked my disobedience in not staying perfectly still all night.)

Sunny liked stretching. He liked all the things which good cats love, like having his butt scratched. We joked that the dust bunnies he left behind were 'dust kitties' that he was producing and he really was prolific in making those. Sunny was a shedder and if he sat on you, he left a coating of his regard on your clothing when he left. When he walked past you in the hallway, or if you were in the kitchen (his favourite place) he would always get up and rub against you, then meow, asking if there were any treats, especially if he knew you were cooking. Besides cheese, he also really liked bread and there were a few times when I gave him quite a bit of that. We both liked bread; sometimes it was all that we really had to eat to stave our hunger cravings until dinner.

One of the worst and hardest things I ever did was leave my cat in the Okanagan when I left for university. Is this the terrible fate of all dear childhood pets, to be abandoned by their owners because of ridiculous no pet laws in apartments and dorms? I wanted to bring Sunny, I really did, but in the end, it wasn't to be and despite all my trying to get a place that would accept both me and him, I was not victorious and poor Sunny was left behind. That was probably the worst part about moving out; you can talk to your parents on the phone and you can look at them on Skype, but you can't pet your cat. You can't reach through the phone and take him onto your lap. So much of having a pet is physical and that's lost at a distance. I could tell Sunny how much I loved him, I could see him on Skype, but I couldn't scratch his neck under his collar where it was itchy, or take it off to give him a break from it, or rub his blaze which I had dubbed a Canada Star, or scratch his itchy chin which he would push out for more, closing his eyes or be pricked by his claws as he kneaded on me, or just plain give him a big hug. I couldn't bother his knicked ears, making them twitch. Sunny was the master of big hugs and away from him, I was terribly lonely. I missed him with ridiculous pain and I was relieved when I went home to find that he missed me too just as much, that he had asked where I was.

So much, too much of our story together on this plane is of us being apart and of me not being with him. Thinking back, I did a lot of stupid things, like after my first year, I should have gone back to the Okanagan. Instead what I did was I tried to hold my apartment and I spent a crapload of student loan money which I couldn't afford to spend when again, I really should have gone home. I missed out on four months which I could have spent blissfully with my cat and my parents, working on my book in my sunny homeland. Instead, I was an idiot and stayed in Vancouver and went through another year of school. (The latter bit, the going to school bit wasn't idiotic, but the rest sure was. Damn.)

What can I feel but deep regret for all the time I missed with him? I have had many chances to move home. I should have moved home after I graduated, which would have spared me a lot of misery. I wouldn't of gotten Copernicus and maybe Sunny would still be alive today. We would have had two more good years together, me and him, Sunny and Rosy, in love together like always. Sunny was and is my soulmate.

A month ago, around July 20th, my parents went on holiday to celebrate their 35th Wedding Anniversary and left Smokey and Sunny (Mamma passed away two years ago) at my brother Josh's house. When they came back, it was to the beginning of this tragedy; Sunny was acting strangely, so they took him to the vet and learned that Sunny had suffered a stroke. I will always remember the day they told me.

They texted me at work, ordering me to call them when I got off. This was strange; my parents do not usually text me and the fact that they ordered me - 'Rosy call us after work' - was exceedingly strange, because my parents don't usually order me to do anything; they ask. I knew something was wrong then and I had been sensing something was off, because earlier in their vacation they had been calling me every few days, telling me of their adventures, but then, quite suddenly, halfway through, they had stopped doing that. It was good that I read their text on my break, because I had a panicky moment worrying about Sunny where I burst out into tears. I'm always worrying about my animals when they are left alone you see, but this time, the worry would prove to be for real. I was paranoid that my brother had somehow killed my cat.

This belief proved to be unfounded, but it was bad. I knew the second I heard my father's tone that something was very, very, very wrong. The thing about my parents, is that they are exceedingly bad at giving news about things which while life threatening, don't actually usually spell a death sentence. The last time I had heard my parents give one of these terrible opening one liners had been when my brother Josh had broken his neck in a car accident - my mind logically jumped to the words 'paralysis' and 'dead.' No though - my brother was alive - and so was Sunny, but barely.

Sunny had had a stroke that had wronged his left side and he was dehydrated from not drinking. He was walking in left circles, his head seemingly permanently cocked in that direction, his left ear always swayed back. He was eating, but only if you put food in front of his whiskery face and the only way he drank was by you feeding him with a syringe of water, cocked under the corner of his lip between his jaws. His fetlocks sometimes trembled when he put weight on them and if you petted him, you could suddenly feel the ridge of his spine near his tail over his hips, which one could never feel before. Sunny was a fat, happy, healthy, muscular cat before my parents left on their trip, but they had come back to the horror to a Sunny who was no longer quite whole, whose vision was mostly gone but who could hear your voice if you spoke loudly enough. Smokey was extremely confused by him and reputably swatted him in the face a lot, running up aggressively to him to tell him to stop acting so weird, to damn well act normal but Sunny couldn't, because he was himself confused because why wasn't everything working as it should? Why were his thoughts and ideas so fleeting? I wished I could of been there when he had his stroke to comfort him. I wish he had not have had it at all.

(Picture: Sunny, in more happy times, laying in the cool summer grass and asking for belly rubbins.)

I rushed home at the first opportunity that I could, braving the airplanes which had in a time before triggered in my body into a panic attack, lighting up my anxiety and inspiring great fear in my soul. Neither me nor Sunny really likes travelling, though I'm okay with cars. Trains are the best transportation for me and probably him too, feeling by far the safest, but airplanes are possibly the worst mode of human transportation ever invented. Sure, they're fast, but do you know how many people have panic attacks on them, or just get sick riding on them? Probably a pretty big number. Humans weren't meant to fly, plain and simple. Anyway, I loaded myself with Rescue Remedy and Nervoheel and with breathing techniques in hand, I got on that blasted metal deathtrap and flew home to Kelowna. Terrified I was (though I must note that I was fine with planes as a child) but my terror was worth it for seeing Sunny again, one more time.

You know that something is extremely, direly wrong when a cat with a history of being terrified in the car is calm riding in one to the vet. This was what my parents saw when they took him, but what I saw, stepping into my yard - or what I didn't see, was just as bad. Though we've had a dreary, very damp summer, in normal days Sunny would have been waiting for me on the porch with Smokey; he wasn't. In normal days, if he wasn't outside, he would be waiting in the mudroom, just inside the door; he wasn't. I walked all the way inside the house and Sunny wasn't even in the hallway, which he had before frequented, even occasionally on rare days bundling up and down it with Smokey with a joyous "Brrrrt!" as he galloped along that runway once or twice. (Smokey meanwhile goes for the triple crown and runs for usually at least half an hour.) Sunny wasn't in my room, laying on my bed. He wasn't in the cool hallway outside it, or in the kitchen, his favourite place, laying on his rug or begging. Sunny, my baby wasn't even in the office looking out the screen door at the Swan Lake vista, drinking in sunbeams.

Sunny was in the living room, corralled there not by anything at all, sitting on the floor while my brother held out his bowl of wet mush so that he could lick it. I have never seen Sunny look that tired. There is a dear difference between a cat that is just cozily sleepy and a cat that is exhausted. Sunny's shoulders were hunched, his head was low. He was licking his fodder mechanically, like a horse with its nose in a feedbag. I was horrified; was this really my Sunny? My parents had warned me, but still... I cried. I bawled. I couldn't stand that this was what had become of my sweet cat. I went home expecting to put him down and what I saw reaffirmed that that was what had to be done, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill my cat, my best friend. How can you kill your best friend? After that shock of seeing him like he was, I was determined not to think of him as doomed as I desperately wanted him to get better, just like any parent wishes for their child. I started feeding him. I gave him his water and took him to his litter box. For me, he tried. He drank more than my parents said he did for them and he struggled in the litter box. He did manage to poop a little, but so little was going into him that very little was coming out. I sat with him on the floor and I petted him. I followed him; I called, I encouraged. His ears pricked up a bit at my voice and he slowly followed me from the litter box back to the living room, as obedient, loyal and trusting as ever and always. I was patient and always, always I encouraged him.

Me and my mom went out and discussed what we could do to help him. None of us wanted to see him die; we thought of trying homeopathic measures, because natural medicine had always worked for ourselves. We made up a plan. We wanted him to live; I was so, so hopeful, but even so, when I was laying next to him on the floor, just about to fly back to Vancouver, I knew that it was very, very possible that I would never see him again. Sunny had improved while I was there, showing flashes of normalcy such as licking himself and laying on his dear rug, so I knew he could get better, if we only tried hard enough. However, I also knew, deep in my heart that my going back was wrong; if I left him, there was a possibility, a great possibility that he would lose heart and die. I can say that I had no choice in leaving him that 27th of July, but the fact is, I did have a choice. I could have outright refused to go home and stayed with him, except that Copernicus needed me in Vancouver and I had a job. Screw the job though; Sunny was what mattered and he desperately needed me with him. I believe that Sunny would have gotten better if I had stayed. I do. I also believe that I made a few more mistakes after I left.

The first mistake I made, after leaving Sunny, was sending my parents money to take care of him instead of forking out the cash and buying him good cat food and ordering the medicine which I think would have greatly helped him recover himself, but instead I chose to trust that my parents would do what I thought they knew I wanted them to do with the money. Instead, they didn't. I can only blame myself for that. They saved the money for in case he died, so that they could take care of him that way, after the fact which was good and I can appreciate that somewhat, but still. Really though, no matter what happened with all of that, I should have been there. I should have quit my job and gone back as fast as I could - instead I was an absolute utter moron and stayed like a good stupid girl in Vancouver, under a secret plan that I was to move back to the Okanagan at the start of September to be with him. At the very least, I wanted desperately to be with him when he died, but instead, I was at work, worrying about losing my job, no less, the job I should have already quit when it happened.

That was yesterday.

In the days after I left him, Sunny slowly stopped eating and drinking. He grew weaker from this and as I continued to hear reports of his subtly declining health, I desperately tried to keep positive that he would survive until I got to him, that he would be able to wait. In the end though, it wasn't Sunny who stopped waiting. Life had grown painful and he wasn't himself anymore, so my parents made the harsh but good decision to put him down. It's probably sounding like I'm blaming them here, but no, I'm not. I blame only myself. I should have gone to visit him on my last two days off, to see him one more time and snuggle him and maybe, with me with him, he would have felt relieved enough to pass on then on his own, for his life had grown so tiring and he wanted to be himself again, whole and unfrustrated. In the end it wasn't like that. Sunny fell asleep in my arms when I was given him as my angel and he should have asleep that last time in my arms too, in love. He was surrounded by love; my parents and my brother were all with him, stroking him and he let them know that it was okay by purring like he had not done since he was a kitten, filling the room with his beautiful musical purr which I shall never hear again, which I loved most. He went to his last sleep in peace, purring the whole way, singing his song of love and one thing that can be said is that Sunny was never mean to anyone and he never truly got angry, nor was he afraid of his end. My cat never hissed. He never growled. He never fought. My cat was a man of peace, a priest, a monk, a saint. In him was the heart of a century-old Dalai Lama, loving everything, doing harm to no one, living life with all that he was and is. He loved me. He was with me when I was fighting through my teenage depression, while I was almost giving up my will to live. He was with my when my anxiety disorder started to assault me, causing me great fear and when I understood it. He was with me through two home moves, through all the formative years of my childhood.

He was a girl's best friend. He was my Sunny baby, my guardian angel in fur, my spirit guide on paws. He was called many things; Buddy, Big Dave, Big Chub, Sun-bunny, Sun-bun, Sun-sun, Sir Chubbington, Chubbaroo, Sunners, Fun-sun, Cuddlemonster and Sunny-bun. He was the original fire cat; he inspired Firis and all the elven cats who would rather steal their food than catch it themselves. He is a part of Rimer and in Rimer I can still feel close to him, but all the same, I will never, ever hear his purr again, unless he blesses me with his song one night when I am asleep, though frankly I'm not sure if I deserve that. I abandoned him. I abandoned my champion and my hero. My saint of light. The world will never be right again. When my parents called me last night at an abnormal hour, I knew the world wasn't right. A knife twisted deep in my heart and all I could do was mutter desperately "Don't think about it! Don't think about it!" because for weeks now I had been paranoid that I would get a call some morning, a call from my mom like she had called me for Mamma Kitty to tell me that my Sunnels had met the light and passed away.

The call happened at night though. I was on my way home, on the bus, so for five minutes I suffered waiting to get home, then for my parents to call me back. When they did, my dad said "You know, don't you?" and I burst into tears, bawling my eyes out. I'm bawling as I write this, struggling to see through my eye-water with burning stuff running down my nose, which is raw. I fell asleep crying last night. I woke up crying today. My Sunny baby was dying and I wasn't there to hold him and now I will never hold him again. The fact that I will be getting his ashes is of small comfort because I will always want him, alive, by my side, purring up a storm as he wraps his lovely soft thick tail around my leg in his cat-hug, his stake that I am his, forever and always. Sunny was my soul mate. He still owns a part of my spirit and a stake of my heart will forever be his. I will it that when I die, let us be put to earth together, so that we can live in love once more, on the other side with Mamma Kitty. The Saint of my Heart has gone to join my Warrior Queen and the world will never be right again. I don't know what to do with myself, now that he is gone. When I go home, what will it be like to see his rug without him and to see his bowl that still has his name written in my nine-year-old cursive on it and what will it be like to see his collar, the same collar which he wore since he was a baby, faded purple when once it was bright? What will it be like to never see him again, to never admire his fur, to never pet him or scratch his chin or root through his fur for dirt? What will it be like to not rub his big round cuddly soft belly or feel his tail, the way it was always sort of a little funny at the base after that bite or play with his soft, soft paws, the skin of his pads so cool yet so, so soft? What will it be like to never stick my fingers between his toes, to never admire them again, to never fight with him to clip his claws again so that he cannot hurt me when he kneads? What will it be like to never see him shoot up a tree like orange lightning again, or stare at me with those wide, beautiful gooseberry eyes that loved me so much? What will it be like to never stare contests with him again, to be beaten and look back, only to find him still staring, or feel him knead my leg as he circles to lie down? Will I ever kiss your head again, even as a spirit?

Sunny, what will it be like to live without you? I know you are better now. I know your head is once again held high and that that butter banded tail is high. I know that heaven has made you already trim off a few pounds, or maybe not, but in any case, you are running, playing with your paper-and-string fly toy, being a kitten, maybe lying in some semblance of my lap. I know that you are sniffing noses with Mamma Kitty, kissing; I know that you are sitting with her in her garden amongst the carrots and the tomatoes in the warm, hot black earth. I know you're running through the cool grass, laying under the cherry tree and climbing the Russian Olive, long past. Maybe you're catching mice now and they aren't defeating you. Maybe you're stealing them from Mamma Kitty and celebrating your spoils. Maybe you're looking down on me and maybe, right now, unseen, you're beside me, watching me write, or sitting in my lap. Maybe you're even on my shoulder where you sat as a baby, looking down at my world and maybe you're sniffing bothersomely at Copernicus, your little brother whom you never met, but whom I wanted you to meet. Maybe you're with me, trying to make the pain less bad.

Sunny, I miss you buddy. You were my friend, my dearest friend and I still need you, even if you no longer need me. I'm sorry that I wasn't there! You needed me there and I wasn't there! I love you Sunny. I love you with all my heart and I know from the last time I saw you that I always will. I'm not mad that you died. I'm only sad and I miss you. Why, why did you have to have that stroke? I know you didn't want it. I know horrible things just happen sometimes, but why?

Sunny, I love you. I know you can understand. I know you know English and the language of my heart. I know you heard me, all those times that I was away in Alberta and I thought out to you with all that I could stay off the road, be careful, be safe; be nice to your sister and Mamma Kitty, don't eat their food because you always listened. You were always there when I returned but now you won't be and my heart is bleeding, my soul is in pain. Sunny, I love you. It's hard to live without you, without the thought of you laying under the Christmas tree where it's warm, without me being able to call you a present, a big, orange, tabby spangled, wonderful present. You are the best thing that my parents ever gave me, besides my life. You are my guardian angel in truth now, I suppose. You and Mamma Kitty and Tobers, a dog you never met who passed away. I know you never liked dogs, but Tobers was a good, nice dog, honest! He protected me from Grandpa when he was pretending that he wanted to steal my wallet and he laid by my side, just to make sure that Grandpa wouldn't come creeping up in the night, which of would course he didn't. Toby went home a long time ago, but you... I can't believe that you won't be there. I love you Sunny, I love you! I wish and hope you know that. I hope you really did know whenever I went away and told you when I was coming back that I was right. Someday I will return to you, just now... now it won't be for a long time, because unfortunately humans have longer lives than kitties yes? I can hate that, but I still have many things to do and despite everything, more love to give on this plane and more love to have... so I can't follow you yet. I hope you understand! I hope you know that I am deeply sorry! I love you!

I'M SORRY!

Sunny, I will love you forever. Your collar tag might have been a fish, then a mouse, but always it should have been a smiley face, because you were always smiling, whiskers pressed forwards. You made me very happy Sunny. You filled my world with joy and with you and my parents, I didn't need anything else. Now though, I only have my parents and your sister Smokey and a few friends, scattered here and there. I miss your creamy orange cat hair though, scattered on my shirt and on my pants and even in my food. I miss your smell, your bad stinky breath and pressing your lips open to look at your admirable, beautiful teeth. I miss your blaze, your Canada Star, your plush winter pelt. I miss you Sunny. I miss you pressing against my leg and laying in between them at night on top of my blanket. I miss you crawling under the covers at night with me and I miss you in my lap, clawing up my legs unintentionally with love. I miss you walking up the spiral staircase and I miss you greeting me when I got home, getting up, tail waving to see me, purring, always purring. I miss your annoyed tail twitch too yes, but it's your tail up, straight up like a flag or a pole or a tree that I'll really miss, that banner of confidence and happiness and peace. I'll miss your eyes slowly closing, the depth of your sweet, gentle purr and the feel of your ears, each a little tattered, probably from Smokey. I promise to take care of her for you and Mamma Kitty, but it's you that I miss. I miss you Sunny. Going back home and not seeing you will seem so wrong. Not having you in my lap, or sitting at my feet will seem so wrong. Not seeing you on your rug, four feet tucked under, will seem so wrong. Not feeling your gentle paw draped over my foot will hurt.

Sunny-sunny, why? Why?! Why did you have to go? It's 4:27 now, which means that I have been writing this thing about you for hours and I haven't eaten in half a day now, but I don't care, because you have been dead for twelve hours and thirty seven minutes now and I can't stand that. You're dead Sunny, you're dead. You're asleep. I'll never get to pet you again. When your box arrives with your name plate on it, saying 'Sunny Tiger Brost' what will I be able to feel? This was my cat. This was. It won't be you, looking up at me with eyes green and loving, warm and beautiful yet cool. I know you've gone back to a world that is always green, always bright and that is of some comfort to me but...

I miss you Sunny.

In Loving Memory of Sunny Tiger Brost
The World's Greatest Cat and a Saint, A Monk in a Past Life

August 6th 1999 - August 19th 2011

Thank you for sharing your life with me Buddy. I'm honoured to have spent it with you. Rest in peace now old handsome baby mine; Mommy loves you and you will always be a part of Rimer and thus my soul.

The Rainbow Bridge

Inspired by a Norse legend; Author Unknown.

By the edge of a woods, at the foot of a hill,
Is a lush, green meadow where time stands still.
Where the friends of man and woman do run,
When their time on earth is over and done.

For here, between this world and the next,
Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest.
On this golden land, they wait and they play,
Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.

No more do they suffer, in pain or in sadness,
For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness.
Their limbs are restored, their health renewed,
Their bodies have healed, with strength imbued.

They romp through the grass, without even a care,
Until one day they start to sniff at the air.
All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back,
Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack.

For just at that instant, their eyes have met;
Together again, both person and pet.
So they run to each other, these friends from long past,
The time of their parting is over at last.

The sadness they felt while they were apart,
Has turned into joy once more in each heart.
They embrace with a love that will last forever,
And then, side-by-side, they cross over… together.