Ballad of Kupkake

     As I look through my huge collection of photography I have stored on hard drives and back up media, I usually come upon images of a cat we named KupKake. When we adopted her, in 2005, she was so very tiny and the name seemed to fit her.

    Her intense eyes still stare back at me from her photos. Her gaze still penetrates me deeply.

    When she was with me, I felt like our minds were connected and she understood my thoughts. I was also very attuned to her facial expressions, her ear direction and her volatile mood swings. She could be mean. Very mean. She looked the perfect angel but that was very deceiving. She never liked the dog and always let her know with a charge across the room, front claws swinging. The poor dog never knew what was coming. Even I, the only human that seemed to like her most of the time, could receive a quick swat with her razor claws. I would look at my hand and it seemed like nothing had happened. Slowly, however, blood would appear on my skin, bubbling up into neat trails of three staccato lines. Her swat was quick and accurate.

    We always attributed her meanness to the fact that as a tiny kitten, she was attacked by an adult cat we were trying to adopt. I can still recall the horrible scream kuppy let out as she was bitten viciously under our living room chair. The adult cat launched on her so quickly and unexpectedly. I rescued her but she suffered a bite that became infected and swelled up with an enormous amount of puss within a day or two. My other half, Cyn, squeezed it out in the bathroom. The puss shot completely across the room nearly hitting me. She was shocked because it was a total surprise. Kuppy's wound healed nicely though. Unfortunately, the attacking cat was just a little too feral and we had to return him to the Humane Society. After that experience, Kups was slow to accept others.

We had a weird bond. Her eyes. Her eyes were so aware and knowing. You could feel that she knew something, maybe everything. That even comes through in her images.

    It was me who she would curl up with to sleep. She gave no one else that privilege. If I were lying on the couch to watch the television, she would climb up on my chest, purr, and give herself a bath. She would wait for me on the bed when I was working briefly as a bus driver for a group of handicapped people. She would stay there until I came home. She was my companion, my spirit animal. She was not a cat. She was another person. She understood me. I understood her. It was that strange mental connection I mentioned earlier.

    She was beautiful. Her white fur was always kept pristine. Her ears, nose and pads seemed to glow with pinkness. I loved her intensely.

    There is much more I could write in remembrance of her but I will leave it at this. My emotions are rising too hard and fast. Some might laugh at my intense affinity for a cat. Maybe later, I will be brave enough to recount my childhood and how I became this way. My childhood was no Dandelion Wine. 
   When she left us in 2017, something broke in me. I stayed with her until the end. I had never cried as hard as I did that night. I don't understand my need to recount this to a world that seems to have no time for what I might write or feel. I only write this to maintain my memory of her incredible personality and her being, her presence. As I get older, I fear losing those memories. I need to remember her softness, her subtle cat voice, her warmth beside me.

   Kups, you were a special girl.