This is actually Jeannie, Bill’s girlfriend/sig o.  I took today off to prepare for our camping trip this weekend and although I have been aware of the significance of this day, it didn’t hit me at a conscious level until just about an hour ago that today is the one year anniversary of the day we lost our cat, Albert. 

Bill posted a lovely tribute to Albert here a few weeks after we lost him so I thought I would hijack his blog for a moment.

Last year early in the week we were planning to go camping with friends.  They have a family member who has a lot of land and they have created a great, private campsite where they invited us to join them and several other friends and family members for the Labor Day weekend.  On Wednesday night when we got home from work/school, Albert appeared to have had a stroke; we took him to the vet for the last time Thursday morning.  Being in a bit of a state of shock, we both ended up going in to work afterwards still thinking we were going to go camping the next day.

Friday dawned gray, rainy, cold, and completely congruous with our mood.  We called our friends to tell them we just didn’t have the heart to go and they told us they had decided to cancel anyway because of the weather.  I cried most of the weekend and we both just moped around wondering if we would ever stop missing him and thinking about him all the time.  I didn’t want to clean because I didn’t want to vacuum away the fur Albert had left on the furniture.

A year later, we have once again made plans to meet up with these same friends and will be heading out as soon as Bill gets home from work.  (I took the day off; we’re hoping his boss will have mercy and let people out early for the holiday weekend!)  We still miss Albert and still make references to him and think about him, but somewhere along the way I stopped thinking about him daily.   I haven’t cried thinking about him for some months, other than today when I re-read Bill’s post about him.

We adopted two overgrown kittens on December 31st.  They turned 1 year old on February 14th - coincidentally the date I had “designated” as Albert’s birthday when I first brought him home in November, 1991.  He had been a stray and the vet guessed he had been born around February or March.  He was so sweet and lovable, I thought Valentine’s day was an appropriate birthday for him! 

Zack and Zeke would have tormented Albert - they would have chased his tail, leapt out or down at him from around corners or furniture, and they would have shown absolutely no respect for him.  Just like Katie did.  And just like he loved and tolerated Katie, I think Albert would have loved them and tolerated all the indignity because that’s the way he was - a social, lovable, loving creature who really never responded negatively to any person or (domestic) animal he met (we won’t talk about the field mice!) He wasn’t territorial, he wasn’t grumpy, and he was remarkably accepting of other animals.

I still miss him and will always treasure the time I had with him.  I wish he could have met “the boys,” but although they were making the rounds of the Adoption Fairs last summer, given Albert’s declining health we felt Katie was enough of a challenge for him.  I rarely compare them to him anymore, though I have to admit I did at first. 

He is gone, but not forgotten and it just seems odd how some things are exactly the same as they were a year ago and others are so very, very different.