FAREWELL PAZ (1990-2007)







Becky had little Paz put to sleep on Wednesday. Here's some of what she wrote about it on her myspace blog:

At 17, her little body finally gave out. No specific disease, she just lost the desire to eat or drink, and veterinary attempts to change that the past couple of weeks didn't work. She became paralyzed sometime in the middle of the night, and my waivering about when to have her put to sleep was decided for me.

I adopted Paz from the Houston SPCA in December of 1990. She picked me, because as I approached her cage, she stuck out her paw and waved me down. Reaching out and pawing me for attention was something she did until just a couple of days before she died.

Paz moved from Houston to San Francisco with me in 1993, then back to Houston in 1995, then several places around Houston until I moved to Baton Rouge in 2003, and finally to New Orleans this past Labor Day. She was a good traveller and seldom complained. She adapted to new environments easily, and never got carsick.

Paz loved it when someone would whistle the Andy Griffith theme song, or "Pennies From Heaven". She was known to sing along with a great sense of timing.

Click here for the rest.

I knew Paz for ten of her seventeen years, and I was lucky enough to live with her for five of those years. She really was a wonderful little kitty. Becky never liked my doing it, but I always enjoyed squeezing Paz's tail, which often made her meow really loudly--it was my and Paz's little thing. She was one of those cats who seemed to have wisdom beyond what her feline status would allow. She could communicate a great deal of information with a simple look, and as she got older she played her role as tribal elder very nicely, offering her opinion on matters at hand when she was moved to do so.

I'll never forget how she grieved for my longtime cat Giskard when he died back in 2003. Giskard was extraordinarily hostile toward Paz and her companion cat Phil when Becky and I moved in together back in 2001, but after a while, Pazzie and Giskard-Kitty became fascinated with each other from a distance. When it was clear to her that he was gone forever, she ran around meowing on and off for hours. It made me feel a little better to know that I wasn't the only one whose life had been severely disrupted by his passing.

Becky picked up Paz's ashes from the vet earlier today.

From "The Once Again Prince" by Irving Townsend:

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.

Goodbye Paz; I'll always love you, little girl.

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