Tribute to a Cat

Our cat, Dart, died last Thursday night. She was 13.5 years old and her health had been in decline, so really it was something we were expecting to happen soon. But you can never really be prepared.

Dart was a really beautiful, sweet cat. She wasn't the type to come and sit on your lap every night, but she was always nearby, at least in the same room, or at the end of the couch. Unless, of course, you were trying to crochet a new pattern, then she would sit on your lap, preferably on top of your pattern.

We took Dart into our home in 1998. Her mama, a stray, had been hanging out around the neighborhood. When we returned home from a short trip, we found the mama with her 3 beautiful kittens. So we named them Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. The next day we realized there was a fourth kitten, and we named her d'Artagnan. The vet told us d'Artagnan, Dart for short, had feline leukemia and needed to be quarantined. So we brought her inside and kept the other three outside. After a few days, the three musketeers took off and we never saw them again.

As it turned out, Dart did not have feline leukemia.

Relaxing in the Barbie pool.

She was a good cat. And we will miss her.

After we buried her in one of our gardens, my oldest wanted to make a grave marker for her. She said she wanted to put stickers on a rock spelling her name, then paint it, and pull the stickers off. This is something we did last spring. I remembered having trouble with the paint peeling away when we took the stickers off. So this time we did it a little different. We used spray paint. 

After we removed the stickers, I used black paint to outline the letters as we didn't get a good contrast between the rock and the paint. And because the rock wasn't as smooth as we'd have liked, we had a little paint seep between the sticker and the rock. But it was no matter. We didn't need perfection. Just something special to remember our friend. Because this will be outside, I sealed it with a clear coat.

He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.  Isaiah 25:8