My Memories Of Sammy Options

[sammy]

I came here right after Sammy died...feeling so lost and hopeless. I want to post memories of him before he died. I want all of you to know who he was before that dreadful day. The following will be what I recall, thank you for being there for me....all of you


I'm making this thread to tell you who Sammy was before he died. I was especially inspired by Spirit, who lost her best friend just this week. Spirit responded to the post I made...just days after Sammy's death, and her positive attitude about her beloved kitty makes me "know" that remembering the little things our best friends did in their lives...the details, the accents that made us love them so much while they were with us....despite their death...is utterly healing.

Where to start but at the beginning! Some of you know that Sammy came to me by surprise...totally. I was 7 months pregnant with my last child, and my husband came home early one day with this tiny black ball of fur on his shoulders. He worked for the electric company....surveying peoples property for electric upgrades. He went to someones home to do just that, and they had a litter of kittens that they were trying to give homes to.

To understand how strange it is that Sammy and I became soul mates...you have to understand that my husband didn't particularly like cats...but he knew I did. This man, my husband...a dog lover, looked at this litter of kittens and saw "something" in Sammy, and picked him up and brought him home to me...HUGE thing for him to do, and something I will be forever grateful for.

Sammy was so tiny then. He couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 weeks old....he surely wasn't weaned yet from his mother. He had little triangles stuck on the side of his head for ears, and definitely hadn't discovered "drinking" yet...as he still tried to suck the water (or milk that I put down for him). His fur stood straight up still too.

Sammy claimed me as "his" from the second my husband disentangled his tiny claws from his shoulder and put him in my hands. He somehow climbed up on the bed every morning to pounce on my head....his signal that I need to stop laying around, and get up and feed him! I would wake up with this tiny black body on my face...arms around my head, legs around my neck, and teeth biting my face....this was Sammy's communication to me that I should get the hell up and feed him....now!

What's really funny to me now, all these years later (17) is that this tiny little "helpless" kitten grew into a sleek 18 pound black cat that strutted around like he was a panther in the jungle.

I'm an animal lover so have several cats, and even two dogs...but the entire household "knew" who was KING....and it was Sammy. He could swath a path just with his strut, and his energy. You could see his shoulder blades moving in perfect synchronicity with his hind legs when he "strutted" and slowly scoped the area as he "walked" from room to room. And that tail of his!

Sammy didn't "talk" much in life...he didn't have to. He had the smallest of purrs, and never meowed...all it took was a look, a glance, a glare to get his point across. But the tail was his biggest communicator. He could swish it so faaaast and you would know what was on his mind....he was not pleased about something someone thought or didn't think in his direction.

I can't possibly put into one post what Sammy was, and still is to me. Let this be the first of many posts of positive memories of my KING panther cat, that taught me so much about life. I love you Sammy....and miss you tremendously.

Love and light