My furfamily, Bear

Bear: In the apartments where I lived when my daughter Jackie was small, there was this sweet gray kitty, he seemed young, maybe 6 months to a year old. He met me at my door every day, I’d leave a bowl out for him.

My landlord tried to discourage me from feeding him as "he will never leave".

He was a talker, the kitty, not the landlord. He’d walk with me to the laundry room and talk the whole way, he’d walk with me to the mailboxes telling me his story. I suspect someone moved out and left him.

One day I opened the front door and he raced in between my feet and never left. I called him Smokey. He was gray and I wasn’t real good at coming up with names.

Smokey morphed in to Smokey Bear because he was such a lover, a teddy bear, then he just became Bear. He was the sweetest boy. He was mama’s kitty. He talked for years, then he just stopped. I suppose he ran out of story to tell me. He was always near me or on me.

When we lived in a house, he would wander off, never far, I’d call and within a couple of minutes he was home. He was getting tubbier and tubbier until one day he jumped off of the hood of my Honda with an audible “oof” and I decided to put a collar on him, sure he was being fed somewhere else too. After the collar went on, he started hanging out at home more and lost weight.

My Bear always slept on my shoulder at night, I’d roll over and he’d climb right back on or roll me like a log. He was my love, my light for 20 years. We lost our precious Bear to kidney failure. I still feel him come sleep on my shoulder and Oscar, who sleeps on my hip will scoot down and make room when I feel Bear come visit me.