An Ode to Buddy the Cat

This last week Mom’s Cat, Buddy, passed away.  He was my mom’s constant companion and she loved to spoil him.  Mom has taken it rather hard.  She says she can’t believe how much she misses “his little person” around the house.  He was such great company to her.  Some of you may remember that I did a painting of him as a gift for my mom back around Thanksgiving in 2010.  I called it "Mom's 10 lbs. Butterball".

Oil on 11" x 14" Canvasboard.

I remember when she first got him and took him for car rides.  I was like “Mom, you realize this is a cat and not a dog.  Cat’s generally have issues with motion sickness in the car.”  Mom said to me, “He’s going to be a “Car Cat” if it kills him.”  And that was the end of that discussion.   Buddy actually did end up loving to go with Mom on car rides.  He would either lie in her lap or perch himself in the back window of her car as they tooled together around on the eastern Iowa roadways.  The image of them brings a smile to my face.

A earlier watercolor of Buddy that ended up getting lost in Omaha.

Mom admits that Buddy could be stubborn at times.  (I think it might have been a bit of mom’s German stubbornness that rubbed off on Buddy?)  But Buddy purred a lot to let her know he was contented and happy.  Buddy would crawl under the blankets on Mom’s bed and sleep the whole night through.  He loved to roll around on the cement patio on sunny days and he enjoyed his catnip too.  He had a pretty good life.  I sometimes would tease Mom that she treated Buddy better than she ever treated any of us kids.  I also think that if I ever get reincarnated I want to come back as someone's spoiled cat. 

He was relatively young.  It came as some what of a shock to me because Buddy was only a little over 8 years old.  But I think that it’s always a shock and hard to accept loosing a pet.  Pets are a part of us and a part of our lives.  Then, there’s the wonderful unconditional love that we received from them.  It’s hard to loose that.  I still have my days when I see someone walking a black lab dog that I miss my old dog Rocky who I had for almost 14 years.  It takes time to get over something like that.  All I can say is “Hang in there Mom!”  It gets easier with the passing of time.  Mom- my love, thoughts, and prayers are with you.