Goodbye, Bessie (2008-2018)

By David McElroy · May 15, 2018

Bessie never really wanted to live with me.

She and her sister were feral street kittens who were terrified of the world. But when their mother disappeared after I’d been seeing them for a few months — leaving the babies alone on my front porch — I had no choice but to bring them inside when it got cold that fall.

For 10 years, she’s reluctantly shared my home. She never lost her feral fear of the world, but she accepted my food and she stole my heart.

There was nothing wrong with Bessie when I got home Tuesday evening. She was impatiently waiting for dinner, just as the rest of the cats were. But by the time I went to feed them dinner, something had happened.

Instead of loudly demanding food — as she did ever night — she laid peacefully in one of her favorite sleeping spots. When she didn’t move, I feared the worst. When I touched her, she was already cold.

I had no reason to believe anything was wrong with her. She hasn’t acted unusual in any way. But there must be something wrong in the genes she and her sister share. When they were young, Molly had four kittens — which I wrote about long ago — and now three of those four daughters have died.

One of the kittens lived only a couple of weeks, not long enough to even get a name. Emily lived until three years ago. About a year later, Charlotte died. Both of them had an illness that the vet couldn’t figure out. Their bodies essentially stopped taking in nourishment, even though both ate all the time.

And now I’ve lost little Bessie. Of the six cats in their little family, only Bessie’s virtual twin, Molly, and Molly’s daughter, Anne, survive.

Can you tell which is which in this picture? Other than the amount of white between their eyes, they were pretty much identical. Molly’s on the left and Bessie is lying beside her.

There was two other differences between the two sisters. Bessie had only three legs, for one.

She wasn’t born that way, but she had an accident when she was young. She somehow got some strands of fabric wrapped around her paw as she played under the bed one day. Because she was feral, she wouldn’t call for help from me. She just pulled and pulled on the fabric, tightening the grip and killing the blood flow to the paw. By the time I found her and got her out, her only hope was amputating her leg. (I’ve talked before about how my online friends surprised me by raising the $1,800 to pay for her bills.)

She hobbled around just fine on three legs. A girl who was already tiny weighed even less than before with only three legs. Bessie and Molly each have weighed between 4.5 and 5 pounds, as have all of Molly’s adult offspring. I’ve never been around cats so small.

There was another difference between them. Molly has never gotten over her fear of people enough to even let me pick her up. I’ve never heard her purr. I’ve never been able to hold her except when I’ve given her flea treatments and she’s fought me as though her life depended on it.

Bessie would occasionally let me pick her up. She learned to trust me just a little bit. At times. And in those wonderful times when she could close her eyes and relax in my arms, she would purr for me. Coming from a feral cat who’s still filled with tremendous fear, it’s a beautiful sound.

I’m going to miss Bessie. It’s going to take me awhile to quit looking at Molly and wondering briefly which of the sisters I’m seeing.

I’m going to miss the two of them sleeping together, huddled closely just the way they were when I first caught them on my porch and brought them inside on a cold night about 10 years ago.

I regret that Bessie could never get over all of her fear, but I’m really proud of how far she came with being able to trust me. I’m sorry I won’t have any more years to teach her that it’s OK to trust — and that it’s OK to lie in my arms and purr.

I’m going to miss her, but at least I know she will never feel afraid again.

Goodbye, little Bessie.

Note: All three of the photos of Bessie will enlarge to a bigger size if you’d like to click of them to see her more clearly.

Share on Social Networks

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

Related Posts