Domino

The last feline member of our family is gone. This is especially hard for me, because she's always been my cat particularly. I've lived with several cats over the years, including when I was a kid, but of all of them, she was the only one that became especially attached to me personally. It's more accurate to say that I was her person than that she was my cat.

She was the queen of quirkiness, with more personality than I've seen in any other cat. She loved doughnuts (would do almost anything for one!) and Lebanon bologna. She used to make what my wife called "monkey noises", where it sounded as though she was trying to talk to us. It's hard to describe. Sometimes she'd chitter or trill (both of which I've heard other cats do), but sometimes it'd be almost like she was trying to form words. Sometimes it sounded like "uh-oh!", which was particularly hilarious when she said it after she'd gotten into trouble.

I could tell numerous stories about her. On one occasion, my wife was eating a doughnut and Domino jumped up and started eating from the other side of the doughnut as fast as she could, until my wife realized she was there and yelled. On another, my wife had made rice crispie treats to take into work, and left them out to cool. Domino decided they looked like a nice warm place to sleep and curled up on top of them. When my wife found her, she chased Domi around the house, and I was seriously concerned about Domino's continued well being for quite a while there.

She was very insistent when she wanted something. If she decided she wanted a lap to occupy, the only way that you weren't going to provide one was to never sit down. I spent many nights with her on my lap as I've typed these entries, frequently stopping to perform the required neck scratches. Sometimes it was a pain in the backside to work with her there, but now I'm glad I did it as often as I did, and wish I'd done it more.

I could go on and on with stories about Domino, some of which require visual components I can't adequately supply in writing. I'll never hear the phrase "dinner and a show" without thinking of one particular incident involving her. It's all the more painful because she was the last animal in the house, when we used to joke about our home zoo. She really warmed up as a personality this past year because she'd always wanted to be the only cat and finally had that position. Cats don't make a lot of noise, but somehow the house seems far more quiet now. I really don't understand why that is. We'll have pets again, but we've decided to take a long break before we do. We've had the privilege of some truly rare personalities in our furry housemates. We had Domi for roughly 18 1/2 years (from the time she was five or six weeks old), which is a good long run for a cat, and it still could never be enough. We'll miss her very much.