Pema R.I.P.

Pema in her prime.  Click photos to see in full.  BK photos

She was in all senses a rescue cat--rescued from starvation by friends who found her in their barn.  They didn't think she'd make it through the night.  She was probably about two years old, but nobody knows.

We met her shortly afterwards, twelve summers ago, and she adopted us.  We named her Pema, after the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron.  As I've said (or bragged) before, she soon lived up to her name, impressing our next door neighbor (not a fan of cats) by sitting still in one place in the back yard and just being.

 Eventually we would say "Meditation, Pema!" and she would stroll into the living room, where she would sit on my lap and I would meditate on petting her just the way she liked it.

She was semi-feral at first and only Margaret's patience and persistence got her out of the cat carrier in the kitchen.  It took a lot longer for her to warm up to me, but once she did, she was all in.

She was smart from the start.  She learned how doors work, and soon opened them herself.  It wasn't long before she became the queen of the household.  But she was never any trouble, except for her various health problems in recent years--she kept within the backyard boundaries outside, and did no damage to anything inside.  Except for a salamander she brought in a few times (and it survived), she never hurt another creature.  She was more of an indoor cat, and in recent years exclusively so.

She had her peculiarities.  She didn't drink water from her water dish (only in with her wet food); she hid from everyone but us, and she refused to be picked up.  All of that changed, mostly in her last weeks.

I nursed her as best I could through her final illness, and with courage she proved the adage about nine lives. Though she had to be in pain much of the time, she insisted on living her life as normally as she could, and even as we adapted, she was sweet and gentle and affectionate.

I learned a lot from her, like always know you have a clear exit before you enter a room.  We got to a point that she understood my words and I understood her non-verbal communications, most of the time anyway. But I won't go into what she meant to me, which was a lot: this is about her.

She was beautiful as you can see (a vet told us that a female with her coloration is rare.)  She was more than rare: she was unique, because of who she was, and who she became in relationship to us.  She became Pema, and she was Pema to the end.  May she rest in peace.  We will miss her every day.