Someone to Watch Over Me

by I Dig Bad Boys

October 22, 2001, was the day my world temporarily came to a standstill. That was the day we visited our veterinarian and took my cat Precious for The Long Walk. It wasn’t a walk I wanted her to take, but a walk necessitated by her condition. As I sat there, holding her for the very last time, tears rolled down my face like a river, and I mourned her loss. It made it very hard to go to work that night, but somehow I did, and I made it through my shift. I didn’t know it then, but when I got home there was someone to watch over me.

A few months before, my husband and I had moved into our first house and I got a case of what he calls ‘Kitten Fever." I wanted a kitten even though we already had two, Precious and Rumpleteazer. But the party didn’t quite feel complete, and so we decided to adopt a kitten. I had fallen in love with a big, gray female named Mitzy at the local PetSmart, but according to Mitzy’s foster mom, she had an attitude problem and would be better off as a singleton. Would we like to look at some other kittens, she asked, and we agreed. We talked over the phone about the personalities of our resident cats and what sort of kitten we were looking for. The foster mom said she had the perfect kitten for us, an eight-week-old brown and tan female named “D." I agreed to look at her and make a decision, knowing full well this probably wouldn’t be the kitten for us. But as soon as the cage door was open, this tiny brown puffball hurled itself to my husband’s shoulder and attached itself with ferocity, purring like a motorboat in high gear. That was it. We didn’t have to choose… we had been chosen.

The puffball was later named Buttercup, after Princess Buttercup from the movie The Princess Bride. She insinuated herself into our daily routine with ease and became my constant companion and guardian. Wherever I am in the house, Buttercup feels she must be also, on my lap or on the computer monitor or shadowing my every movement as I cook in the kitchen. She is always by my side.

I didn’t know it then, but her love would help me overcome the grief I felt at losing Precious. Precious was ‘my’ cat; she didn’t like anyone else save our friend Janice who had no cats. Everyone else she seemed to hate on sight and would go out of her way to attack them for little reason. But me she loved without rhyme or reason, without cause. I felt grateful to have her love as I have Buttercup’s now. In those dark, dark days after Precious' passing, I often cried myself to sleep or made myself sick with grief. I worried, torturing myself over the decision to put my cat to sleep, wondering if I’d done the "right" thing. But every time I started to cry, I felt a little paw on my foot and Buttercup would look at me with those big sun-yellow eyes of hers and say without words, “I am here. Let me heal you.”

Eventually, though it took months, I overcame my grief, though I still miss that beautiful cat every day of my life. I didn’t know it then, but when we adopted Buttercup, we adopted someone to watch over me. She seems to always know what I am thinking and to always be by my side, loving me with unconditional love, never asking for anything more than a kind word or a pet or a scratch behind the ears. I think that somewhere, someone knew what was going to transpire before it even happened and sent this gentle soul to me to help me through the darkest of my days. I don’t know who and didn’t know why then, but now I know and I am grateful. Grateful for her love, grateful to have someone to watch over me.