Tough Love

We're finding it difficult to celebrate the holiday season while mourning the loss of a much loved family member.
     One spring afternoon in 1995, a white kitten with a black eye patch crawled into my lap and looked up at me as if to say, "Here I am. Take me home." So of course I did.
     She was true trailer trash, born beneath the single-wide of a good ol' Georgia boy. But we never told her that. Instead we named her Calliope (after the muse of epic poetry), and she grew into a blue-eyed beauty. She charmed us with her quirky habits, such as sleeping in a shoe box or leaping to the bowl of the fountain in the garden and drinking from the spout.
     After a period of dramatic disdain, Callie condescended to accept Sam (named for Samuel Johnson, poet and essayist), a marmalade stray who came over the board fence one day and decided to set up housekeeping. Eventually, they became buddies and bedmates, sharing the wicker basket in front of the fire.
     In this, her fifteenth year, Callie's beauty faded, and she grew blind, arthritic, senile, and incontinent--despite all our efforts to the contrary. Parting with her just before Christmas was our most difficult--and kindest--act of love.

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