Today marks nine months since my sweet friend Salem passed away, in the morning at a few minutes after 11:00 a.m. on August 2, 2009 at my home in Escazu, Costa Rica. I miss him very much. He was one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever known. Whenever I called him he would always come to me. He was not really a lap cat, in the sense that he rarely wanted to settle in there but he did like to jump up regularly and be petted. When I went to bed each night, he would jump up on my chest to “say goodnight,” and he always slept with me on the bed, nestled against my leg. He loved to eat almost anything and was a bit fat. When he ran his belly would swing back and forth beneath him like a sack of Jello. When I picked him up he was like a sack of warm rice. Salem came to me from a Humane Society in 1997 in Eureka. He was a few months old. He became Cloud’s friend very quickly. I was shocked and saddened when I learned, only a few days before he passed last August, that he had cancerous tumors on his kidneys and liver. I had to have him put to sleep, and quickly, to avoid him suffering. I know Cloud’s death was very hard for him. He would often sit in the bathroom after Cloud passed, where Cloud had spent so much time in his final days. Salem would meow in that squeaky way he had. He really missed Cloud. That was why I finally broke down and got another cat, Jasmine, much earlier than I had planned. She was for Salem. Five weeks after Cloud passed I got her, to help him forget Cloud. But I wonder if the stress of losing Cloud was what might’ve caused his cancer to happen, because he started to change only about six months after Cloud left. He suddenly stopped playing with Jasmine. I never knew what was wrong until it was too late.
He could be very skittish at times, but his affection was reliable and deep. He was always there for me. And my life has not been the same without him. Wishing all of you joy with your kitties.
Geoff, Angel Cloud, Angel Salem, Jasmine and Kensho
www.picasaweb.google.com/gsmith659/InMemoryOfSalem
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I loved my friend
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began--
I loved my friend.
Langston Hughes
