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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nOr “Beloved Old Goof”. Or “Barrel O’Greatness”. Or even “God” in Russian, at least so I’ve been told. His name was BOG, but it meant many things to many people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note the past tense. Fuck I hate writing these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I introduced you all to him back in 2012<\/a>, when half his fur was clear-cut and he was covered in scabs. I think I may have described him as “one of the homeliest mammals in all of southern Ontario”. He came by his scars honestly: first spotted as a full-grown adult, living rough in an abandoned car for eight years before he started doing so badly that some kindly do-gooders trapped him and started him on the road to retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We still had a huge Banana-shaped hole<\/a> in the Magic Bungalow but of course someone passed his stats on to the BUG, and the Meez laid out the most logical argument her 12-year-old brain could muster, and we drove across town “just for a look” but somehow a cat carrier ended up in the car with us and we would’ve looked really dumb if we’d driven it all that way and never even used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But God he was a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peppered with scabs, half his fur shaved off, several teeth rotted away and the rest in need of immediate extraction. He had congenital micropthalmia: his eyeballs were the right size, but the slits they looked out through were too small. Worse, his eyelids were kind of folded down and around, so fur scratched BOG’s corneas every time he blinked. For over a decade he’d looked out upon the world through squinty, lacerated, running eyes. They had been hurting him his whole life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We fixed that, along with everything else. There was nothing anyone could do about the width of the eyelids\u2014BOG was going to be saddled with squinty mole-eyes for the rest of his life\u2014but we could at least get their edges rolled back up so nothing touched those tortured orbs but tears and tissue. (It’s not your average veterinary procedure; fortunately Julia Hammond<\/a>, who was working at Kato Animal Hospital<\/a> back then, knew those ropes. She was awesome.) It was a pretty invasive procedure, and BOG was even homelier than normal during his convalescence. But The BOG abides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And judging by his behavior post-op, the drugs were great.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n He never did grow into any kind of looker, but over the years he bulked out and developed into a being that exemplified both quiet dignity and unmitigated goofiness. In a bungalow where half the residents always seemed to be hissing and spitting at the other half (not to mention the cats themselves), he was a gentle orange paw of moderation. Taking his rightful place at our side while we worked, he would place a quelling paw on our mouse hands when he thought we were working too hard; if that wasn’t sufficient, he would wrap his paws around our wrists and force us to type one-handed. The click click click<\/em> of his claws on hardwood preceded his welcome entrance into any room. No great beauty, he nonetheless instantly won the hearts of all who met him. More than one visitor to the Magic Bungalow looked down at those squinty eyes and that increasingly-tottery frame and uttered the words\u2014almost a mantra: “That cat has seen<\/em> some things.” His profile expanded into the public sphere when I incorporated him into my official author photo back in 2017; it peaked just last month, when he appeared in a glossy German culture\/fashion magazine with two hot chicks making out on the cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the work day was over he’d join the rest of us on the bed for salmon, sushi or feta (depending on the night’s menu), and snooze while The BUG and I watched the latest episode of whatever had caught our eye on Netflix or Soap2Day. Should some disturbance awaken him\u2014a tussle amongst the junior members of the Gang of Fur, unauthorized movement among the can openers\u2014 he would lift his head, survey the tableau, and heave a world-weary sigh before going back to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those sighs were one of his trademarks. They conveyed a sense of wisdom that, honestly, BOG probably didn’t have in great abundance. But perhaps he was thinking back to all those years spent in his junkyard, the freezing cold and the scorching heat, the frostbite and the pain in his mouth and the lacerated eyes that had just been The Way Things Are from the day he was born. The tum that went empty far too often. Perhaps he was comparing that to this new life, where there was no pain and scritches on demand, where all he had to do to get fed was to sit next to his bowl looking needy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe a world-weary sigh. Maybe just a sigh of contentment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The staff down at Kato’s would battle to the death for the privilege of tending BOG’s needs when we brought him in; I heard at least one of them describe him as “a legend”. He sailed through those checkups with flying colors. In recent years each veterinary transcript came with its own formulaic caveat tacked on to the end\u2014given his current age and condition there is a 95% chance that BOG will develop kidney disease within the next year<\/em>\u2014 but he never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s an irony in this that stretches over a decade. Back in 2012 Toronto Cat Rescue initially refused our adoption request because we were already a multi-cat household, and they didn’t think an FIV-positive cat would do well with us. (They changed their minds after I pointed them to my eulogy for Banana<\/a>. Can I write, or what?) Since then, we’ve watched younger cats<\/a> with healthier backstories<\/a> succumb (another of ours is suffering from kidney disease right now) while BOG, with his micropthalmia and tooth rot and FIV, just kept on ticking. He beat every odd, surmounted every travail with supreme unbroken chill. He was the best kind of outlier: a statistical anomaly sheathed in orange fur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Honestly, I was starting to think he’d live forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/p>\n\n\n\n BOG spent his retirement soaking up the love of every adoring Human he ever met, of course; but it wasn’t until quite late that he experienced the love of his own kind. We found Doofus abandoned under a bleacher in the winter of 2021. We took him in. We made a few token efforts to locate his Human, on the off chance that he’d somehow escaped from a loving home and not just been ditched by some heartless asshole. We adopted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>