In Memory of Buzz the Cat, 2011-2024

This is Buzz. Buzz is gone.

Buzz was a tuxedo cat we adopted as a kitten for my stepson's 16th birthday. My stepson turned 29 this year.

Buzz was sleek, playful and had the prettiest tuxedo cat markings ever (a blaze on his nose, a white tail tip, white feet and a small white bib).

Buzz was also a problem sprayer all of his life.  I went through three couches and three easy chairs because of this. At the end of his life, we had aluminum foil and washable chair covers on all our furniture, and we had given up on having a couch. We tried everything. We tried Feliway, we tried various combinations and changes regarding litter boxes, we tried it all.  He would just spray when he wanted to. It didn't seem tied to stress. My final theory on this was that one of his testicles hadn't descended properly when he was neutered as a kitten, and that caused some sort of hormonal thing.

Buzz was the leader of our little clowder until he got ill towards the end of his life. He kept our youngest, fattest cat, Yuri, under control, and stood off from Krysta, our long-haired female cat who doesn't really like other cats, and was friends with our other tuxedo cat, Apollo.

Buzz played all the time. He was also very affectionate. He liked to get on laps and stretch out.  

He was an indoor-only cat, and when he was younger he would sometimes get out and stay outside until he had to go to the bathroom, at which point he would finally come in because he didn't know he could poop anywhere outside.

He was the best cat. My husband, who died about six months before he did, always commented that he was the oldest and yet most playful of our cats.  

You would think that my son and I would be relieved we don't have to worry about the spraying anymore, but we actually just feel sad.  I took all the foil down, and the rest of the cats are fine with having a lot more soft surfaces to sleep on, but we just miss our beautiful Buzz.

2024 has been a dark year

Chris, 1958-2024

Starting from now, I am making myself yet another promise to get back to blogging here, because I feel like I have things to say and not enough people to say them to. 

 I lost my husband in February. He had a lot of health issues, many of which were from his lifestyle, and one big one that was a rare genetic disorder. The lifestyle health issues contributed, but the big genetic disorder ultimately killed him.

He was my best friend, and we loved talking about stuff. All stuff. He was the person to bounce things off on, the person to come home to, the person to play board games with or spend hours on YouTube with or cuddle with. We met in 2009 and married in 2017.  It would have been exactly 15 years we were together had he lived another three months. 

He is gone and I am very bereft. 

I live with my grown son and three remaining cats - we also lost our oldest, amazing, beautiful cat later in the year. We are coping with a lot of grief for my husband, the cat and our values (now that we have also had a very traumatic national election that did not go the way we were hoping). 

 Hold your loved ones very close. If you have a choice between vegging out and doing an activity with them, do the activity. Many of them will be gone before you are, and those activities will create memories that sustain you in your grief. Love yourself but don't forget to check in with others you care about. If you are having a difficult time, maybe they are too. The best thing to do in grief, I've found, is to help each other. Just grieving together is much less soul-crushing than grieving alone. 

Commemorate those you've lost, through your own rituals and your own thoughts. Memory is a very weird, subjective, often objectively false thing but it is all we have from our pasts. 

 If you're reading this, bookmark and check back in. I will once again try to be more regular in screaming into the void.