The past 48 hours have been difficult, dealing with the loss of a longtime faithful friend. But a sad remembrance wouldn’t do her justice, because she brought so much joy and laughter into our lives. So to honor her memory, I’d like to share some of my favorite Furrari stories.

My mom and I adopted her on the day after Thanksgiving, 1985, from the animal shelter in Pinole, CA. The sign on her cage said her original name was Sweet Pea, and she was about five months old. She had been in the stressful shelter environment for a month already, and was not eating well; as a result she was even bonier than the typical teenager cat. When we took her to the vet, despite her malnourished state, she hopped down off the examining table and proceeded to explore the room, tail at 12:00. The vet commented, “You have a very outgoing kitten there.”

Once we got her home, lack of appetite was ancient history. She did such an excellent job of tanking up that when we took her back to the vet a month later, he thought we’d pulled a feline switcheroo on him. In later years, she developed a paunch that inspired Kevin to nickname her “Catzilla” and “Jabba the Catt”.

I wanted to help her restore her kittenish figure, but not all kitty weight loss ideas are created equal. For example, I tried putting her in a harness so we could go for walks outside. Unfortunately, Furry’s strategy for dealing with the harness was to simply tip over sideways and refuse to move. I thought maybe putting her on a treadmill—still in the harness—would force her to walk, but she simply fell over sideways again and rode the tread surface off the back of the platform, whereupon she landed with a dainty thud and a reproachful squawk.

Furry had unusual taste in “toys”, with a special fondness for small cylindrical objects. You could not leave a drinking straw unattended in a glass; she would swipe the straw and perform an entire kitty ballet with it. After Furry discovered the bathroom cabinet, we returned home one day to find the living room strewn with well-mauled tampons. They did sort of look like little mice… Later, when the moving company came to pack us up, they found a bunch more under the fridge. Try explaining that to a Teamster.

She certainly enjoyed typical feline favorites such as tuna, but the way to get her completely berserk with excitement was to open a bag of tortilla chips. For some reason she was a fiend for anything corn-related, and would even chew on a corn broom given the opportunity.

Furry always did things differently. She would sit on top of the scratching post and lean over the side, scratching upside down. Last year we were given a scratching post which dispensed kibble when a scratching cat pulled down on it. She, however, figured out that she could also get kibble by pushing the post up with her nose and letting it drop. Imagine trying to sleep with “ka-thunk crunch crunch ka-thunk crunch crunch” going on. Every night, “ka-thunk crunch crunch ka-thunk crunch crunch.” Furrari was a clever cat, but sometimes “ka-thunk crunch crunch ka-thunk crunch crunch” we wished maybe she were “ka-thunk crunch crunch ka-thunk crunch crunch” a little more like other cats. “ka-thunk crunch crunch ka-thunk crunch crunch.” Finally we moved the unit as far away from the bedroom as possible.

She was definitely a “talker”, usually prefacing her meows with a trill. She never enjoyed being picked up and cuddled, but was very affectionate with trills, purrs, head bonks and slurps, tail waving like a flag on Independence Day. I often threatened to get her a helmet, since she habitually butted her head into the coffee table with an audible clunk.

Furry was a well-traveled cat. Over her nearly nineteen years she was a part of several cross-country moves, including the 4500-mile road trips to and from Alaska. Each morning on the trip north, she led me on a merry chase when I was trying to catch her and put her in her carrier. One morning, in a motel room somewhere on the Alaska Highway, Furry was not to be found.

The bed was typical of motel rooms, with that barrier underneath that keeps things from getting lost under the bed. Or so I thought. Eventually I located Furry within that hollow under-bed platform; she had gained entrance through holes in the bottom of the box spring. With her most devious hiding place to date having been revealed, she finally decided she had exhausted her bag of tricks. Afterward, she walked right into her carrier by herself, giving me a resigned look.

In these last few years, she has been the grande dame of a three-cat household. Despite her advancing age, she never shrank from giving our big tomcat Taz what-for when he got too big for his royal Siamese britches. She offered only token objections when the young calico Suzie-Q joined us, and they got along very well. She had a sunny disposition to match her bright orange coat.

Her body, an earthly cocoon, was only a small part of who she was. Her spirit lives on, and we will be together again. Love you, Pooh Bear. See you after ‘while.

[This post was written originally for blogoSFERICS quite some time before Chris started her own blog. I’ve moved the post here because, well, really it belongs with her other critter-related writings. And I think Furrari prefers it this way.—McGehee]