Farewell, Beanie

Last Friday was a very sad day for me, my wife Anne, and my daughter Leela. We had to euthanize our cat Beanie, who had been with us for nearly twenty-two years. That is almost half of our forty-five years of marriage. And, as anyone who has ever loved a pet knows, Beanie was a member of our family. She was not like a family member; she was a family member.

Our daughter Leela and her then-boyfriend found Beanie in the boyfriend’s yard one cold November night when Beanie was maybe five weeks old and weighed barely a pound. Beanie had gotten separated from her mother somehow and probably would not have survived the night. But she ended up surviving longer than any previous cat either my wife or I had ever had, and we both have had cats all of our lives.

"Maybe if I had started crying for my father, I might never have stopped. I don’t know."

I suppose because Beanie was being handled by people so early in her life, she was friendly with everyone and very tactile. She was completely comfortable being touched. She even seemed to enjoy having her tummy rubbed, which many cats object to and let their humans know it. She often sat with us and on us and regularly slept under the covers with us. I have known and had some very affectionate cats, but Beanie was in a class by herself.