Sweet King

I had NPR on in the morning as I was getting reading for work on September 11th, 2001, and I was listening in tears about the first crash. Then I heard the second crash happen and I wailed with fear and horror. Reggie came running to me. He wove his way around and through my legs, pushing against me, and I reached down and pet him until I stopped crying. I was 26, umarried, alone in the first home I owned. Reggie was 6 months old.

In the beginning of June that same year, I first met Reggie in the kitten room at the Pasadena Humane Society. He had been discovered alone and didn't have litter mates. Tiny, near black with darker spots and stripes when you looked hard enough at his fur, he was round-bellied, big-eared, and ridiculous-looking as a kitten. When I walked into the room, I looked at him, he looked at me, and he yelled and climbed his cage wall to get as close to me as possible. Our connection was instantaneous. We knew each other.

In the condo in Pasadena, Reggie came running downstairs every day when he heard the garage door open upon my arrival home from work, and he would be waiting by the door when I entered. He talked all the time. It felt like he was telling me about his day and asking me about mine. He grew up to be beautiful, solid black with golden eyes. He always wanted to be stroked, and would stand in front of me then and for the rest of his life, stopping me from wherever I was headed to pause for a moment and give him some love. In that same house, I fell in love with E, and E fell in love with me and Reggie and Rose, Reggie's long deceased former companion.

Within a few years, we all moved to our home on the canyon in Altadena. There, Reggie found new windows from which to observe the world, new sunrays in which to sit. Sometimes he would come to the backyard with me, but most of the time he spent inside, enjoying the view and the leisure. When Indiana-the-dog came to live with us, it was fearless Reggie who taught him how to be near cats. And when Rose died, Reggie and Indiana became more tolerant of each other, eventually becoming companions rather than just housemates.

Then there was the other move, years later, the life altering move that ended the marriage between E and me but offered me a new life in a new place. But it wasn't all new, because Reggie, the creature that comforted me whenever I cried, the creature that has since the moment he entered my life, saught a way to be as close to me as possible, moved with me, first to the rental house then to our San Francisco home. He purred me along through the divorce, sometimes pushing his rolling chest up against mine, heart to heart, while he purred and loved and I was able to just keep going.

When Scott and the kids entered my life, he was content to have another lap or two to sit on. He still slept on my shoulder every night, curled tight against me. Sometimes, he'd roll over and ask for a belly rub. But, he kept slowing down. In the past few months, he'd been sick with a host of age related maladies. Last night, he didn't come to bed to be with me, and today, his back legs no longer worked correctly. He hardly talked at all today. He hurt. It was time.

Tonight at the vet, I got to hold him in my lap as he fell asleep for the last time against me. I was able to pet him until he no longer moved, to thank him for every comfort he has given me, for being the consistent king of my lap while the rest of the world had rearranged itself completely around us.

Oh, Reggie, thank you for your almost 18 years. I am so sad. I already miss you.