Doug’s Dynamic Drivel

Reading “Kyle Banas’ post on his old cat dredged up a lot of old memories for me. I don’t write about myself much, I’m pretty much a private person, but I want to tell you about one of the dearest friends I’ve had in my life, my old cat Basil.

I got married for the first time in 1988. Once we were able to buy a townhome Barbara and I, both being cat lovers, contacted a local cat shelter in the hopes of adopting a cat. When we visited the shelter it was rather an amazing sight. it was located in hte basement of a house and the cats ran free in the room. There must have been close to 60 cats there, all rescued from the street. A lot to choose from for sure.

So how do you choose in that circumstance. Well I wandered around trying to make friends with various cats but none struck my fancy or seemed to fancy me. After awhile I stopped and tried a differnt strategy, I sat on the floor and decided to see which cat would adopt me instead. It didn’t take long. A beautiful female marmalade walked over to me, gave me the once over and plopped herself in my lap, curled up and started purring. I was a goner. That was Basil. She was a smart cat.

We took Basil home and over the course of the next year we acquired three more cats from that shelter. All the cats had FIV, or Feline Immunodeficiency Virus which made them hard to find homes for so we boarded them at our home to help the shelter out. But of all the cats we had Basil was always my favourite.

As things sometimes go in life our marriage fell apart aftre four years when Barbara fell in love with another man. They are happily married now and I wish them both all the best.

I took Basil with me when I moved and that was the best thing I could have done for myself. She was my constant companion. When I was down, and for a long time I was very down, Basil knew it and always came to me and dragged my attention away from myself and onto her. It was uncanny, but she always knew when I needed a friend the most and she was always there. I really don’t know, and sometimes doubt, if I would have made it through those dark times without her. She was a loving cat.

In time I came out of my depression and got on with my life and that’s when I met Noelle. We bought a condo in Surrey together and moved in. However, as I’ve mentioned before on this site I am a pagan Before we moved in we went to the new place to do a cleansing ritual and we took Basil with us. After all this was to be her new home too. We set up an altar in the living room and cast a circle encompassing our whole suite. Then Noelle and I walked the perimeter of the entire suite, through each room smudging and energizing some protection stones for the quarters. During this time Basil just sat in the middle of the circle, in the living room, calmly watching us. When we had finished walking the perimeter I sat down in front of Basil and looked her riight in hte eyes and told her “Ok, now it’s your turn”. She sat there looking at me for a few seconds then meowed, got up and paced the perimeter of each room in sequence just as we had, making the place her own and adding her own cat protection to it. She was a magickal cat.

Basil lived with us for two years until one day she was just too sick to go on. The FIV had finally taken its toll. Now came the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life, and I have had to do some very hard things. One morning when i got up I discovered Basil could no longer walk, she was dragging her hind quarters. I knew that this was the end for her but I still hoped for a miracle. I took her to the vet and he told me here was no hope and that the kindest thing I could do for her would be to “put her down”.What an awful term but I guess it will have to do. He left me alone with her for a few minutes to saay goodbye, I just wasn’t brave enough to hold her while he injected her. I know that Basil knew what was happening. She looked at me. meowed and dragged herself across the examining table to be near me. Here I was about to take her life and she was trying to comfort me. So long as I live I will have forever burned into my vision the sight of the vet carrying her out of the room and her looking back over his shoulder at me. To this day I do not know how I made it home in one piece, I know I hated myself for not staying with her to the end, but it was just too painful for me. She was a brave and generous cat.

That night, after crying myself to sleep, racked with remorse and self loathing, I woke up feeling a weight on my legs. I looked down and there was Basil looking at me and purring. Every hair on her body was glowing as if they were strands of fiber optic cable. She stayed there for a minute then disappeared. In life Basil was never allowed in the bedroom and certainly not on the bed due to Noelle being allergic, but I guess this was the exception. Basil had come back for a brief moment to tell me in her own way that I had done the right thing and that she was OK. She was a healing cat, and I will miss and love her forever. Thank you my friend.

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