Aloysius and Angelique

Glenn and I had a brief respite from our time in Washington state in the late 90’s - this was a long time ago. I can’t believe how long ago it was.

Long story short - after nine years of rain we thought it would be a capital idea to go back to Colorado, so we did a lease-purchase on our house in Washington (I do not recommend this, unless you want to have an unscheduled adventure), sold pretty much all of our worldly goods, packed up the two dogs and three cats, and moved to Boulder, Colorado. 

We settled in, and I got a job at a place that allowed PETS (mostly dogs) to come to work with the employees. 

Before we moved, we had lost a cat named Mel. He was a great cat, and we didn’t have him long. Without going into a lot of detail, he was teaching me a lesson which involved him disappearing. This is a very simplified version of Mel’s story, for context, and I sense another blog in my future about the wonderful Mel. 

Mel looked a bit like this

So there I am, missing my teacher Mel, who said he would come back at some point, and one of my fellow employees at this company brought in a mama cat and her four kittens. Mama was sick (and on the mend), but while she was taking medicine she couldn’t feed her kittens, so the human was bottle feeding them every two hours. Mama cat was black. All of the kittens were black. 

I love black cats.

I hung around the desk with the kittens probably more than I should have, and found out that the kittens needed a home. Well, I couldn’t take them all, but I could certainly have one, right? I got the news that Mel had returned with these kittens. All I had to do was pick one out (and Spirit always directs you to the right one.) Except I couldn’t decide which one I wanted, the boy or the girl. Dither, dither, dither. It’s usually pretty easy to find a soul when it wants to be found, but this was becoming a problem. Which one was it? (I didn’t even recognize this for what it was - more teaching. Mel was always teaching.)

Two black kittens reminiscent of A & A

In the end, they both felt right, so we took them both. Their names, they told us, were Aloysius and Angelique. They came home to us when they were eight weeks old. Angelique was adventurous and boisterous. Aloysius, on the other hand, was quiet and a little shy. He always hung back. One of his front legs was a teeny bit shorter than the other, so he had a little hitch in his gitalong. They were like two halves of a whole, and we remarked on it more than once as we watched and enjoyed them. My friend Joy said Mel couldn’t decide whether to be a boy or girl, so split his soul and inhabited both bodies. More teaching. More fun for us, we decided, and loved them both and laughed at their antics.

The dogs were very good with them, even our Husky, Kara. Even so, we usually put the kittens in our bedroom when we went to work, and let the dogs have the run of the rest of the house. 

One day we came home from work and realized we had left our bedroom door open. Laying on the floor, still and lifeless, was Angelique. She didn’t have a mark on her. No slobber, no bites, no broken bones. Just no life. Neither of the dogs was acting guilty. We never figured out what happened, and most animals, after they pass on, don’t really care. There are agreements of which we’re unaware. Nobody was saying, not even to Joy. The message was “it doesn’t matter.”

What mattered was Mel had made a choice. He decided he liked being a boy more than being a girl, and so let go of the girl body. Just. Like. That. 

As time went on, we noticed that Aloysius had changed. He was still his delightful, quiet self. But he was also bolder, and more boisterous. The two halves had come together in one body.

So handsome, with panther ears.

Aloysius stayed with us for 17-1/2 years. He was an amazing cat, with brilliant amber eyes and a wisdom that oozed from his body. He was incredibly athletic, despite his shorter leg. He could jump five feet straight up a wall, and would do it just for fun. He was interested in everything, loved to play, and equally loved to sit on your lap for hours, purring and snoozing. When his life on this planet was over, he made it clear he would not be coming back. He had fulfilled his mission, and was moving on. He was a great teacher of letting go, and I am so grateful that he spent time with us, and taught us so much.