My Best Friend Ever
It is a consumer's market, and everyone - advertisers, Youtube, network TV - they all want your eyeballs. So I feel like I have to give you a preface as to why you should spend your valuable time reading this post. I will tell you why it might be worth reading this, and then you can decide whether to scroll away or not. Fair enough?
1. This is a tender and beautiful love story.
2. This (or at least the end of the story) is one of four things that have happened in my life for which I have absolutely no explanation.
3. You will be introduced to the life of great guy.
So, if that helps you to decide whether or not to read this, I hope that was useful. If you're still reading, I will tell you about my best buddy ever.
I like computers and I like volunteering, so in early 2001 I started volunteering at the Elmsford Animal Shelter. Their computers were a mess, and they needed a lot of help with their central database. None of that is important. The main thing is that every time I walked into the animal shelter, one cat would go crazy, jumping up on the bars of his cage. And he only did it for me for some reason. So I took an interest in him. His name was Claude, and he was born there at the shelter, his mother Willow was a few cages away.
Claude was very weird. He drooled all the time. He would often fall down for no reason. He was oddly shaped. He was definitely an strange cat. So I took him out of his cage one day and held him, and he loved me, and I loved him. And I started visiting him every day at the shelter - I would usually use my lunch break to drive over to the shelter and play with him. We talked a lot, and I promised him that I was going to get him a good home, and I meant it. I called and emailed everyone I could to try to get someone to adopt Claudie, but nobody would. And we already had two cats in a small apartment, so my wife said no to another cat. So finally, in September, I got my Mom to officially adopt him, and he lived with her for a week, and then I snuck him into our apartment - I got yelled at but it was worth it.
Claudie was my best friend. I would take him to work all the time - my boss was from Poland and wasn't well-versed in American culture, so I would tell him that it was National Bring Your Pet To Work Day, or National Animal Liberation Day, or any one of a dozen other made-up things, and he always said okay. I think Dr. Wojtczak knew I was conning him, but he was a nice guy and let it slide. We went to the park, we went to the store, I would drive around with his paws up on the wheel next to mine. We were inseparable. And he was so good with the baby, who would just sit there chewing on Claudie's tail and Claudie didn't care. Claude had a great philosophy - he just didn't care about the small stuff.
About 6 years later, I decided to take Ritalin for a few days, just out of curiosity. For about three hours after I took the first pill, my thinking changed - everything became orderly in my mind. After that, I just felt sick. On Day 3 of the Ritalin, I had a vision that Claudie was going to die soon. I tossed the pills, and the next day, Claudie died.
His ashes are buried in the back yard, and my mother-in-law bought a beautiful little cat statue that serves as a memorial to my best buddy ever. I don't believe in heaven, intellectually or in my gut, but I do try hard to leave open the tiny possibility that it exists, because some day I want to enter the pearly gates, and the first thing I'm going to do there is find my best friend ever.