November 20, 2005
Thanks for remembering Ollie
A card my mother sent me on Ollie's departure. It is printed by the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi in St. Francis, Wisc.
Thanks so much to everyone who responded to news of the loss of Oliver. We received calls, cards, e-mails and condolences from Mom, Maureen, Sharon, Carol, Jim, Paul, Shirdell, Katie, Joanne, Justin, Andrea, Blaire, Lisa, Sarah, Joanie, Laura, the doctors and staff of Essex Dog and Cat Hospital, and others.
We really appreciate your thoughts and the two cards showing grey cats, above and below! Thanks so much.
This card arrived from Essex Dog and Cat Hospital -- thank you!
- posted by jbelliveau at 7:03 PM in The Neighborhood
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November 13, 2005
Well done, Megi
Megi Morishita poses with two sisters at a nutrition center in Ghana.
Our former housemate, Megi Morishita, graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore in 2001, after staying with us during the 2000-01 academic year. She was a lot of fun, passionately interested in kayaking and travel, a great conversationalist as we both cooked in the kitchen, and helpful to me as I developed concepts for my forthcoming book, Romance on the Road.
After graduation, Megi became a resident at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and now is a doctor in an obstetrics/gynecology, in Eugene, Ore.
She was profiled Sept, 26, 2005, in the Racine (Wisc.) Journal, for a visit she took to Ghana to correct fistulas (a connection between two organs) in local women.
Well done, Megi! We are very proud of you. It's inspiring to know someone making a difference in the world and embodying what public health is all about.
We've had an illustrious list of housemates, including Laura, now a professor at American University; Jim, an analyst at the Rand Corp. in Los Angeles; Rose, a nurse in Seattle; Katie, a nurse in Columbia, Md.; Barbara, formerly with Doctors without Borders, who handled the outbreak of Ebola virus in Kitwit, Zaire, as well as maternal health improvements in Rwanda; Justin, a doctor at the estememed Royal Marsden Hospital in London; Mark, a dermatology researcher at Stanford University; Scott, an environmental biologist in Oregon; Joe, who is some kind of math genius and works for a banking firm; Steve, who analyzes X-rays; Muriel, who became qualified in nuclear medicine; and Michelle, a nurse at Johns Hopkins.
Phew! That is quite a pedigreed group!
Read or download this article about Megi, Changing lives a world away.
- posted by jbelliveau at 7:01 PM in The Neighborhood
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November 9, 2005
Goodbye to a fine grey boy
Ollie enjoys a beautiful final afternoon last week, crouching beside our bike shed. An unseasonal strong warm wind bathed him Nov. 3, as he sniffed our flowers and hung out with Pierre (photo below).
Oliver Belliveau, August 1991-Nov. 3, 2005 4:30 p.m. RIP
aka Mr. Olls, the Oll-meister, Oliveiri
Our fine grey boy has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Ollie we miss you! The dining room isn't the same anymore but hope you are having fun in kitty Heaven.
Our sweet Oliver lived to be 14, and survived one bout of feline lower urinary tract disorder in August, but not the second in November.
If you are reading this and have an older male cat, you may extend his life if you keep him off dry food! Never punish him for mistakes of peeing outside the litter box -- get him tested by the vet and Google on FLUTD (feline lower urinary tract disorder) and diet. Considering buying him a pet water fountain
Ollie's life
Ollie came into our lives in October 1997, eight years ago. He spent his first 6 years with my brother Jim in Annapolis, who adopted him as a kitten from the SPCA of Anne Arundel County.
Jim did a great job raising Ollie and Casey, his other cat. He handled them often as kittens and they turned out well-socialized and excellent lap kitties. We inherited the pair of them after he got married and his wife's cat allergies overwhelmed her. Further, we had an annual mouse invasion each autumn, and our housemate Justin (a medical doctor familiar with hantaviruses) encouraged us to get cats as a countermeasure.
At Jim's house, Ollie was, in his own mind, a panther in the tree limbs, enjoying looking down on people from high bookshelves and the refrigerator. He was sweet but rather shy. When we first got him, he spent three days under the day bed in our living room, spooked by his new situation.
Over time he blossomed into a cheery ambassador unafraid to hang out with our guests. Three of our housemates fell in love with his guileless nature and habit of jumping up and arching his shoulders into a petting hand. He talked to whoever got to the kitchen first in the morning, trying to see if they would feed him before I stirred.
From the Annapolis panther he morphed into a Baltimore tiger at the watering hole, sitting by the water bowl even when not drinking, while the dogs waited him out quietly.
Sometimes Ollie would "groom" my hair by nibbling at it cat-style, but in general, he was fairly canine -- loyal, not a diva, and better than the dogs sometimes at being a watchdog.
We've had one intruder, a neighborhood kid, walk on the roof of our house, which is galvanized steel and makes kind of a booming sound if anyone moves around on it. This happened one night when Ollie was perched on my lap as I was reading. Both of us swiveled our heads up at the noise while the dogs did nothing. Seeing Oliver react, I knew I hadn't been hearing things and we went upstairs to investigate. The kid was later arrested.
"What do you think of when you think of Ollie?" I asked my husband Lamont.
"He was a sentinel," Lamont said. In his final year he enjoyed sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator, getting a blast of the warm air it exhales. "He was on the lookout for mice or anything else that might be moving around. He might not catch a mouse, but he was a sentinel. What do you think about him?"
"He was gentle," I replied. Even when knocking off my little Buddha and Razorback figures off the windowsill, he did so with delicate little paw cuffs and a face the picture of innocence.
Casey is a booming purrbox, audible from 10 feet, and quite pretty with her lynx-tipped ears, huge white whiskers, perfectly groomed bronze tiger-striped coat with Abyssinian ticking and fluffy lemur tail.
Ollie was lower-key animal, and more subtle -- you could hear him purring happily away, but only if you put your ear to his body.
Of our four pets, Oliver had the quietest resume. He never had the adventures of our shelties Beau (who has barked at the bison herd in Yellowstone and chased seagulls at Ocean City) or Pierre (a rescue who had survived a pet store, a noisy family of wild kids and a tumble into the Chesapeake).
He had an annoying habit of licking our Venetian blinds and a cute trait of weaving around the plants surrounding our bathtub as though a jungle tiger. He loved making a close study of running water, be it the tub or a flushing toilet.
Somehow without any drama, and despite me being a dog person, Ollie grabbed my affection. I guess it's true that you don't pick cats, they pick you. Ollie LOVED women and had not only me but some of our female housemates found him quite winning.
Ollie thought he was one of the dogs. Here he is with Pierre on his last afternoon, Nov. 3. They had a game where Pierre would bark a deep "Woof WOOF," Oliver would fly upstairs, and then come back downstairs nonchalantly.
Ollie's sickness
Ollie first had blood in his urine circa December 2003. He had a number of tests and no obvious reason could be determined for his problems. He went on Waltham's (later Royal Canin) S/O diet. Cost of vet visit: $220.
He never much liked his prescription food and I continued to give him canned Friskies and some of his dry food. This was probably a mistake. It might have been a better idea to try him on various quality canned foods or even a natural diet, or hand-feed him the S/O until he got used to it. I should have asked his vet, Dr. Pamela Nesbitt of Essex Dog and Cat Hospital, more questions -- was the S/O a lifetime diet? What if he didn't like it? Was there somewhere to access veterinary medical literature on FLUTD?
Ollie had a good stretch, but blood reappeared in his urine again over the summer of 2005, and I took him to the vet Aug. 8 as it got worse. An X-ray showed stones in his ureter (the pipe from the kidneys to the bladder). "Stones in the ureter are difficult to manage," Dr. Nesbitt said. She recommended taking him to the Chesapeake Veterinary Referral Center in Towson for advice on treatment of this problem and to check on his loud heart murmur, which would require an echocardiogram costing $300-$400.
"That's not gonna happen," I said stubbornly. Ollie's job as a cat, I figured, was to catch mice, make himself useful, and not run up huge bills in his senior years. Our four pets are supposed to fill ecological niches in the household -- catching mice, acting as watchpets, licking plates, eating cheese rinds and apple cores. Besides, we are a one-income family, and have to watch our expenses.
We went home. After two days, Ollie began to deteriorate and moan, and tried to hide under our bedroom dresser. It was time to call CVRC. I might feel broke -- but not heartless. By the time I got him an appointment, he was "blocked," i.e., bloody sludge in his bladder had blocked his urethra, the pipe from his bladder to outside his body.
On Aug. 11, we went to CVRC. I spoke with Dr. Keats. My bottom-line question was, Would spending this money guarantee another two years or so of life for this 14-year-old cat? "He's a gentle soul," I told Dr. Keats, "and I wouldn't want to see him hurting."
I never got a clear answer. It just seems that no one can predict, and you roll the dice in these cases.
CVRC presented me with an estimate of $1,300 for treatment. I was beginning to panic. This would run through my limited income as a part-time newspaper designer (long distance) for a chain of rural papers in Alaska. I'd have to hit savings. "Let me think about this," I told the tech.
She left me alone in the room with Ollie. He seemed perked up by his surroundings, curious and engaged in his gentle way. "Do you think we should try this?" I asked him, rubbing his ears.
Well, OK, another chance for Ollie. He had a ultrasound ($347) to see what was going on with his urinary systems and an echocardiogram ($429) that found he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy -- a heart condition that could have explained his lethargy. His heart problems did not preclude anesthesia, so we went ahead with surgery to insert a catheter to unblock him.
After five days in intensive care ($400), with me visiting him to brush him and play with a shoelace, he came home. On the ride to our house I said, "OK Ollie, now you have to do whatever wild cats do to get better, because we are OUT of money!" Total bill: $1,630, higher than the estimate, plus another $50 for prescriptions.
He had drugs to stimulate his appetite (Valium), and an antibiotic (Clavamox), as well as a beta-blocker (phenoxybenzamine) to slow down his heart.
Ollie had a rough time but he was a little doll for his treatment. CVRC's techs (one, named Ethan, called Ollie "a lover," meaning a very dear cat) taught me how to give him a pill and to give him oral medication. I also hand-fed him as his appetite was not the best.
It seemed touch-and-go his first weekend home -- he seemed zonked and drooling. He hated being confined in our bathroom, which doubles as a cat infirmary. I let him outside under supervision, and we hung out together. In the sunlight, and with constant vigilance, he began to improve.
A last hurrah
Over the next two months, Ollie became restored, and then he began to seem better than new. Now I kept him strictly on Royal Canin S/O. His coat for the first time in his life grew glossy and thick. He lost a few pounds and seemed more active. All in all, he had a vibrant renaissance.
He began to prowl around and to chase Casey in a way he had not done in years. I put his old collar and bell on him to kept track of him during his recuperation. He would jingle from the kitchen, and I would call out from my office, "Ollie, watcha doin'."
For the first time in years, he peed consistently in the litterbox and not, due to fear of pain associated with the litterbox, on the tiles in front of it. I took the top off one of the litterboxes, filled it with Yesterday's News litter, which Dr. Keats had recommended, and placed the litter box base in a larger plastic container (the kind used to mix cement). I put him on the litter each morning first thing, and lavishly praised him and gave him breakfast whether or not he went. Bless his heart, this patience worked where my punishment of his earlier mistakes did not.
I brought him upstairs on Saturday, Oct. 29, as we watched a DVD. He was affectionate and playful with my husband Lamont, who usually is more partial to Casey, our other cat. Casey had always found her way to Lamont's basket of fresh-washed laundry, and Ollie to mine. They showed their preferences for us, and somehow could tell which clothes belonged to their favorite human despite smelling of the same detergent.
Sunday, Oct. 30, I put Oliver on his litter and seemed to strain a bit. I often monitored him closely now. On Monday morning, Oct. 31, I walked into the kitchen and said hello to our housemate Cassie. I froze in mid-step -- where was the grey boy's meow of greeting?
"Where's Ollie?" I asked. Cassie said she didn't know. I pirouetted and found him immediately -- under the table huddled on a chair. Put on his litter, he strained but nothing came out. I called Dr. Nesbitt and took him in to Essex Dog and Cat. We learned Oliver was blocked again, and he was checked in for another catheter. The echocardiogram that CVRC had automatically forwarded to Dr. Nesbitt gave her the confidence to proceed with anesthesia.
I was confident he'd be home by Thursday, so confident that he had years ahead of him that I asked Dr. Nesbitt if she wanted to clean his teeth while he was under. (No, came the answer: We'll focus on one thing at a time.) This time, there had been no hesitation and second-guessing about beginning expensive treatment. We would pay for it and take it from there. We had bonded more deeply during his recuperation, and I just had faith that I was doing the right thing, even if money was no more plentiful. If anything, it was even tighter, as I had gone through a computer failure and replacement, a recoating of our back roof, and was beginning to hunt for estimates to replace our front roof. Well, savings would just have to come into play.
I went in Wednesday to brush Oliver and talk to him in his cage at the vet's. Ollie seemed active and ate quite a bit when I was there, and he also seemed feisty and uncomfortable with having a catheter coming out of his rear.
I planned to call Thursday, Nov. 3, at 11 a.m. to see how he was doing. At 10:20 a.m., Dr. Nesbitt called me.
"Oh Miss Belliveau," said Dr. Nesbitt, and I could hear her message in her anxious voice. "I'm afraid Oliver isn't doing too well."
They had removed the catheter Wednesday night and he had reblocked. "Also, his heart murmur sounds stronger than it did Wednesday," she said. They had tried to manually empty his bladder, and to reinsert the catheter without anesthesia, but Ollie had fought the vets.
Dr. Nesbitt said they could re-anesthetize Ollie and try to catheterize him again, but what with his heart murmur, his age, and the stones in his ureter that might at any time wander out and block him again, well ...
"Is it time to let him go?" I asked.
"You can think about it, but let me know if you can by noon or 1 or 2 what you want to do," she said.
Well, here we were back where we were in August, when I had questioned how to proceed with a 14-year-old cat with stones, a bladder problem and a wonky heart. At least we had given him a chance. It's better probably to try and fail than to try to "guess" a pet's time is up.
I called Lamont, basically to see if we should go over and put Oliver to sleep at the vet's. Lamont surprised me with his response. He basically thinks animals always want to live, and never wish to die, giving as an example his dog McGraw, who lived til 17 and was not put to sleep during her final weak days. Lamont suggested bringing Ollie back home to see how he would do.
I knew Dr. Nesbitt wouldn't go for that, but I called her back and told her Lamont's reaction. She confirmed that Ollie would not recover, and would have a miserable last 24 to 48 hours. She had never seen a cat spontaneously unblock, and she had seen blocked cats in the latter stages, and "it isn't pretty."
We compromised. I would pick up Oliver and bring him home around 1 p.m., and bring him back for euthanasia before the vet closed at 6 p.m. At best, he might have a miracle. At worst, I could hang out with him at home, check him over, spring him from the vet's cage for just a little bit of time.
I went to Essex Dog and Cat and settled Ollie's next-to-last bill ($860). They brought him out in his carrier. He was growling unhappily, and still had his IV in his front leg, hidden by a pretty red bandage. "Ooh, you are not a happy camper," I said to our discontented cat.
We drove west along Pulaski Highway, and he was quiet and alert, no longer growling. Ollie did seem to be trembling, but I wasn't entirely sure if it was the car or him. He really seemed to fight against his last hospitalization, and as sick as he was, seemed more content to be heading home.
It was quite bittersweet to have him home from 1 until 3 p.m. The best part about it was getting to shoot some final pictures of him for this page. He tried to hide behind our bike shed, but otherwise perked up a bit while he was outside. For a few minutes, he clung gently to the front of my sweetshirt, as I enfolded him in my arms.
He didn't feel so great in his last hours, as the photo at the right shows him a bit downcast.
In the house, I put him in a box lined with old sweatpants. He tried to curl up but couldn't fold his leg with the IV. He closed his eyes, but didn't lay his head down in comfort, and trembled slightly but steadily. I had never seen him in such discomfort, and I did not know a cat could be brave and stoic in such a situation.
I wondered if he was really up for a ride back to the vet, about 30 minutes away. I called three mobile vets regarding home euthanasia but couldn't get in touch with any of them, and the neighborhood vet (Doc-Side) said they didn't do home euthanasia. [Later, Dr. Griffin of Companion Care mobile vet care in Dundalk did leave a message, he is at 410-285-5442 if anyone wants to try him.]
Oh well, we would go back to Essex Dog and Cat -- at least Dr. Nesbitt, who seemed fond of Ollie, would handle his last minutes.
In the car, his heart was beating rapidly -- I could see his white locket of fur at his throat jumping, which I had never noticed before. I picked up Lamont at his job, and he took us to Essex Dog and Cat. As any pet owner knows, this is a dreadful experience -- the last drive to the vet.
The one saving grace was Lamont's steadiness. "Ollie, make a run for it," he said when he got in the car -- a joke but a very serious one.
We headed east on Orleans Street toward Essex. I was bumping up against the reality that this was Oliver's final hour. With four pets with an aggregate 53 years on Earth, it's inevitable that one would be crossing the Rainbow Bridge. We'd been really lucky not to have been in this situation long before.
That the first was our unassuming "fine grey boy," rather than our oldtimer Beau, a 15 3/4 year old sheltie, came as a bit of a shock.
"Oh, there's one detail," I said to Lamont. "It's $60 for euthanasia if you bury the animal yourself, $70 if the body goes to mass cremation, and $200 if you want a private cremation where you get the ashes back."
We had nowhere to bury Ollie at our rowhouse, which has no yard, and another $200 for private cremation, on top of $2,900 in other expenses, weighed on my mind.
Lamont said we could bury Ollie at his mother's house.
I had felt inconsolable until that point, but the thought of knowing where Ollie would rest finally began to calm me slightly.
Lamont carried Ollie in his box into an exam room at the vet: "Ollie, hurry up," he said, peering down at the grey boy resting on sweatpants, "pee in your box," he coaxed. Lamont also talked soothingly of soccer and other topics as we waited for Dr. Nesbitt, and Ollie's ears perked up and followed his calming tenor voice.
A tech named Kathy took Oliver away to give him a sedative. That takes about 20-25 minutes to work. He was returned to the exam room as it took effect. A member of the staff brought me a final bill ($60, euthanasia for a pet under 30 lbs.). I could hardly see where to sign the slip through the tears in my eyes.
Dr. Nesbitt came in stroked his sleepy head. Ollie's pupils grew large. The poor guy vomited three times as a result of the sedative, and we cleaned him up with paper towels.
"Are we ready?" the vet asked. We nodded. I cradled Ollie in my arms on the exam table, where he lay on his right side on a thick green towel. She cleared his IV, and then put a different solution in the IV. I couldn't detect any change at all in Ollie -- he seemed peaceful -- but after two seconds, Lamont saw his upper rear leg lower quietly to the table. Dr. Nesbitt got her stethoscope and announced, "He's gone."
She left us with him for five minutes. We smoothed the green towel, and stroked his still-warm and soft fur. Then she came to take his body to the freezer. We would pick him up Saturday for burial.
Ollie's burial
Friday night Lamont rented the DVD of "Pet Semetary," as a fitting prelude. Heck, it featured a big grey cat in a starring role! On Saturday, we went to pick up Ollie's body. He was placed in a white cardboard coffin and brought out the back doors so as not to upset the owners of live pets in the vet's lobby.
We drove the coffin and a shovel to Lamont's mom's place; we could have used a tarp as well to neatly pile the dirt.
I carefully started cutting the sod including 6 inches of roots to eventually return it to the top of the soil. [More on pet burial from Dr. Michael Fox, the Washington Post's Animal Doctor, who recommends placing a stone over the grave.]
I only had my running shoes; boots would have been better to drive the shovel. Still, it was extraordinarily therapeutic to dig the grave. Peter Gabriel's song "Digging in the Dirt" played in my mind.
Lamont went to change into his heavier boots, and on his return made a beautiful grave, deep with perfect square and smooth sides. I looked at a smear of bright red Maryland clay on his black jeans and felt a deep gratitude for his manliness; I had fallen apart at the loss of a pet, he had stayed strong.
Best of all, he never said, "I can't believe you are falling apart over a cat."
Lamont was a champ Saturday. We chatted as he dug quite deep. "Imagine what it must have been like to be on the frontier, and have to dig graves for people," I mused. It was a fair amount of work digging a pet-sized grave, for humans it must be quite taxing.
We each took a handle and lowered the coffin. I placed some ocean whitefish Pounce treats on top. It was time for the eulogies.
"Thanks for staying with us Ollie," I said. "You were a fine gray boy, and you had an interesting life in Annapolis and Baltimore. The dining room doesn't seem the same without you."
"I went down to the kitchen last night," Lamont added, "and you weren't lying by the refrigerator, waiting for mice, but maybe you were there in spirit."
We took turns filling dirt back in. Lamont tamped it down nicely with his boots.
We drove off, with Lamont announcing, "We're taking a detour." We went to see the grave of Lamont's Dad, who died in 1991, in January (Ollie was born seven months later). I had never seen it before. It was a beautiful afternoon, with trees turning scarlet and light gold everywhere in Northwest Baltimore, and geese feeding on the lake.
Lamont spoke of the final movies he and his Dad had watched together. I got a sense that my sorrow at losing Ollie had connected him with events 14 years ago. I was again touched that he wasn't making fun of me; moreover, he was finally showing me his father's resting place.
Afterward
I never quite got over my panic, when Ollie first got sick in August, at how to pay for his vet bills. We were in some indeterminate place between poor people, who would have let him hide outside behind the bike shed and have a painful passing, and people with good incomes, who might have paid $6,000 for several rounds of catheterization and ultimately a PU operation, which is essentially a sex change that avoids the blockage problem.
We were in-between economically, and Oliver's health, age and heart were in-between. We let him have a chance, and he enjoyed a renaissance for more than two months. The money question, now that vets are so expensive, never quite left, however. In looking at my files, I realize that I never even filled a second prescription CVRC gave me for Ollie's heart. It went into my files, along with the rest of the paperwork from CVRC, unread and unfilled. I wasn't rejecting the prescription, I was too dazed to absorb another piece of paper. That's how muddled I became at the combination of our cat being sick and the expense.
Perhaps Ollie's case was somewhat unusual. CVRC couldn't seem to get any crystals from his urine to tell if they'd be caused by a diet too acidic or too alkaline. That would have helped in fashioning his care. I bought him natural, unsweetened cranberry juice to heal his bladder, but didn't dare give it to him since his problems might have been exacerbated if his urine was already too acidic. Like everything else in his case, I was confused. Maybe if I gave him the juice, he'd be healed today. Or maybe he'd have gotten sicker faster.
I had asked Dr. Keats if there was a way to test his urine to determine its acidity, and he shook his head in incomprehension. "Then I don't dare give him cranberry juice." He shook his head no. Some Internet cat forums describe using cranberry juice, but again, I was at a dead end -- the vet hadn't heard of this treatment, and didn't know if there were strips or anything to do home tests of cat urine.
If anyone reading this has insights to what could have been done better in this case, please drop me a line.
At some point, when it comes to money and health, our fate is in God's hands, and He will provide. Casey was sick with hepatic lipidosis in October 2003, and cost us $1,000. The following year, I lucked into my Alaska newspaper job. This uptick in my finances felt as though generosity to this small creature was repaid manyfold in a fortunate turn of events. You do what you have to do.
What I don't understand is, why don't all vets and fellow cat owners tell us not to give dry food, or cheap canned food, to male cats ???
Clearly cats would have died out as a species if their diets in the wild led to stones and bladder sludge that blocked many of the males' tiny urethras and killed them. Now rows of cages at the vets are filled with boys on commercial diets recovering from catheterization, and Web sites talk vaguely about "stress" and "diet" playing a role. Come on!
Oh well, it is a week later now. Though I still fill hollow at times, I've come to terms with the fact that our family of four pets is not immortal, and the youngest of the remaining trio is 10. I'm relieved that Ollie is no longer in pain.
And I spent a fair amount of time looking at images of grey cats up for adoption on Petfinder and the SPCA of Anne Arundel County Web site. I've learned, from looking at cats that could nearly be his twin, that Ollie was actually what is called a blue tabby -- darker, with a slate color on a buff background, and more splendid than a silver.
I am grateful to Ollie for showing me how to be more patient, and also revealing my husband's strength. I noticed the clay earth clinging to Lamont's black jeans cuffs Saturday night. Men just seem to know what to do in some situations, how to behave, how to soothe and how to bury.
Let me close with thanks to Dr. Nesbitt, who was an angel in Oliver's last minutes, giving him an extra shot for his nausea. She rubbed Oliver's head and called him "beautiful."
I whispered to Oliver my last words for him, "I'll see you later." As Todd Rundgren sings on "The Afterlife," "You and I have unfinished business," more morning chats about getting some food in the bowl, more half-hour brushings while you purr, sleeping at night on the top of my pillow. Billy Graham was once asked if there would be dogs in Heaven and he replied: “If it’s necessary for our happiness, then they will be there.” Let's hope the same is true for for all companion animals.
- posted by jbelliveau at 3:29 PM in The Neighborhood
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