Petunia

Adopted 19 August 1989 in Tulsa – died 8 April 1996 in Tulsa

A young friend and devoted animal defender, Meg O’Meilia, gave me a gray-tabby-&-white female cat, insipidly named “Baby Kitty”  -- clearly inappropriate for a cat at least eight years old. Sight unseen I had agreed to adopt “Petunia” as I immediately renamed her. Ostensibly Meg gave her to me so she could keep a male kitten who had been dumped at her doorstep. The truth, however, was that Meg, aware that her days were numbered due to a brain tumor, chose me as the safest adopter of this exceedingly gentle cat.

This preemptive placement notwithstanding, in October 1990 Meg, in her Last Will entrusted me the rehoming –in responsible, permanent homes—of her other seven cats, two dogs (a Chow and a German Shepherd to remain together!) and five horses, one of them lame! (Blog bio 5 FEB 17) – a responsibility greater than any other I remember which consumed me until the last one was placed.

As is customary among my rescued felines, on arrival Petunia took to the basement for a few days – and a good custom it is because the litter boxes are there. She calmly surfaced one day and began the third chapter of her life, which was more suited to her quiet, complacent character than the turbulent previous two. I recall Meg telling me that Baby Kitty was one of several cats and large dogs she stuffed inside her VolksWagen Beetle when she fled from her Vietnam-PTSD husband who wanted to kill her and her pets.  What a scene that must have been.

Petunia was a friend to all, placing no demands on others. Such creatures –regardless of species-- tread lightly and their footprints are likely to fade. No tantrums, no breakage, no enemities, no bad habits, no escapes ... Drinking from dripping fossets was her singular "notoriety."

In the process of memorializing my companions’ existence, some bios are novellas and others are abstracts, and yet they all mattered equally.  Not unlike people, the meek may “inherit the earth” according to the Beatitudes, but until then, the excentrics, the unstable, the reprobates, and overall troublemakers make history.

Grooming Pandora and resting

An oldfashioned diary I kept for years might have filled the widening gaps in my memory, but other than dates of adoption and death, there were few references about those who mattered most, my companion animals, so busy was I complaining about pedestrian problems. I recycled the useless thing.

All that remains of Petunia are a few photos and my undying love for her, 21 years later.