Big Boy, you see, is our big ole tomcat....fluffy yellow longhaired tabby right off the streets of Five Points. Renee brought him home one night in 2015 after he padded through the door and just wandered around and who could blame her? Five Points is no place for an impressionable adolescent feline to reside so Biggie came to join us here on Coachmaker, along with Little.
I take Biggie out for walks pretty much every morning and yesterday we went out for a stroll and Biggie made a beeline for the base of a Holly tree at the edge of the carport. There is a pile of rubble that I used at the base of the tree to mark it as the eternal spot of rest for Big Girl, our Maine Coon Tortie that Renee got from her friend Shannon. She, too liked to go out and ramble in the yard and loved that particular tree for some reason so it became her spot of eternal rest.
As Biggie nosed the chunks of rubble, stacked at the base of the tree I told him "Boy, before there was a Big Boy there was a Big Girl. She was fierce and tough, and she would bite you if you weren't careful! When I first met her she started off licking my finger, then bit me so hard when I jerked my finger back I drug a kitty head with it!
She loved to ramble outside like you, and she also had the fluffy stuff fur. She would scratch at the door and cry, and we would laugh and ask if she wanted to "go outside?"
She ruled the roost long before you came along, Mister!"
Biggie proceeded to nose the tree as I continued..."she pretty much tolerated me even though I loved to tease her. She was chilling up in an open window once, digging the nocturnal bliss of an April evening back in April of 2003 when I snuck up from below on the outside and scared her. I jumped up and said "Yaaaahh!" and poor Big Girl sprung backwards and upwards like a fast replay of the astronauts blasting off from the moon, tail thick with startled fright and back arched like a horseshoe. It took me a couple of days before she would come any where near me and I think she never fully forgave me."
He trotted over, jumped up on the low wall along the edge of the carport and blinked at me. I said "That girl was so smart! She knew how to get her way and she did. Whenever Renee whistled the theme song from "Love Story" Big Girl came running, meowing inquisitively! I would tap a pencil on a chair leg and it would drive her wild...she would stop, focus on the tapping and..and...butt wiggling pitty-pats of the back footsies...pounce! and lay out the skippity-paps with those front paws and knock the pencil away.
She loved me and I loved her, but in our way. Before she left us we both shared a special relationship and both knew that each loved the other dearly despite any growing pains. We respected each other and shared the love we had for each other freely. Biggie, she was kinda the blueprint for you. We loved her and cared for her and it made us so happy we not only wanted to share that love again, we wanted to make it better and look at you!"
Big Boy looked over my way, and attacked a leaf that was surely posing a threat, or has taste. He then ambled around the forever-stationary 1979 Volkswagen Weekender van with the funky Audi wheels and made a beeline for the door when a passing car seemed just a little too close to comfort for him, and he retreated to safety. I let him in and followed.
This morning I was out with Biggie and we saw, just across from the Holly tree, a big ole Cardinal sitting in a bush observing every move. I said "Well, hello Big Girl! How ya doin?" Biggie poked around in the bushes, uninterested in the blaze of red sitting there before us.
I sat and thought that the Big Girl had a hand in delivering all our critters to us, knowing that they were in loving hands. We not only learn our parents traits and mannerisms but we learn how to love, and how to pass it along. We purify that love every day and we don't see it...that although your heart is heavy with loss the love you have has intensified and will be a blessing when it is shared. They wait at the door with eternal patience. Have a rice day, all y'all!