In passing conversations with neighbors I’d hear stuff like, “Ricardo?….Oh, you’re referring to ‘Ring Leg’ “. Or, “Oh…you must be ‘Stripe’s’ owner”. But I wasn’t his owner, far from it. He was his own man, a man about town really. If anything, he belonged to the neighborhood (obviously).
He showed up on our doorsteps during that horrendous winter when temperatures rarely got above 10 degrees for weeks on end (2005/2006?). My buddy Chris popped his head in my cellar door one evening exclaiming “Jim, there’s a HUGE cat on your front porch!”. It wasn’t long before that huge cat became my friend.
Lisa and I called him Ricardo, sort of a bastardization of Ricardo Montalban. Of course, we were thinking ‘Ricardo Cinnabon’, due to his rather portly stature. Indeed he knew how to work the ‘hood’ for a free meal and our house was no exception. More often than not I referred to him by another alias; Chunky Monkey. He always came for the meal, but stayed for the love, and if I turned my back for too long, he’d disappear up the block. It was all good, that’s just how he rolled. I used to say to myself, “I guess he just needed to move on”.
It was my pleasure to provide him shelter, a hot meal and a good brushing of his bear-like coat. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs I guess. He was worthy of such kindness. I always kept his vaccinations up to date and dropped what I was doing when surprised by a visit. After all, there are plenty of texting motorists and hungry coyotes, and any visit might be the last. I didn’t want to regret brushing him off in favor of whatever yardwork was at hand.
He was not initially a “people person” and I could tell by his demeanor that he’d been abused in the past. Certainly over the past few years he came to trust people more and more, eventually making regular appearances if voices drifted too far from the biergarten. He would venture into the crowd and flop over on his back, exposing his fat belly…smack-dab in the middle of home brew-sipping men. I’d call that progress and I was proud of him.
After a two-week battle with some kind of wicked virus combined with a bacterial infection, Ricardo finally decided to stop eating. All our efforts and those of a mobile veterinarian proved fruitless. With his health and vigor in decline, I made the hard decision to end his suffering this afternoon. Prior to the arrival of the vet, I carried him out to the backyard to enjoy a fine autumn afternoon one last time. He purred when I set him down in the warm sunshine. He was an “outdoorsman” after all, and had been convalescing indoors for the past couple of weeks. He passed quietly and without pain. I buried him under the Choke Cherries but he will always be buried in my heart. I guess he just needed to move on.
Your best friend,
| Ricardo |
| 2, Nov 2010 |
| Jim Spaulding |