Joe Meagher loved his cats.  On the deaths of two of them, to comfort himself and Lee, his wife, he wrote the following...

For Ginger
There never was a cat with jewel eyes until Ginger came along. She joined our home in 1976 and refused to leave until a greater force intervened. Illness had no business poking its snout into so elegant a little life, so captivating a prancer, so rapid a racer behind the books on our shelves and so adept a climber who could mount to the top of the wall cabinet where toy soldiers stood at permanent attention saluting her daring.

Ginger de Pinger -- her ancestry was vaguely Dutch -- was a striped grey beauty with a tawny undercoat -- a double coloring that was a living memento of her mom and dad. She made gentleness far from dull and sweetness not at all boring because she was a mesmerizer. Lately she had developed a passion for egg yolks but would never say no to fish, gourmet cat food or any of the delicacies that are rightly the favorites of the wide-whisker set. Even a villain would love her for her serenity of expression and her trusting ways. One could put one's face close up to Ginger's own and she would never take a self-protecting swipe at it, unlike many of her cat sisters, but would instead lick it if it came close enough. When she wanted to be fed while we still lay asleep, she had an iron-footed way of
walking around the bed to call our attention to her active appetite.

Ginger believed in getting as close to the People Who Fed Her as was humanly possible -- even though she wasn't a human but was willing to cohabit with those who were. In bed she would flop down against you in all her fearlessness and stay up against you for hours at a stretch. In the dead of our New York winters she would climb under the woolen cave of the covers and stay there long periods of time, safe from the open-air blastings of the January night.

She had a passion for having her ear rubbed -- either one -- and would visit my desk and present herself for a little aural massage. She played no favorites, for when one ear had been done she would turn her head so that the other got its fair share. She was a maker of excellent music, as well. Her purring could attract serious attention, being not only melodic but a steady expression of contentment.
If Ginger was all right then the world was all right, it seemed to say. Symphony with Whiskers, one could call it.

She was partial to string, catnip and yellow cloth mice -- which meant that she was a playgirl at heart who had never quite grown up. We loved her for her sunniness of soul and said goodbye to her with that grave reluctance with which one lets go of the truly irreplaceable. We have her in our hearts as a dancing presence, in our minds as a spirited delighter of our nights and days, in our memories as an assiduous soaker-up of the early afternoon sun when winter had its way and in our souls as a cat who easily earned her way to those Elysian Fields where Jessie waits and Gwendy gambols and where Ginger has at last come, a little tardily, to join them. To think that someone so small could enrich our lives so much is proof that God lives where love lives.

Adieu, little charmer. Your going has darkened our West Side world.

October 20, 1990


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For Jessie
We are here to say goodbye to that serious but gentle-eyed cat, Jessie de Pessey, who lived with Lee and Joe and Ginger for eleven lovely years during which she would quite often turn her champagne-colored eyes on us in elegant surprise. She was a lady and a mother, a gourmand and a raucous soloist, a climber into comfortable chairs and a sleeper who could dream of mouse patties undisturbed while lightning, hail and thunder threatened the world outside.

She was first at meals and the last to finish. She could tear tissue paper to tatters in no time at all. As far as purring goes she was like the fabled Stanley Steamer of long ago which took quite a while to get started but once it did it would never stop. Jessie had no use for exercise but believed instead that it was the duty of a lady and former mother to survey the world -- or what little she could see of it from the best chair in the house.

Her white mittens were well thought of and it was common knowledge that the Campbell's marshmallow people modeled their well-known product after Jessie's snowy cheeks. Her eyes were exceptionally large at times and would verge on the soulful. She had a way of rubbing her head up against your hand if she liked the way you were stroking her. Tit for tat, she called it. She was a past master -- I should say mistress -- of the four-poster method of sleeping on her back, four white-tipped paws extended in air.

Although not a melodious singer, she had the ability to make her feelings known just the same. You always knew when it was her mealtime because she would let you in on the secret. She had also a finely developed instinct for interrupting at its most interesting moment any movie we were watching on television because she would march into the room with the curled plume of her tail in full sail behind her and make trumpet voluntary noises in her throat. Jessie was always able to stare you out of countenance whenever she cared to. You could readily feel her glance on you from far across the room. Her will was almost as strong as her appetite. Ardent is the word that best describes her.

Jessie liked the rain, was interested in the snow and made full use of the winter sun when it came into our living room but more than all else she loved to eat. She ate expansively over entire areas of the floor and would at times knock her food nuggets well into the next county. Yet at all times she comported herself like the perfect lady
her mother had raised her to be.

And now it is time for her to join her family in the place where cats are actively gamboling, where mice surrender willingly to them, where feeding is on a twenty-four hour basis, where there are brooks to fish in, butterflies to chase, green grass to roll upon, catnip to sniff and trees to shield them against too strong a sun.

Goodbye, little Jessie. When you go you take something of us with you but yet leave something of yourself with us in return. How happy we are that you spent most of your little life with us. After all, you could have gone elsewhere but you allowed us to choose you and we are grateful that you did. You have enriched us with your grace,
your beauty and your elegance. All we can do in return is promise never to forget you.

Dear Lord, please take this little creature under your lasting protection. We did not know how ill she was and that her time was short.

October 16, 1987