Amelia, 2000-2017

Mellie-cat on a blue blanket
Mellie on a blue blanket

Last year, I wrote about the blossoming of the Mellie-cat, and closed with this line: “Sixteen years is not long enough to get to know a cat.”

It turns out that neither is seventeen and a half years.

Mellie passed away today after a brief illness. She is the last of my first set of cats, daughter of Erasmus and LaZorra, sister of Sophia. In the last year of her life, she trained Freddie how to cat; while she perhaps did not have the most apt of pupils, I know that he will miss her too.

She was the bravest cat I have ever known. She was not inclined to pounce on the world and take it in full; she was reserved and cautious… and yet she always showed up to observe, no matter how unfamiliar the strangers or unusual the circumstances.

Amelia is a grand name for a cat, but perhaps too grand for daily use. She was Mellie most days, but like many cats had accumulated a number of names and sobriquets throughout her life. The Clown Princess. Senior Member of the Treat Committee. Inspector of the Feets. Her mother’s special daughter. The softest and fluffiest.

And so another cat joins the realm of story.

It never gets any easier to mark that transition.

CC BY-SA 4.0 Amelia, 2000-2017 by Galen Charlton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.