Farewell to the Comeback Kid

THIS SPRING ISN’T GETTING any easier at the Nuthatch. We buried Bosun today, next to Compass and Rose, among blooming salal beneath the tall firs.

Our dear old tuxedo cat, who was old enough to vote if the San Juan County Clerk had just let him register, was in what we were calling his third “bonus year” since suffering a stroke in 2018. He’d had at least one more stroke since then, on top of failing kidneys and hyperthyroidism. But he was the Comeback Kid, bouncing back and refusing to give in to his ailments. His trademark was a booming purr anytime you touched him. He kept purring until just a few days ago.

When the purring stopped, we knew he was in trouble. He stopped eating and drinking early this week. His body had decided it was time to go. Bosun wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, but he was falling down and couldn’t use his sandbox anymore. We were afraid he was going to fall down the stairs and break every bone in his body. We couldn’t let him go that way. So on Thursday I took our old friend in his travel carrier on the water taxi to a veterinary clinic near Mount Vernon. He came home in a box.

It’s been a tough spring.

Bosun was a good cat. He spent much of his life on our sailboat, Sogni d’Oro, where we lived until moving to our island cabin three years ago. He was our third cat with a nautical name, following Compass and Rose, and he sailed the San Juans with us summer after summer. He was the beta cat, the big softie who got bossed around by smaller females. (And what male hasn’t, at some time in their life?) He was a sweet-tempered boy who liked to plant himself smack dab between me and Barbara in bed at night. It tended to hamper our social agenda. But when you tried to pry him off the bed and got that rumbling purr, what could you do?

Daughter Lillian was here to help nurse him in his final days, along with my brother, Tom, who arrived from Arizona on Tuesday.

Bosun was a sweet old cat, and he was my good old friend. I told him to go be Barbara’s kitty now.