In Memoriam

Sam died last night, age 15 1/2.
He joined our family in 1994 after the black cat Reilly died of leukemia. Reilly's cohort Murphy was driving us crazy because he had never been an only cat, so we went to the animal shelter to find a companion for him. The inmates all did their little "notice me" routines except for one full grown cat who just sat back and looked at us. I thought he might be sick, but the attendant said he had a clean bill of health and also had all his shots and was neutered. We were even given the vet's name (turned out it was our vet.) The cat's name was Simba and he was two years old. So we decided that a nice, sedate, past-kittenhood cat was just what we needed to balance Murphy the Menace. This was the Lion King era and I don't like faddish names, so we changed it to Sam and introduced him to our household.