Losing our boy

Chase Bird, Christmas 2014

I can’t tell you about the last six months without first telling you about Chase Bird. We lost our boy on Tuesday, October 27.

You know that my cats are my family. Larry feels the same way. So the last two weeks have not been easy.

Chase Bird’s death was unexpected. He was referred to a different vet to do dental surgery for stomatitis. During the exam before the surgery, the vet found a mass in his abdomen. We gave permission for her to do exploratory surgery.

He had numerous tumors, including one a little smaller than a golf ball. They could not be removed. Even without doing a biopsy, the three vets there thought it was lymphosarcoma, or lymphoma. The prognosis was very poor, and he was certain to be in pain.

Their recommendation: let Chase Bird go while he was on the table, so he would feel no pain and no fear. We let him go.

My friend Carolyn made this for me.

I want you to know about Chase Bird. He came into our lives in 2007 when he started hanging around our house. Apparently, he had been hanging around the neighborhood for a while.

He was so thin, we started feeding him. One morning, he jumped into my car as I got in to go to work. I remember his little face looking up at me, eyes so bright and eager. He chose us.

On October 20, 2007, we brought him into our house. We named him Chase Bird. He became family.

He was a gentle cat who would snuggle on our laps. He had the longest legs and jumped with such grace. When he purred, he also “puffed” his cheeks and made a clicking sound. That was his “I’m content” sound.

He could catch a toy mousie in the air. His paws could bend and pick things up—you’d swear he had thumbs. He would carry certain toys—only certain ones—in his mouth and looked so cute.

My friend Christi made this.

I am writing this on Tuesday night. We picked up his ashes tonight and brought him home. This ritual is heart wrenching and comforting, a strange mixture of emotions. It’s another reminder he’s gone. But his remains are home.

I have to believe that I will see my boy again. I still talk to him. I believe his spirit lives on.

And I think I heard him tonight.

The crematory service puts the name of the pet and the name of the pet parents on the bottom of the wooden box that holds the ashes and on a certificate stating that the ashes are his.

Chase Bird’s humans were listed not as “Larry and Tina Barbour.” They were listed as “Larry and Tiny Barbour.” Larry and I laughed and cried, probably a bit hysterically, when we saw that. And I’m sure I heard Chase Bird laughing too.

Sometimes you need comfort food and good company

We didn’t talk much on the ride down the highway to Gretna, a town about 12 miles south of Altavista.

Earlier that day, we had heard from the vet’s office: Sam’s ashes had been returned from the pet crematory. So we had picked up the small, cedar box, gone home and sat together for a while.

We knew we needed to get out of the house, so Larry suggested we go for an early dinner at C & E’s Restaurant.

This restaurant serves Southern, country cooking and includes a buffet. Mashed potatoes with butter, macaroni and cheese, pinto beans, stewed tomatoes, green beans, fried chicken, baked chicken, cornbread—comfort food.

I figured Larry needed comfort food. And I did, too.

So we drove to Gretna and entered the restaurant, quiet before the dinner rush. Soon we had our plates piled with the good food.

A side note: I was raised in the South and in the country, just one county north of where Larry was raised. But there’s a dish that I had never heard of until I met Larry and learned about C & E’s: pig’s feet.

Larry grew up eating pig’s feet occasionally, and he loves them. The only place we know of that serves them is C & E’s, on Fridays.

So last Friday, Larry got his bowl of pig’s feet. He put vinegar on them.

As we started eating, the man who had seated us returned to the table.

“I noticed that you were eating pig’s feet,” he said to Larry. “Have you ever tried them deep fried?”

Larry hadn’t, so the man described how good they were breaded, then deep fried for a few minutes. It gave them a different taste, he said.

“Would you like me to fry you up some?” he asked.

Larry said sure, so the man went back to the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned with a basket of the fried pig’s feet.

Larry thought they were delicious. The man seemed so pleased with Larry’s review and so interested in food, I had to ask him about it.

“It sounds like you enjoy food. Do you love to cook?”

“Well, it’s one of my loves,” he said, laughing.

We chatted for a few minutes. We learned that his family runs the restaurant. He’s an electronics engineer by trade, he said, and has a business in Atlanta, but when he comes home to Virginia, he puts on an apron and helps out at the restaurant.

He talked about fixing turkeys for takeout for Thanksgiving and a little about the process he goes through to get them ready for cooking. He talked about the taste of deep fried turkeys, something Larry and I have never tried.

We had a nice visit with him. And good food.

As Larry and I left the restaurant, we were both smiling.

We had eaten our comfort food. And we had enjoyed good company.

What’s your favorite comfort food dish?

Remembering Thunder Cat

Thunder Cat

Thunder Cat had gray, luxuriant hair. He was stalwart, regal, a king of a cat.

He was Larry’s first cat. In the mid-1990s, Larry lived in Lynchburg a city 20 miles north of Altavista. He didn’t have any pets when he moved into his neighborhood.

One night, as Larry sat out on his front steps, a neighbor’s cat, Thunder Cat, walked right up to him and rubbed against his leg. Larry was surprised because he didn’t really consider himself to be a cat person.

But later that night, he went to the grocery store and bought some treats to give him when he visited.

When Thunder’s original family moved, they asked Larry if he’d like to take in Thunder. Larry jumped at the chance.

When Larry and I started dating and I met Thunder, I was a little afraid. He was a grouchy cat and didn’t like to be touched except on his very limited terms. He would bite if he didn’t want to be touched—not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to hurt.

When Larry moved to Altavista, everything was different. Larry kept him inside all the time, and the new environment seemed good for him.

He calmed down and would even sit on our laps for short periods of time.

Here are some things I remember about Thunder:

*He could leap long distances. One day Larry was playing with him and was lying on the floor with his knees bent. Thunder jumped over Larry’s entire length. Larry looked up and saw only a blur of gray fur.

*I loved watching Thunder. When I sat in our living room reading, I had a view of the kitchen and the hallway leading to the bedrooms and the litter boxes.

Sometimes I’d look up and see Thunder quietly walking by, his paw steps mere puffs of sound, winding his way back to the litter boxes.

After he used the litter box, he would run back by me, his paws pounding the floor, hurrying back to his domain, the den.

*Thunder loved my shoes. When I took them off, he would stick his nose in them, then wrap his front legs around them and lie on them.

At night, he would usually stay in the den, not coming into the bedroom. Sometimes he would cry in the night. If I went and got him and brought him into the bedroom, he wouldn’t stay. But I could take him one of my shoes, and it would calm him.

*Just as Waddles helped me overcome a lot of my OCD and the fear of responsibility I had, so did Thunder. I loved being his mother and taking care of him. I embraced the responsibility.

We lost Thunder Cat to kidney failure on Feb. 12, 2009. I can’t put in words how devastated Larry and I were and how much we miss him.

We still feel his gray presence.

Is there a pet or other animal that you have admired?

In memory of my sweet Wa



Waddles in 2003.



I spent her last night on the floor beside her. She was on a pad in the large hallway in our house, right outside our bedroom where she also had a pad.

She had made it to the other side of the house early in the evening of that last night, all the way into the den to sit by my husband on the couch until I got home from work.

At some point that evening, she could no longer stand.

I put a blanket and pillow down on the floor beside her, not wanting to be far from her because she periodically woke up and cried. I wanted to be close so I could comfort her.

Waddles had chronic kidney insufficiency, arthritis, a heart murmur, low potassium and low iron.

She was 21 years old.

During that last night, I knew it would be her last. I knew that I would have to call the vet in the morning and talk with her about the end.

I knew that I couldn’t keep her when she was suffering.

I knew I was going to have to give her up.

And we did give her up. Larry and I took her to the vet’s office that morning and held her and talked with her as the vet gave her the medications that could not heal her, but lifted her suffering.

When Larry and I returned home, I immediately lost any composure I’d had. I immediately doubted that I had done the right thing.

That was Oct. 13, 2011. I can’t believe a year has gone by since we lost our sweet Wa.

She was a beautiful half-Persian, black and white girl. Her voice was sweet and melodic, only demanding when she was hungry or scared.

She was very dignified. She would sit with perfect posture, her front paws crossed.

She liked to play with toys that we swung near her with a small fishing pole toy. She liked to bat at them and grab them and roll on her side, conquering the toy mouse.

She had some stuffed toys that came with her when I adopted her. She mostly ignored them when we were around, but we’d come into a room where she was sometimes and find the toys moved from one place to another.

She was a thoughtful eater. She’d eat a little, then pause and think about it, then eat a little more, then walk away for a while, then return and eat more.

She was a plucky girl, learning to live with new cats when Larry and I got married. She could hiss and then walk away with great dignity.

Waddles helped me break though my fear of being responsible for another creature. She helped me with my contamination OCD. I could clean up kitty messes without a thought.

I miss her every day. Sometimes the grief has overwhelmed me, and I think my heart will burst from the pain.

   I am forever grateful for my sweet baby Wa. And I will love her forever.

Where does the lonely hide?

Sometimes I think that because I have OCD, anxiety and depression, I’m extra sensitive and hyper-alert to how I feel. I monitor how stressed I feel, how down I get, how tense.

I try to be aware of any changes because if I need to make an adjustment in medications, I want to jump on it quickly. And lately, I’m analyzing myself more closely to try to decide if I want to take cognitive behavioral therapy.

But sometimes the feelings sneak up on me.

I had a semi-pleasant day today. I conducted an interview and wrote four stories for the paper tomorrow. It was hard for me to concentrate and settle down to write the stories, but I managed to get them done and get home at 7:15.

Once I got home, I thought things were OK. I told my husband about my day, watched part of “Jeopardy” and snuggled with my cat Sam.

But I started thinking about Waddles and, as soon as my husband left to go get some takeout for dinner, I had a deep crying spell over her.

Waddles was my beautiful baby cat who died in October. I wrote about her and the incredibly positive impact she had on my life in a past post.

I just fell down into the grief of losing her. I wanted to have her with me so badly. I didn’t want to go on without her.

When my husband got home, I told him how lonely I felt without Wa. He said he understood because she and I had spent so much time together.

I am still grieving. I understand that. And I understand that I’ll never “get over” her. I don’t want to.

But I have become more able to get things done, to focus on what’s in front of me, of making over the other cats. There are things that I still can’t think about, but the tears haven’t been so close to the surface lately.

I guess what surprised me about the episode this evening was that it seemed to come out of nowhere.

But then I remembered that I got out the Christmas stockings last night, including Waddles’ stocking. Maybe that stocking, which now represents a lost loved one, burrowed down into me and pushed the grief to the surface.

Maybe I’m not as self-aware as I think I am.