Losing Sam

I have previously written about my cats Blondie and Baxter, but I hate to say that I haven't really mentioned Sam. In the summer of 2007, we got a lot of rain in San Antonio. One day, Sarah and I noticed an orange cat drinking stagnant green water from a pitcher we'd left outside. It absolutely broke our hearts to see it drinking such disgusting water. So we decided to put out some clean water out for it. We put some inexpensive cat food out while we were at it.

The cat kept coming by to get food and water. The original intent was to eventually find a home for this cute kitty. We weren't sure if it was male or female, so we named it Sam. Either for Samantha or Samuel. Sam was getting more and more used to us and was letting us get closer. Eventually were able to scratch Sam at arm's length. We fed him outside for about two months.

One day, it was raining particularly hard. I came home and I thought I heard something. I went to the back sliding-glass door and pulled back the blinds to see Sam meowing at the door. I opened the door and he didn't run away, so I closed the door, grabbed my cat-carrier, opened the door, and grabbed Sam. I took Sam straight to the vet to get him checked out. I didn't want to expose him to our cats before I knew he was disease-free.

Sam was Samuel, about 5 years old, neutered, declawed on the front, and disease-free. He got his shots and I took him home. That's how Sam adopted us.

He quickly gained weight and constantly demanded attention. He would get up on the arm or back of the couch and we'd have conversations, meowing back and forth, for several minutes at a time. He also likes to lick our hair. He's trying to groom us, but it doesn't quite work when your "fur" is a foot long. He's so easy-going that he even purrs through getting his temperature at the vet's.

At first we looked into finding him another home, but we quickly realized how much we were already attached. Sarah and I both love Sam very much. Which makes this so much harder.

Sam was diagnosed with cancer on Friday. Sarah posted about it, so I'm not going to repeat it all. I found out while we were waiting for my car to get a minor fix-up on Friday after school. I knew that the vet was supposed to call Sarah with the test results, but she hadn't told me anything about it yet. When I asked her about it, she apologetically mentioned that she had planned to tell me at home. I instinctively knew what the diagnosis was at that point, but I wasn't really prepared for my reaction. When she told me he had cancer cells in his lymph nodes, I broke down.

Sam is such a sweet, innocent little guy. This will be the first time I've lost a non-fish pet. For now, we're trying to find everything we can do to make him happy. Right now he's sitting next to me on the back of the couch, purring like crazy. I wish I could be as oblivious as he is.