It has been an emotional week as we have packed up and moved the Big Top. To add to the tears we had to say good-bye to our cat, Ginger. She has been part of this family circus for over 17 years.

Like my children, she got her start at Good Samaritan Hospital, in San Jose, where I worked for a number of years. True story. There was a stray cat that hung out around the employees’ parking lot. Of course many of us made hanging out there a pretty nice thing as she was well fed and even had a comfy, warm, dry place to sleep. She gave birth to a litter of kittens right by the on-site child care center where three of my girls attended. Someone from the Patient Relations department took responsibility for caring for the hospital cat and set about to adopt the babies to members of the staff who were interested. Of course we were interested and with Holly’s help, I chose Ginger. I never thought of her as a “Ginger”. She was more of a “Daisy” to me but Ginger was who she became and Ginger was who she was.

I wanted to write about her but every time I tried to I would start to cry again.  Then I remembered that Zoë had already prepared an eulogy for her last year in her speech class. It pretty much sums up the life of our bitch~kitty who, as much as we complained about her idiosyncrasies, will be greatly missed.

My apology to St. Peter if she bites at your ankles. That is just how she is.

Thank you all for coming.  As a child I always wondered, “Why does everyone die?  Why is it such a prominent part of our society, and why isn’t it accepted more?”  Death is what has brought us here today, the death of a member of our large family.  And though you all are sad and mourning, I would like to take this time to look back on the times Ginger shared with us.

            Ginger was brought into our already large family in March of 1994.  She and the rest of her litter were born at the child care center I went to as a child.  Back then she was so tiny, she could fit in the inch tall space underneath the living room couch.  Most of ’94 was spent there, trying to avoid the toddlers running about the house.  By December she grew tired of the sofa and moved on to the fake Christmas tree—a habit that caught on and stayed for years to come—where she knocked many ornaments down while playing with them.

During Mom’s fourth pregnancy, Ginger took to biting her ankles as if to say, “Just get it out already!”  After the birth she was often found watching over my sleeping sister with a look that most clearly meant, “Another one?!”  However, she was completely harmless; she never bit or scratched or pounced unless us toddlers absolutely deserved it.  In other words, she never hurt us unless we hurt her first.  It was always a love-hate relationship with her.

She was often found stretching on top of the sofa or dozing in the sun shining through the window.  These places were where my sisters and I had the most fun “playing” with her, or, as I now see it, picking on her.  It’s no wonder that, over time, she became less of “the family’s cat” and more of “Dad’s cat” or as Mom called her “the Bitch Kitty.”  She would hide underneath the master bed during the day and only come out when the children were asleep and the guests had long gone home.  But, now that I think about it, it makes sense why Ginger would begin to avoid us.  ’99 was the year we started bringing new pets into the family.  How could we forget that stray cat we found?  You know, the one who slept in a box in the garage.  Then there was Missy, the Boston terrier we adopted from Mom’s aunt. 

When we left San Jose it was obvious that she was growing older and, at eight years old (in human years), it was unclear whether or not she would adjust well to the new environment.  She did surprisingly well, although she spent the rest of her years as an indoor cat.  In the last year or so we saw more and more of her around the house which, as my mom would explain, was her not caring anymore considering her old age.  Around this time Ginger developed severe bulimia that would eventually lead to her death at seventeen years of age.

Death has the tendency to creep up at the most inconvenient time.  The life of this “Bitch Kitty” was taken just as we began to enjoy and cherish it.  Now I am reminded of that childhood question I had: “Why does everyone die?”  Thank you.