The hardest part of all isn’t the absence of his nuzzling; his annoyed little triangulated face; his lustrously soft fur; his ambling walk; his majestic vaulting; his perception; his setting himself on fire with the dinner candles, twice; his jumping from the kitchen stools onto the dog’s back; his persistent diet of Peace Lilies; his patience with twice-a-day insulin injections; his repetitive leaping, floor banging and hopping back up to make Noam get out of bed; his fights with Galoshes; his manly meow on the way to the vet’s; his lying beside me at night; his soft paws covering his green eyes, protecting himself from the light, or his uncomplaining nature in the face of painful cancer.
The hardest part of all – and this is selfish – is that I was his favourite.
In a world where I have almost always come second, or third or fifth or last (this is not a complaint; merely a fact), no one loved me more than Boots. His entire world could have been blowing up in his face, and I blowing up in his, and still he would seek me out.
Whether it was from a far-off Ottawa neighbourhood where he had strayed, or from the recesses of the warm winter basement, I was the person to whom he was most devoted. I was the woman he sought. Boots…forever loyal, forever graceful, forever consoling.
A person has to be a great risk-taker to make a companion of a creature such as he. Because when they are gone, the hole they leave is wider than any chasm you can imagine, their loss permanent, their love irreplaceable.
There was no one and nothing like him. There was no one who loved, or forgave, me more. There is no constant companion who will be more missed and lamented.
Good-bye my darling Boots.
