PetGoodbyes

When I got Bear  he was in a shelter in Georgia. There were many cats online at the shelter site that looked like him closer to me in Tampa but something about him told me he was to be my cat. The shelter could not fly him to me so I had about given up when the shelter called me back and said that they had some people coming up from Gainesville Florida to get a puppy and they could ask them if they would bring him as far as Gainesville if I could meet the people there. I told them yes. The people brought him to me at a hotel in Gainesville. He had been riding for eight hours or more in a car with strangers and a dog. I figured when they took him out of the carrier he would hide under the bed because most cats do that even without that much stress. But they open the carrier and he jumped right up on the bed next to me and he immediately started kneading on my arm.

Then the people left and he got behind my head on the bed and started cleaning my hair and then he laid on my chest and he went to sleep like he had been my cat 400 years… even the people that brought him to me thought it was strange how he just jumped up like that like he already knew me.

My cat teddy bear who I had gotten in 1983 and who died in 2001 at age 18 looked just like Bear. I don’t know if I believe it or not but the people in India believe that if your pet really loves you and you really love your pet when they pass away they will find a way to come back to you in the form of another animal or pet. I don’t know if that’s true but if it ever was it would have been the transition with Teddy Bear and Bear. Even when we got home teddy bear would never eat his food if it was not up on the counter. I put Bears food on the floor and he sniffed it and walked away and I thought well he’s probably not hungry after the long trip so I put his food up on the counter and I turned around and he jumped up there and he was eating it in the exact spot Teddy used to eat. He would only eat up there also just like Teddy. It was very strange.

I loved him for himself though,I never thought that he was a replacement teddy bear.