Mary Novaria

The three white, plastic boxes were nestled into a larger brown, cardboard box labeled “office” with a black Sharpie and stacked among hundreds of other cartons in a moving van, along with more than two decades worth of furniture, household goods, and memories. Why, I wondered, was I moving the ashes of three dead cats halfway across the country? DaisyBelle Riley, Mose and DaisyBelle left us one by one over a span of three years. I always thought we’d gather the kids and ceremoniously scatter their ashes beneath the branches of a towering evergreen just beyond the backyard fence. We’d say a few somber yet loving words, recall their idiosyncrasies, and retell the stories of how our feline companions first came into our home.  But life intervened. It seemed as if the family was rarely all together anymore and, although I thought about it frequently, I never quite planned the memorial service.  We moved West and the ashes of three Kansas cats sat in a closet in Los...

Update: Please read my Requiem for Three Cats It’s finally happened. The proverbial “better mousetrap” is here and his name is Mose. Mose is a great big furry bundle of a cat who may or may not be a Maine Coon. My mom says he is, but we don’t have any papers to prove it. We are Mose’s fourth home since being adopted from the pound as a kitten nearly four years ago. Mose is also on his fourth name—fifth, if you count the month or so we called him simply “Big Kitty.” Earlier this year, we took him in because my mom could no longer care for him. She had “inherited” the feline from a neighbor, whose mother had given him to her. The neighbor’s mom had named the cat Thumper. We think he was named after the bunny in Bambi, although it takes just one day with this cat walking on hardwood floors to know there could be another reason. Due to his considerable girth, you can hear him thump-thump-thumping from room to room. My mom does not care for cartoon cutesy, but she does go for all thin...