A few years back, a lonely lost old man came to us in the earthly form of
PAL.  He was ragged, worn and torn; full of fleas and grease and seemed
to have no lust for life left in him.  He had lost his owner in a town
and state where fuzzies are illegal you see.  Seeking shelter from the
cold Northern California rain, he had crawled into a warm washroom where
a good samaritan found him and turned him over to my wife.
 
It was obvious from the start that there was going to be a long uphill
battle to save this one, but he was special and once warmed up, fed and
wrapped in a flannel blanket a burning lust for life rekindled in his
soul.  No one could look into his bottomless onyx eyes and see anything
but love.  Near as we could figure, he was 5-6 at this point and yet he
seemed to rebound quickly as the "new guy on the block" status in our
"business" of 10 other fuzzies.  He always preferred to sleep alone and
established a favorite sack right off.  PAL had come home to enrichen
our lives.
 
He already had Adrenals going bad and was scrawny and was losing his
hair, but we had to try and save him.  Cubic dollars later (and one
impressed vet who took the largest tumours (bilateral) out that she had
seen to date), his slow recovery began.  Duck Soup and lots of it in
small doses, antibiotics for the skin wounds and lesions that he had
developed while lost...the list went on and on yet he soldiered thrugh it
all, with nary a whimper or cry, for he was PAL the strong..  He always
looked a little nearsighted, kind of like the mole in the "Wind and the
Willows", and probably suffered some eye condition as well, but he didn't
mind, he was PAL, friend to all and enemy to none.
 
Over the next several years, he bonded with both my wife and I but he
always seemed to prefer Cyndi, so he became her little man.  The two of
them really looked forward to late afternoon/early evening walks in the
backyard, where he could sniff and snuzzle at all the good aromas to be
found on our acre (skunks, foxes, raccoons, bobcats, gophers, possums and
more!).  He had a few favorite dirt piles that he loved to roll in and
quite often he would return to the house with dirt all over his face and
whiskers.  However, his health was never totally restored and finally,
this last year, things started to go from bad to worse as his adrenals
went on the fritz again.  His rat tail returned.  It was a delicate
balance of pred and food to keep him going, and when his rear haunches
started to show and he got tipsy in the behind, we knew he was fighting
a losing battle.  But he was PAL, the fighter, and never gave up.
 
Then this fall, a decision had to be made...we had to go back east to
bury my parents ashes in their home town, and that would mean leaving Pal
in the care of our petsitter.  The trip was only to last 3 weeks and we
figured that he had that amount of time left in his poor tired body.
 
We were wrong tho and just before Thanksgiving we received a call that
he was doing poorly and that he was at our vets.  Shortly thereafter, his
vet...the one who has stuck with him all along and was so amazed at the
size of his tumours...called to tell us that things looked grim.  His
lesions of old had returned and he couldn't stand anymore.  Pal tried
valiently to hold on until we got home but just couldn't do it.  He was
tired and worn down by the unfairness of adrenal disease...so common to
our kids it seems (we have lost at least 7 of ours to that in the past
decade).  So, while we were on the train returning home, he quietly,
without a whimper or cry, passed to the Bridge, leaving his thin and
worn out body behind.  Wrapped in his favorite flannel baby blanket and
laid in a fern lined grave, Pal got his wings at last and went to be
reunited with
 
Clyde, Casio, Bounder and Big-Boy.
 
Sandee, when you see him, please tell him that we didn't mean to be gone
when he left us.
 
AND to say hello to all of the kidz that have gone before....Bubba,
Bodie, Blizzard, Beeper, Bopper, Clyde, Casio, Bounder, Big Boy, Cindi,
and ABBA the dancing Queen.
 
Here's to fines in the water, feathers in the aire and tails in the tall
summer grass.
 
Putorius, CP and the remaining 6...Max, Wingnut, Gigabyte, Bonnie, Flower
and Ivan the Toeable
[Posted in FML issue 5085]