His assessment of my mother was a little inaccurate. She's not anywhere near insane. However, she is very enthusiastic. And emotional. Let's just call her passionate. His comment came after I'd related what I considered to be a flattering portrait of my mother, a story that revealed her endless love and devotion. The story involved my mother, a cat named Muffin and a flower bed on a rainy spring night the year before.

I was a freshman in college when I got the call: "Kristina, it's time. We have to put Muffin down. She's starting to feel the pain." My mother stifled a sob and then was silent. Muffin had given us both years of faithful affection and was one of the few beings in life that had never let us down. After blowing her nose and clearing her throat, she remembered, "Oh, by the way, your father's tuition check bounced again. You'll have to go beg the dean to let you stay this semester."

Reports on my father's financial irresponsibility generally sent me into histrionic fits, ending with my roommate sticking a large purple bong into my mouth. But after this call, I was completely still: Muffin had to go down.

Every night as I was growing up, Muffin slept with me. She was the cat to end all cats, the cat by which all future cats would be judged, the Marilyn Monroe of cats. She had come from nothing, just a street mutt from a broken home. She was a pure-white long-hair with a fluffy, expressive tail that moved like a belly dancer when she entered the room. She wasn't an ambivalent cat -- I've met that kind and I don't like them. No, Muffin loved and she loved hard. If you sat down in my house you were fair game for some kitty lovin' from Muffin. Often my mother and I would delay whatever we had to do for a few minutes if Muffin was on our laps because it pained us so to disturb that sweet, serene moment.

So I was sad when my mother told me the news. But if it was bad for me it was going to be a nightmare for her. She could not go through this alone and I knew I had to go home. A lot had been going on in my mom's life the past three years. She'd gotten divorced from my dad after he'd taken a second mortgage on the house, forging her signature, to save his failing business. The business failed anyway and the bank took our house. At about the same time, my dad announced that he didn't love her anymore and was leaving. And I, the last of her three children, had just left the nest for college.

A few years later she remarried, and her new husband did not like cats. Jack is a very large man with a lot of hair. He's basically wall-to-wall alpha male. But he's afraid of cats. Any time sweet little Muffin came near him he'd start screaming like a girl. I think he may have had a bad feline experience as a child. Some feral, evil cat may have backed him into a dark alley and scratched him to shreds, or at least I like to think so. In any case, it was clear that when Muffin died, there would be no more cats. At this point, Muffin was the only vestige of my mother's previous life. Her first husband was gone; her house was gone; her children were gone. That cat could always be counted on. When Jack would have a heart attack because my mother put the mustard back on the wrong shelf in the refrigerator (I kid you not), my mother would sneak away with a book and a cup of tea and sit with Muffin. All would be right with the world.

I came home over spring break to say goodbye to Muffin, and to help my mom get through it. Despite all my mother had been through, she'd kept up a good front, trying to stay optimistic and enthusiastic, saying that everything would be OK. But the prospect of losing Muffin was the last straw. She could not hold back. Every time Muffin walked into the room those few days before her last vet appointment, my mother and I would sob uncontrollably. Muffin would climb up on our laps and lick the tears as they rolled down our cheeks.

Next page | A funeral fit for a Pharoah