Betty Brown

We loved – and we still do love – our Betty. The words are simple, but that love, oh that love. Some days – many days – it had an intensity impossible to believe, as if it were just too good, too perfect, too absolute. And now her loss takes our breath away. The loss of such a loved one leaves us at a complete loss, gasping and numb. I first met Betty in April 2004. I lived in Chicago at the time, and one Friday I took the bus downtown, got off and walked up Grand to the Anti-Cruelty Society at LaSalle, perhaps a bit late in the day I soon realised. The cats had settled in for some serious afternoon napping: to them I was the least possibly interesting thing in the world. There was just the one who wasn’t sleeping. And she was wide awake – at head height to my right she appeared in a furious burst of movement: a little black ball of fur digging away at the newspaper on the bottom of the cage with concentrated dedication, trying to find a way under the paper and into hiding. That was her, that was the one: Betty. She’d just be put out front for adoption after being treated in the back for a week or so. She’d arrived to the shelter with some problems but they were in the past now. And was she amazing! Beautiful, wide-eyed, with the softest fur I have ever felt. I signed the documents and I paid the fee. But she still had to be spayed and, as it was a Friday, I would not be able to pick her up until late on Monday. All these years later I can still remember how that weekend felt, namely, long. Really long. When Monday finally came, my friend Thomas picked Betty and I up from downtown and drove us home. Inside, in her new home, I opened her carry case and off she shot. Straight under the bed in a black streak so fast I did a double take. For the next two weeks she wouldn’t come near me. Eventually, though, she came around – she had sized me up and realised I was putty in her paw. Soon she had me running around, fetching her toys, filling her bowl and cleaning out her litter box, all on a tight schedule. We become inseparable and that’s more or less how things went for the next sixteen years. Important things happened in those years. Some weren’t good at all. There was the kidney disease in 2008 that nearly took her away way too early. There was the large cyst on her liver. Eventually there was the cancer that took her away on 28. October, 2020. But there were good things too, very good things. In 2015 Betty met her forever cat-mum, Katrien. In 2017 Betty Brown became Betty Brown-Vanpee and shortly after moved into her first house – and, gracious as always, she let us live there too. Losing her was – is – devastating. We sleep with her ashes next to us and that provides some comfort. We are slowly realising that when we look at her usual napping spots she’s not going to be there. But the love, we have that magical love — and that we are never going to lose. Rest in peace my darling. We miss you