Always in My Heart

Always in my Heart

This week I had a little bit of a shock. Despite still being young (he would have turned 7 in 10 days), we lost one of our cats. Barney was a beautiful, adventurous, loving cat who will be missed a lot. Our house is simply not the same without him. It is going to take a little bit of time to let his gap in our lives feel okay. So today I wanted to write a little post about him and share some of the wonderful pictures I have of him. A commemoration of his life as such. A lovely way to say goodbye, one final time.

Barney was a happy cat. And on top of being a happy cat, he liked to be very vocal about his happiness. His purr was incredible. It was the loudest purr I had ever heard and it only got louder the longer you stroked him. And he absolutely loved being stroked. He was also one of those weird one in a million cats that actually loved his belly being rubbed. He would actually roll on to his back and put his paws in the air and just purr so loud when you even attempted to give him a stroke there.

He was a moggy that we got as a kitten but as he grew up and became a LOT bigger than his sister (who is fortunately still with us), we started to wonder if he was also part bengal. This was also because he was a truly docile cat. The kind of cat who just let anyone do anything to him and he’d barely even meow. He was happy to be petted by strangers and was the only one of our cats who let my three year old neice anywhere near him. He was also the kind of cat who would be in a room on his own, just sleeping. Then as soon as you walked into the room, he would purr, simply happy that you were in the room with him and sure that he would get a little bit of attention while you were there.

Along with a loud purr, he also had a loud meow. Which he liked to use to tell us just how STARVING HUNGRY he was. He would always stare at the food cupboard and meow over and over again. Look at us, look at the cupboard, look at us and then meow. Even when we had moved the food out of that cupboard! But he knew how to make us take pity on him / knew that if he annoyed us with his meows enough that we would just feed him to get him to shut up! But that is just a good look at how wonderfully clever he was. He may have looked like he was just a big dim monster but he really, really wasn’t.

Lastly, but certainly not least, was the fact that Barney was our big baby boy. Even when he no longer was a “baby”, he was always our big boy. Because he was overweight. Very overweight. Every time he was taken to the vets, he weighed a little more and was told to go on a diet but it was never possible to get him to lose the weight. But on top of being heavy, he was also BIG. His bones and general figure was that of a Bengal (as above). And we loved him for it. There was, essentially, more of him to love. And that was just the way we liked it.

Here’s a video of his purr!

So thank you Barney for being the most wonderful, beautiful, caring, happy cat you ever could be. We wish you the best and hope that you rest in peace.

All my love, forever and always.