To Maggie.

In very sad news, our family cat Maggie passed away this weekend. Dave wrote this lovely eulogy, which I thought was too sweet not to share. Most humans don’t get eulogies like this! It is epic.

11 September 2010
Nine years ago criminals masquerading as an avenging god rained bodies, glass, concrete and ash on the streets of Manhattan; our thoughts today are with the victims, and with those who rescued and comforted the few survivors and continue to work today.

Today was all the sadder for us, as we lost our family cat Maggie. Fifteen years ago a kitten appeared in the front garden at 19 Zamia Road, Gooseberry Hill. The  Parkinson family took her in, named her after Maggie Simpson, the famous cartoon character, and they loved and cared for each other for the rest of her life. Maggie suffered immunisations, sterilisation, worming, and being chased up various trees by Charlie, the “other” family cat, who she taunted through a window as he languished outdoors to where he was banished after a series of errors with personal hygiene.

Maggie moved to 5 Hugh Street Guildford with Jenny, Hana, Jack and Sam; a sociable soul, she shared her food with Chops and his brother from across the road, and with a hungry bilby which lived, for a short while, under their next home at 9 Ethel Street, Guildford. She loved snoozing in secret cubbies on the shelves behind the  books, was disgusted by the slugs which raided her supper dish in the kitchen, but didn’t seem to mind the mice. For a while her “second home” was 5 Ethel Street with Sue and Jon when all at No.9 were out.

Maggie was always up for a nap on anyone’s bed at night and a cuddle any time of day, and was constantly there when Jenny felt ill during chemotherapy in 2007. She was a fierce defender of territory and, despite her prowess with mice, spectacularly fast, as the surprised cat over the road discovered one evening as we gazed  admiringly from the front veranda.

When it became clear that you had run out of lives, Maggie, we would have loved to have brought you home to say goodbye among familiar sounds and faces, but we  were twelve thousand miles and three weeks apart, and had to make a hated choice.

When we awoke after a restless night agonising on our choice, it was raining in  Altrincham, and as if on cue, a melancholy bell at old St Margaret’s tolled a solitary knell. This morning Jack and Sam, who toiled so hard trying to save you, laid you in your final resting place in the garden you loved. We’ve marked the place with the stone you knew, from another beloved garden you never saw in Didsbury, the Marie-Louise Garden.

Maggie, you were the greatest and always will be, and we will always be grateful you came by and stayed with us all for a while.