Farewell to a great little cat, Cody

Saturday was a sad day upon the death of our little cat, Cody. I’m not a cat person but wow, Cody was quite the cat. I already miss him. He was a GOOD cat and will be hard, if not impossible, to replace. He was an underrated little cat and compared to the kids, dogs, Ms Dave and even the hedgehog, I barely even have any pictures of him!

What Cody liked to do best as sleep! Anywhere, even on my rocking chair!

From the time he was a kitten he would sleep with his tongue out like this!

We think he must have eaten something poisonous on Friday afternoon, as he began to vomit and was sick. Saturday morning we found him laying dead out in the yard so we were able to bury him. I am VERY grateful for that as dying cats mostly head for the hills and you never really know what happened to them.



It was also nice for the kids that we had his body. Because of their pasts my children are VERY mature in the area of death and saying goodbyes. When I was five years old I would have FREAKED at my cat dying but Ella was very calm and understanding about it, after she made good and sure that she couldn’t wake him up ;). They both petted him, Ella talked to him, thanked Jesus for him, told him goodbye, etc. She did, out of the blue, while we were standing around his little grave, start talking about her family and how she was so glad that she’d found one and wasn’t in the babies home anymore (odd I thought). I think it stirred up some feelings from the past for her, which she dealt with well. Frankie just petted Cody but was processing EVERYTHING in his quiet Frankie way, and has been talking about his cat being in heaven with Jesus ever since : -) (Since I don’t know for sure that animals do NOT go to heaven, I just assume that all of my animals do). He also started talking about Kayo, whom NONE of us have gotten over- and it’s been five months!



We buried Cody out by our swing set. This pile of flowers started looking a bit like a shrine! All we needed was a picture of him to stick on it : -)

We planted an elephant ear plant on top of his grave, that will hopefully grow

The kids are handling it far better than I am. I never knew that I liked and appreciated little Cody so much! Now I have been through a LOT of animals in my life time so I thought that I would be a bit more hardened, but losing Cody has brought up just about every animal death in my history and by golly, I’m grieving for them all!



I had had Cody for four years – longer than both of my children- having gotten him a year after I moved to Uganda. Because I was staying in a one room place at the time, with a cat hungry Lab on the prowl outside, I used to take Cody to work with me when he was a kitten. I’d stick him in my computer backpack and off we’d go on my little boda/motorcycle : -). He lived at the office for a while, while I was in Sudan and in between moves, so he was familiar to all. My mom even helped me neuter him during her first visit here in 2006 (sweet memories, eh? Nothing like a little mother-daughter bonding!).



He did not have the bad habits that most cats have (spraying and being annoying, mainly) and was really a low maintenance, fairly loyal kitty – very unusual for a cat! Everyone on the compound liked him and he liked to curl up and sleep on our beds during the day. There is just something like a sleeping cat body on a bed or chair that I’ve always found comforting. When Frankie came home the dogs were a bit too much for him and he really liked small, gentle Cody. I never remember Cody EVER biting or scratching either of the kids. He also helped keep the snakes out of our compound and was a good little hunter. I already really miss that darn little cat!