totally bogus.

Today would have been bogus' 12th birthday. unfortunately, he used up all his nine lives a couple of weeks shy of turning 84 in cat years. I'm sure happy I got to relish in his Canadian retirement with him this summer hardly knowing there was bone cancer developing inside him as he youthfully attacked me in my mother's wedding dress! We got Bogus from Kara's grade six science teacher when I was in elemenary school. He was named after a movie I watched on a plane with Whoopie Goldberg about a boy who had an imaginary friend named "Bogus". I don't think I learned the meaning of the word bogus until a few years later but he definitely grew into his name as he was constantly doing things that were "totally bogus" like opening doors and lifting the lid off the cage of our pet hamsters for lunch. "Boguswogus" as Kara always called him was the best damn cat. He always slept with Kara and I as a kitten and even though I always wanted to give him a bath and dressed him up and tried to train him to walk on a leash, that fat cat (over 20 pounds!) loved me anyways (and all the cans of tuna I mistook for cat food). Beating feline leukemia, a snake bite that required a shunt in his paw, chronic urinary tract infections, and a laundry list of costly health problems... he went through all nine lives much sooner than your average cat. Being greated by his loving purr was the only thing constant in my life for a long time and now, along with the Strawberry Shortcake room I grew up in, a mum to make me fettucini alfredo "just the way I like it" and the tape separating mine and Kara's sides of the room, a part of me feels like one of the last parts of my childhood is gone now too. He died a happy cat. We sent him to retire with Grams when Kara and I both moved into apartments that didn't allow pets while in college. He spent the last couple of years chasing birds, seeing snow for the first time and getting cat hair on everything Grams owned. He found it just as exciting to lay across her newspaper as he did our homework. I'm really going to miss that damn cat.