The Year of Loving Leon

I've been avoiding writing this blog post, not because I don't want to write it, but because I'm worried it will break the momentum of the funny/daily life/human and cat interest-story-ness of my previous blogs.  I alluded to it a bit in a previous post about Elroy.  But now that it is September 23rd, five years to the date of when we lost one of the most amazing buddies that ever lived, I feel like I need to write it.  Here goes...

The little concrete Buddha that used to be over Leon's grave in North Charleston sits on my bookcase as I write.  Around Buddha's neck, he wears the tattered red collar that Leon used to wear during the short year that he was our buddy, at least in a corporeal form.  All cats, if you know them well enough, are extraordinary.  But Leon, bless his sweet heart, was extra-extraordinary.  

Leon was a scruffy little alley cat with a handsome black and white tuxedo who befriended us one day many years ago.  Elroy, as I've mentioned before, was best buddies with him long before Elroy gave us the time of day.  Leon took to us immediately--there was none of the getting-to-know-you, can-I-trust-you dynamic that is usually so common with foundling cats.  Except Leon wasn't really a foundling--he kind of found us, and touched our lives and hearts tremendously in the process.  

When we took Leon to the vet for the first time, we found out he had FIV, or Feline Immunodeficiency Virus.  It's kind of like HIV, and cats out in the wild usually fare poorly when they contract it.  Leon seemed healthy, and while we were extremely sad at his diagnosis, we decided to make the best of it and just see how it goes.  We got him neutered, so he wouldn't mate and wouldn't be as interested in fighting (two of the most common ways the disease is spread), and kept him warm and fed and comfortable in the finished room above our detached garage.  We let him out, of course, after he'd healed from the neutering, but we kept a close watch on him to make sure that he didn't get into any kind of trouble.  At that point, we didn't know him well enough to know why we didn't have to worry.

When I say Leon was an extra-extraordinary cat, I mean that in the truest sense of the made-up word.  He seemed almost magical.  Leon never seemed to mind the cold, and never seemed to mind getting wet.  I'd come out of the house on cold winter mornings and he'd be sitting there in the grass--in the shade.  I'd tell him to move into the sunshine, but he didn't listen, even if the grass was wet.  If I called him when it was raining, he'd come trotting up to me, getting soaking wet in the process.  Didn't bother him.  Nothing seemed to bother him.  He wasn't scared of dogs--he'd just walk right up to one and roll over on his back.  Leon loved all living things.  Leon treated the other outdoor cats with dignity and respect, even pesky little Elroy who was every bit as effervescent around Leon as he is now around Otto.  Leon had a beneficent attitude towards the opossums and raccoons who encroached on his territory and muscled in on his food.  He seemed to ascribe to the "live and let live" philosophy of life, to a degree that was humbling to us mere humans.  One time, we actually witnessed him eating out of his bowl at the same time as a blue jay who had lighted there to get a snack.  (Why the bird trusted Leon not to eat him, we'll never know.)  He gave off such a positive, benevolent, peaceful energy that we called him our Buddha Cat.  

It broke our hearts that we could not bring him into our house and add him to the family, but there were two problems with this plan.  One, at the time, we did not understand enough about the nature of FIV to understand that Leon posed no real threat to our buddies from an infection standpoint.  And two, we had an extra foster cat in our household at the time who absolutely could not stand Leon.  Again, another story for another time, but suffice it to say that the odds were not stacked in Leon's favor for getting to join our brood.

And yet, Leon wanted to be with us constantly.  He supervised us when we cleaned the litter-boxes or washed the cars.  He trotted down the driveway after us when we took out the trash and recycling.  He was almost always waiting for me at the end of the driveway, whenever I came back from doing anything, and many times we had to bring him back to the house and put him in the upstairs room because he tried to follow us on our walks around the neighborhood and to our little downtown.  He liked being with us so much that he even enjoyed rides in the car, even if the only place he ever got to go was to the vet. 


I have so many beautiful and lasting memories of my sweet Leon boy:  like the time we let him out of the garage room for the first time after his neutering, and how he took the time to stop and smell each of the flowers in the wildflower field that was right across the alley from our house...how beautiful the sun looked on his shiny coat, and how he seemed to be saying "yeah...this is what life is all about--stopping to smell the wildflowers every chance you get."  Or the time a really bad tropical squall was coming in, and I stood at the top of the stairs at the garage frantically calling for Leon as the storm came rolling in...the way he looked as he loped gracefully across the back yard, freedom rippling in every sinew, as if he thought this was all just a game and I was silly for being worried about a little bluster and a few drops of rain.  The times I slept with him in his upstairs room during the coldest nights of winter, in three sleeping bags and with a portable heater, and no central heat.  How he would snuggle up to me, climbing into the sleeping bag with me, or snuggling into my underarm and looking up at me lovingly.  He always became flatulent when he was happy, and he seemed to smile at all the closeness and warmth and loving.  I miss those aromatic moments most of all, I think.


This post just scratches the surface of everything that Leon meant to us, and all we learned from him.  Maybe I will write about him again.  I hope I do.  There are still so many stories to tell.  When he died of an acute case of diabetes, which we didn't even know he had, on September 23rd, 2005, I thought that there would be no end to my tears.  I cried for months every time I thought of him, which was frequently.  How could a cat so loving, so completely at peace with the world and with his life, be taken from us after only one short year of knowing him?  

I'll never know the answer to that question, but I do know what Leon's legacy is for us.  It's having compassion for all living things, regardless of their stature.  It's enjoying every single millisecond of life, even when life is cold and rainy.  It's always being up for an adventure, even when that adventure might turn out to be the human equivalent of a trip to a vet.  It's living passionately, loving unconditionally, and having fun in the few precious years that we're given to live on this earth. 


Luckily, Leon also gave us Elroy, whom we're pretty sure now is his son, and who is a tangible reminder of a cat who will always claim an immeasurable part of our hearts.  


Sweet Leon, wherever you are, please know you are still loved.  And no matter how many years go by, and how many buddies we love along the way, there will never be a more magical time in our lives than the Year of Loving Leon.