Anansi was 18 this year. My best friend/housemate brought the little black kitten home for me, and he got his name (after an African folktale trickster character) because of the spider-like way he would scramble up my leg, in order to get next to my face. He slept in the crook of my neck.
This cat let us know how much he wanted to be an outdoor cat right away, and he was very singleminded in this desire. I lived in places where he could not go out, but he never stopped howling at the door, and escaping.
One Summer, when a boyfriend and I went to Europe, with no clear return date, I asked my mother to care for my two cats. When I returned, she announced that Anansi was hers. We disagreed about this, but she did have a nice little backyard, and I was about to return to SF, where I didn't even have a patio.
I always regretted leaving him a little, but she spoiled him with cooked fish, and he loved her house. She always referred to him as "mine", especially when he cost $ or caused trouble, even though he lived in Southern California 3/4 of his life.
He got pretty sick this year, and my mother was about to embark on the downward spiral of expensive vet interventions that she had with our last two cats (one who had lived to be 21, and the other 18) who also had kidney problems. We had just talked on the phone about what to do, and she told me that Anansi was sitting outside the door, listless, and quiet, and wouldn't come inside. This was a week ago. I asked my mom if she could get him inside, or get the phone out there, I wanted to talk to him, but she couldn't. She got him in a little later, and then let him go out in the middle of the night (a habit of his—he never went far)and then he never came back.
This was a week ago, and we have to assume at this point that he has died. It bothers us that we don't know, and that none of the neighbors have found him. I think that perhaps this was the best way for him, but morbid creature that I am, I keep thinking about his last moments, and hoping that he wasn't cold, and that he wasn't trapped, but was happy to be outside.
Goodbye little black cat. We loved you very much!
Anansi in the Mission, in my apt on Haight, in my apt on Fillmore/Haight, his perch above the City