Any one of my three boys: Wipe my buuuuuuuuuuuutt!!!!!!!!!!!

My husband or I: How do you ask?!

Any one of my three boys: Pleeeeeease, wipe my buuuuuuuuuuuutt!!!!!!!!!!!

"I'm Gonna Tell Big Brother On You!"

S: J is putting that in his mouth!

(silence)
(no response)

S: C! J is putting that toy in his mouth!!!

(C looks up from the game he is playing to glance over at S who is pointing at J looking guilty)

C: That's okay. Sometimes I put that toy in my mouth too.

(Mom laughs at the entire exchange especially the older brother's sure response.)
(Mom's heart and is warm and fuzzy over the dynamic between younger and older brothers.)

Who is God?

S: God is a T Rex.

J: Who is god?

S: You know god! He's everywhere!

Buffy 1997-ish - 1/31/2011

Last night we laid to rest our sweet girl Buffy. She was a beautiful cat. Now her beautiful spirit is free from the constraints her bodily life had placed on her.

She loved to go outside and act like a "real" cat; stalking, hunting, prowling.
She made that funny noise that cats make when they watch birds from the window.
She loved looking out the window on car rides even though she was scared as heck.
She loved to let Brother Bert clean and clean and clean and clean her.
She had an amazing purr that I hope I can conjure in my brain's ear forever - so deep, loud and constant.
Sometimes her purr was so enthusiastic that it crept into her vocal chords like some sort of meow and she sounded like a pigeon which is how she got her nickname Pigeon.
In the last few years she liked to be carried around by me. While I scratched her chin, scruff and ears she would hang her paws over the crook of my arm and purr like crazy.

As Don says her spirit is now "in the Happy Mousing Fields".
As C says her "body stayed at the vet but her spirit went to Heaven".
I'd like to think her happy spirit followed us home but I haven't felt her - yet. I think for now she's off enjoying her freedom and figuring out what's next.

Sweet girl,

We miss you, we love you and we know you're the happiest you've been in a very long time.

Love,
mom, dad, C, J and S
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boys were with Don and I and Buffy when she went. As Don and I talked to the doctor and eachother and I cried prior to putting her to sleep the boys were loud-ish, all over eachother-ish and all over the exam room-ish. It was chaos-as-usual. That's our life, that was Buffy's life. Life is life is life... We saw no reason to send her off in any way other than the way she lived.

In past office visits I would put Buffy on the table and her body would tense up and she would bury her head in my hands hiding from the doctor. This time I held her while we waited in the exam room for the doctor. Then Don held her while we talked and agonized over the decision with the doctor (and the kids climbed the walls). She was purring and relaxed the whole time. When we put her on the table and the doctor shaved her paw she stopped purring but simply laid quietly without tension and without her head in my hands. While the doctor gave her the anesthesia that literally made her fall asleep I kissed her tiny head and scruff and scratched her neck and Don and the boys petted her body. Buffy laid her head down on her front paws without a sound. It took a matter of seconds for the second, lethal injection to stop her organs. Don and I both cried. The boys talked to the doctor about what they thought Buffy was dreaming about. The doctor left us with her for a few minutes. We all petted her some more, the boys checked out various parts of her body and had strange conversations about what it meant to be "dead" and then we said goodbye.

It was a difficult decision but peaceful experience for all of us, especially Buffy, our little Pigeon.