Hello my name is Brad and I’m here because On May 7, 09 I had to put my best friend of 15 years to sleep. It’s been about five months and every day I miss him. Simba was a stubborn, monster of a cat who always knew how to make you angry by breaking things, jumping on things and taking a swing at everyone when something did not sit right with him. Now don’t get me wrong he was a little monster but that was what was so cool about him, he had personality, he knew what he wanted and he would always have it his way. As a kid I never had many friends and even today only one or two, for me friends where people I kept at arms length and alienated myself a lot. I was 9 when I went to my uncle’s farm and found this little ball of gray fur in the barn. Barn cats do not have a long life span, if any. My mom said I could have a kitten and I picked the one with a funny knot at the end of his tail. After seeing the Lion King I named him Simba. He was a fighter, always wanting to play with claws and teeth and his favorite toy was mostly the arms and legs of people whom got within range. Like I said as a kid I never had many friends so after coming home from a hard day at school there was Simba, claws ready to break something or attack me. Most people would see this as a murderous psycho of a cat but when I look back on it now Simba helped me forget a rough day by being that way. He would break something or claw me and I would stop thinking about school. He was an indoor cat that for some reason we never had declawed, Simba’s claws made him happy and fun. A few years after I got Simba I would get another cat, Myrtle, whom Simba even in the months before he died would always hate. The two fought constantly and Simba was always a bully but it kept them both young. As years went on I would never really ever have any close friends, yeah I was that guy sitting alone, but I always had Simba to cheer me up. When I moved out on my own a few years back my mom was there with a pet carrier waiting to be free of the cats, even though the cats where her idea because she hatted dogs. Simba would not like the move to a smaller place to destroy and now it was exclusively my things he would break instead of my mom’s stuff. Once he got used to it he loved it and every night would sleep on my bed, often jumping on me while I was sleeping just to wake me up so I knew he was there. I never had any serious health issues with Simba, my mom ran him over with her car once that should have killed him but he kept on trucking. Then about five years back he had a urinary problem that was easily fixed. Healthy and happy was who Simba was but I knew he was getting older and I needed to take him to the vet. For a time I was working a good job and making decent money. Simba never acted old even when he was fourteen so part of me at the time said wait for him to start acting old then I can take him to the vet. Well about two years ago I was looking for a vet, a good vet but then I got laid off and my focus shifted to paying rent and keeping myself plus 2 cats fed. Then around the January of 09, for the first time Simba started acting old. He got skinny fast and started drooling some nasty drool. I waited a week or two after the drool started then when I found a front fang that was loose I freaked out and took him to the vet. Well his teeth where bad and he had three of them removed, I felt like crap that I had waited so long to take him to the vet but I was told everything would be fine now. Simba being a fighter and never leaving the safety of his home managed to get a rep while at the vet, it seems he clawed some nurses and then had a big “WARNING” stamped on his folder. Then like nothing happened Simba was back breaking things, beating up on Myrtle and making me forget the slump I was in. This did not last more than a week before I noticed his lower jaw start to deform and he was not eating. At first I thought it was simply a matter of him adapting to eating with three less teeth and a month would go by before I decided to take him back to the vet. The vet saw a lot of saliva and then my heart broke when the vet lift Simba’s tongue and found a swollen tumor looking thing under his tongue. I hate to say it but I have always been a realist, I knew that Simba was not going to get better this time. Sure enough the vet would do test and he had cancer in his jaw and that was the whole reason his tooth was loose and his jaw had started to deform. Two weeks later on May 7, I took Simba to the vet for the last time and did not leave his side as he was put to sleep. I did not have the money to cremate him so I decided to bury him outside, Simba always loved looking out the window at nature so now that’s where he was. The most difficult part was after he was put to sleep when the vet left me alone I had to pick up his lifeless form and for the first time ever in 15 years there was not angry fur ball attacking me. I buried him in a simple box because Simba loved boxes, he would play in them, sleep in then and even try to eat his food in them. Being a guy who has always been alone I did not have anyone to help me or talk to. After I buried him I just tried to keep moving and find a job so I could pay some rent. So now five months later I still cannot sleep a full night knowing Simba is not sleeping there and I have slumped into a depression that has affected my job search. Simba was my best friend and not having anyone to talk to makes things tough now. I still have Myrtle who is around 12 years old but Simba was one of a kind that can never be replaced. Like I said before I am a realist so there is a part of me that is screaming to suck it up and keep moving. I have always lived by a simple code, “no matter how bad you/I think we got it there is someone out there that has it worst.” So I don’t complain or talk about life because it does not do any good. Writing this here is hard because I keep thinking that someone here has a more tragic story, someone is hurting more. Heck there is several other sections in this forum filled with people who have lost parents, children and siblings. What about all them? Well it may not matter but I lost a friend and something still hurts whenever I think about him. I still look around and see the things he loved, broke and played with that make me sad. There are a million regrets I have that don’t matter. Well anyway that’s my piece of pie and I think I just wanted to let people know that there was a monster of a cat named Simba. If anyone read this then thank you and feel free to comment, good or bad it’s a free world.
Image provided is of Simba thinking about what to break next.
