Requiescas in Pace
Roo the intellectual cat 1996 - 2013
So now our dear cat Roo has passed away, like dear Kanga before her. Her death was very sudden, though, and didn't follow long illness like Kanga's. One evening I was watching television, with Roo beside my chair, as so often. My wife came home from work. Soon after, Roo suddenly stood up, coughed just three times, and then fell to the floor. We rushed her down to an emergency vet, but we were sure she was already dead. Perhaps it was a stroke.
People often laughed when I described Roo as "intellectual", but ever since she was a kitten she often seemed to be thinking hard about things. When my wife and I talked, she would look carefully from one of us to the other. She certainly seemed to know that something significant was going on, but that somehow she couldn't quite grasp what it was. More than that - whenever she entered the room, we would say to her, "Hello Roo, how are you?" In return she would miaow with precisely the same intonation pattern. But after a while, not having penetrated the mysteries of our communication system, she gave up trying.
Clearly her intellect was above average for a cat - didn't she deserve to be called intellectual in that case?