  |
 Tomo went to the Rainbow Bridge on Saturday, March 20, 2004 Tomo
was my
daughter's
cat. |
Tomo wasn't always a cranky old cat. She was once a cranky young kitten.
Shortly after her father and I went our separate ways, my daughter begged him for a cat. He let her adopt Gabby, but the cat disappeared on a nighttime excursion and broke Paula's heart. She didn't have to beg quite as hard for the next kitten, whom she picked out before its eyes were open, from Gabby's mother's new litter.
Tomo's mother was a black & white mixed breed and her father a purebred white Persian; Paula was there when Tomo was born. She was the only solid black kitten -- her litter mates were brown & white or black & white. "I chose the only long-haired kitten in the bunch. She also happened to be the runt. They didn't think that she was going to make it but somehow she pulled through," says Paula. Tomo pulled through for more than 21 years.
Someone told Paula, who was about thirteen at the time, that "Tomo" was the midnight moon in mythology, a doubtful etymology but a name that fit the cat perfectly.
"Tomo had her own litter of kittens when she was about two years old." Paula remembers. "She only had two but they were huge. We kept one and gave away the other one. For the longest time we thought that we had kept a boy...boy were we wrong. Unfortunately, Jenny went out one night and never came back."
Tomo lived with Paula at Paula's father's homes in Kansas and Texas, at my place in Arizona, and at Paula's homes in Kansas. She tended Paula through the travails of the teenage years and ushered Paula's twin daughters into their early teen years. She saw others enter her house and leave, some for the Rainbow Bridge, including a dog, ferrets, several rats, and other cats, and some, mostly human, stay.
When she was nearly 22, Tomo crossed the Rainbow Bridge, leaving broken hearts behind her.
