Pumpkin

My cat Pumpkin died in Barcelona 22 years ago yesterday. I don’t have his ashes and I didn’t bury them anywhere. I was younger then and stupid and it didn’t occur to me that I could do that. But I still remember him and always mark the day; he is someone I will never forget and I have his photo up on my fridge along with my other little loved ones who have passed away.

All my pets seem to have marked an era. Pumpkin was the involuntary hero who flew with me from the Bay Area to Barcelona on my great adventure when I moved here in 2001. In fact, he flew with me twice because I came once in 1999, then again in 2001. He wasn’t a particularly brave cat but he was capable of enduring what had to be endured. The plane rides weren’t comfortable for either of us, but I did arrange for him to sit with me in the cabin, tucked under my feet, turning me into a pretzel and him into a yowling, unhappy passenger.

Pumpkin came from the Oakland SPCA. How anyone could surrender or abandon such a beautiful cat is beyond me. When he first came home with me to the apartment on Vine Street in Berkeley where I lived at the time, he was a scaredy cat who spent the first few days under the bed.

Pumpkin moved with me from Vine Street to Spruce, later to Bancroft, then to El Cerrito, then San Leandro, then Barcelona. For a scaredy cat, he did pretty well as far as traveling and moving home goes.

Pumpkin died an expat cat in Barcelona on 18 October, 2003. He was about 12 years old and one of the great loves of my life.