My best friend died today. He fell out of a window in our apartment that shouldn't have been opened. His name is Mimi, and I thought I'd share with you a little bit about this special, and I mean VERY special cat. He died at the tender age of two, and when I got him, he was so small he could fit in the palm of my hand. He had big fuzzy ears and white paws, like little socks.

He loved to play ruff, but never bit or scratched anyone, and you could spin him around on the floor and he'd come back for more. Put a handkerchief on him like a cape and he became Super Mimi, and would wear it all day without a bother. His favourite thing however, was dried fish. Sure, all cats like fish, but he would go INSANE if you even opened a bag of anything smelling remotely like dried fish. Not fresh fish, but the spicy Asian kind.

If there was a box or a bag, he was content to sit there for hours in it, and if he got too crazy zooming around the house, I had a mail sack that I would put him in and lightly draw the string so just his head poked out. He would quiet down and just sit there, so quite that you might just forget him when heading off to bed. He wasn't very talkative as cats go, but his noises were more like questions, or statements of some importance our human mind's can't grasp...

He wasn't very graceful, and a tad overweight like his owner, but he kept himself active and was always exploring the world around him in a way that was actually inspiring. He wouldn't just dive into something, but with a keen intelligence would suss out just what it was that caught his curiosity, until he knew it.

I know this must seem sappy, pining on for a cat, but the wound to my heart is still fresh and if this helps the healing then so be it. My wife Sherry and I have some other cats, cute and all, but Mimi (we thought he was a girl when we got him, and the name stuck) was more person than feline. He always knew when you needed attention, when the other cats we're sick he'd tend to them, and was always there to try and make you feel good, no matter who you were. He loved his freedom, and going out, and meeting people and I know it's melodramatic to say this, but the world lost a great soul today because of a stupid tragic lapse by a careless person.

I know I will miss him terribly, every time I open the door to my house I will miss him being at the forefront of the kitty posse waiting to greet me... not for food, but because he loved me as much as I loved him. So I ask you all, in this crazy time and world we live in, to take a moment and try and be a little bit more like Mr Mimi, at peace; with love and enjoying your life to the fullest. He'd like it that way...

I'll miss you little buddy.