I just sobbed over a blog post someone wrote last July.

I guess many people in the blogging world know about Abbie the Cat. Abbie started blogging years ago when blogging was a new thing, and all it was were the daily thoughts of a much-loved and rather self-involved house cat. “He” as in his guy, writing in the voice of the cat, shared funny, short anecdotes about things cats do and think, his interaction with the other cat in the house, and with his guy. The “about” message says: “Hi my name is Abbie and I am a cat and I am writing all about me and the other cat and the people in this place.”

I stumbled across the blog, Abbie the Cat has a Posse, back when my kids were little, and I was a stay-at-home mom. It was 2001.

The posts were usually short. There were no pictures. But it continued for years and years, written as a cat, with cat sentence structure, cat punctuation and cat capitalization.

This is Abbie’s entry from May 9, 2001:

vblogger was down last night so I could not report in
hopefully it is up and running well now. I have had no complaints as of yet with the connection

and nothing too special to report. 
I guess one’s fifth year of existence starts off slowly
we’ve been keeping the sliding door open more often since it is warm

I have been told in no uncertain terms to not rip the screen down and i Swear I have been behaving and following these orders but sometimes a bug flies close to the screen and I cannot tell if the bug is on my side of the screen or the outside of the screen so I have to check just for the sake of accuracy and faiurness in reporting

I hope you understand.

fights this week won by me: 7
fights this week won by the other cat: 0
fights this week the other cat thinks she won but I did instead: 2

Over the years, I read Abbie’s blog and laughed, and marveled that it never stopped coming. Through years and life events, and world events, elections and wars, and kids growing up, every so often I would remember Abbie and go back and find his blog and read and smile. 

Once after a long absence, I went back to find what Abbie had been up to, I learned that the other cat in the house, and sometime contributor to the blog, Martha (who lived a double life as a pirate in her cat imagination) had died. Abbie’s simple description of her illness and passing was one of the most moving things I ever read. And I cried. And I sent the link to friends, who also cried.

I’ve gone back to read Abbie after computer crashes and losses of bookmarks and kids going off to college, and major life changes, and I thought it was astonishing that he was still blogging.

But today, when I happened to think of Abbie, and looked up his blog, I found a post written by his guy, Rob, last July 22. It described in the most loving way, Abbie’s illness and his last day. Abbie died on July 23.

He was 16 years old. His blog spanned 12 years. I don’t know where he lived, or his guy’s last name. But he made me laugh and cry, and think about the simplicity of life and love.

Rest well, Abbie. And thank you, Rob.