In Loving Memory of Our Shady Baby

Today started out a joyous occassion and ended on a very sad note. We came home from Baby Bear's football practice and were going to go to the garden to check on our tomato plants when we found our dear Shady Baby floating in the middle of our pond dead. He was such a precious cat. We called him Shady Baby because he was literally a baby. He was so sweet and loved to take in any kitten that came in and even though he was a male cat would let the kittens nurse him. All the other cats loved him and I know they will miss him. They were all crying tonight, that is what is left of our cats. Another cat, Smokie, seems to be missing also. We have already had another one of our cats leave (we are quite certain dead or taken away) about 8 months ago and now poor little Shady is gone. We can't for the life of us figure out what is happening to our cats but kind of have an ideal. They are male cats but never seem to roam very far from us and it seems that someone must have it out for us or our sweet cats because they seem to keep disappearing on us whenever we are gone. This time it was pretty certain that something bad happened to Shady because he was in the middle of the pond. I can't understand if someone is doing this why they would want to harm an innocent pet of someone's.
After we discovered the body, Papa Bear got him out of the pond and brought him up to clean him off and see if there were any marks on him but there were none that he could find. Then Papa Bear tried to dig a grave but with his back problems and the fact that he was so upset was unable to do it so Brother Bear dug the grave for us. We will be making a tombstone for his grave this week. I am sure Papa Bear will do this tomorrow.

We are so upset about this and hopefully the other one missing, Smokie, will come back to us tonight. We haven't seen him today and he never showed up to eat when I fed them tonight. We will surely miss Shady Baby because he was such a talker and would always follow us everywhere we went outside. When we would go to the other side of the garden he would follow and roll over wanting to be petted and talked to, and he in turn would talk to us. He was one of the three that we raised inside one winter and what kept us sane during that winter. We really had grown attached to these three kitties. Their mommy left us and we raised them ourselves. They were like our babies. Now we are not certain if we have any of the three left since Smokie is not around. The other cats were so upset tonight. So this post is a tribute to our Dear Shady Baby we will miss him terribly.