Meeting your best friend is like coming home from a lonesome journey.
Your eyes meet, in that unmistakable look of recognition: there you are!
It is a magical time. You swap secrets and stories. You are safe and silly together.
At last, you are home.
We just never imagined Jimmy would have to leave again so soon.
When the Beirut Fifteen arrived, they were astoundingly easygoing. Though they could still feel the gravel of Lebanon’s war zone between their toes, Daisy, Bowie, Antar, and the rest were ready for a rollicking good time. We were humbled by their trust. Affection was as natural as breathing.
But a few of our sweet survivors were fearful. Since Jimmy was new to breathing easy, we couldn’t blame him for not rushing his sigh of relief.
Though he was dressed in sunrise stripes, Jimmy’s eyes were still adjusting to the light. The angels of Animals Lebanon found him gasping for air, ravaged by pneumonia. No sooner had they nursed him back to health than he developed feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). Once again, they saved his life, at great cost.
At last, Jimmy was strong enough for the trip of a lifetime. Love, safety, and a babbling gaggle of best friends awaited him at Tabby’s Place.
While his fellow travelers snuzzled our faces before they even knew our names, Jimmy asked us to be patient. Though he was not even two, he was as pensive as a thousand-year-old cedar.
Nothing as important as friendship should be rushed.
Besides, there would be time.
Time is love’s translator at Tabby’s Place. Whether your first language is English, Lebanese, or pure instinct and innocence, time will sing what words can only stammer.
Jimmy listened closely as days and weeks spoke. Kind faces reappeared without fail. His bowl kept refilling like a meaty miracle. Affection was infectious. Humans of all ages and hairdos seemed incurably excited for Jimmy’s existence. It is hard to stay lonely when you make people’s day just by showing up for the day.
Slowly, Jimmy believed.
His wary eyes had once announced, my name is James, and I am the only friend I need. But now, they danced, breathless to declare, I’m Jimmy! You can call me Jimbo James! Can I call you Human Bean? Can I call you when I come up with a good joke at 2am? Can I call you “bestie?” 
Scared slaps gave way to symphonic purrs. Caution gave way to kisses. And we gave Jimmy the greatest joy of his whole journey.
There are cats who love cats, cats who tolerate cats, cats who are livid that other cats live within 500 miles, and then there are Jimmy and Dr. Tom.
If you wondered what area of medicine Dr. Tom practices, it is Jimmyology. At Jimmy’s new patient exam, Dr. Tom diagnosed him “perfect,” “hilarious,” and “mine.”
From that moment, the golden boys of Suite D were inseparable. Whatever hesitation Jimmy brought to his bonds with people, he had no such reserve with his rowdy soulmate. Jimmy rolled the boulder from the cave of his heart, flinging it wide enough for Dr. Tom’s enormous moon-face. The lithe Lebanese lion and the cinnamon gumball with the grace of a wildebeest were instant soulmates.
It seemed the best was yet to come.
When a pair of angels swept into Tabby’s Place, open to adopting an FIV+ cat, Jimmy whisked them right inside. The first thing they found in the living room of Jimmy’s heart was a fifty-foot portrait of Dr. Tom. And so it happened that four best friends found each other. The date was set for Jimmy and Dr. Tom to go to their forever home.
Jimmy would just need a dental cleaning before his big homegoing. We did not imagine where this “routine” road would lead.
The day after his dental, Jimmy developed a bit of increased respiratory effort. Given Jimmy’s history with pneumonia and FIP, our team took no chances. They gave Jimmy a nebulization treatment, and he calmed down right away.
But the next morning, Jimmy’s symptoms worsened. We rushed him to the specialty hospital, and every bestie from Beirut to New Jersey held our breath.
Jimmy was only a year old. He’d put centuries worth of hardship behind him, and now time was supposed to be his (second) best friend. But, before we could even tell the emergency vet, “he likes it when you call him Jimbo James,” Jimmy was gone. He went into respiratory arrest, leading to the discovery of a severe tracheal stricture blocking his airway.
It had likely been there all along. Now we knew why such a young cat suffered pneumonia in the first place. His own body had never been his friend.
But there was a friend closer than a brother back at Tabby’s Place, and adoptive parents whose gold hearts were about to break into thousands of pieces.
Volunteers rushed into Suite D to comfort Dr. Tom, stroking his cherub cheeks and promising that Jimbo James would always be near him. The adopters stayed the course, devastated that they would only have one carrier in their arms, not two.
The tears of all who love Jimmy could cause tidal waves in the Atlantic.
At times like this, we are enraged with time itself. This was supposed to be the start of Jimmy’s journey. We envisioned him spooning Dr. Tom, like two puddles of orange pudding, for the next sixteen, eighteen, twenty years. The best was yet to come.
Yet, if we had to do it all over again, we would choose Jimmy every time.
Grief cannot swallow up the gentleness of Jimmy’s first furtive nose-nuzzle, or the giddy joy of his wrestle-fests with Dr. Tom. The ending cannot erase the thousand stories Jimmy lived at Tabby’s Place, of valor, and silliness, and purring at his dinner.
And the ache that leaves us breathless on Earth may give way to a journey no eye has seen.
If you are familiar with C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, you know why this series is every cat’s favorite. The hero is Aslan, a lion of unwavering courage and unfailing love. Narnia is a land of wholeness, a sanctuary without walls. We want our beloved lion and his friends to thrive there, forever.
But at the close of the final scene, we are given this epilogue:
“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Though our eyes are too full of tears to understand, I believe the best is still yet to come for Jimmy.
Jimbo James, true friend, we hold you in the heart of our hearts. Breathe easy, beloved. We will meet again.
Please join us in holding Jimmy’s adopters and Dr. Tom close to your hearts. The Tabby’s Place family is here for you, dear ones. We will always remember the boys together:
Sometimes the sweet ones are on loan to us for only a brief moment – then they spread their angel wings and leave. Tabby’s Place was heaven on earth for Jimmy. Thank you Tabby’s Place!