In September 1995 Göran and I drove with our friend Lee to the Animal Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota to pick out two cats.

I'm allergic to cats, so for the first couple of years Göran and I were together, I kept telling him we couldn't have cats. But Göran loves cats so much, his life wasn't as happy without them as we knew it would be with them, so I finally decided to give it a try. We decided that since we both worked out of the home, we should get two cats, so they could keep each other company while we were gone during the day. We also decided that since we were two men living together, we wanted female cats to balance out the genders living in our house.

At the Humane Society, there were lots of cats to choose from. There were tiny kittens. There were older cats. Göran and I wanted younger cats, but kittens were expensive. We looked at some cats who were a few months old--old enough not to be considered kittens, but still young. Göran found a small, black cat. He picked it up, and immediately it started purring. He held it and looked into its eyes. It was the first cat he picked out, but he immediately knew that this was the cat he wanted to adopt. I found a small black and white cat, and I picked it up. It also immediately started purring. It was the first cat I picked out, but I also immediately knew that this was the cat I wanted. For both of us, it was love at first sight.

At the time, Göran and I lived in the lower half of a duplex on 31st Street and Lyndale Avenue. We brought the young cats back with us in cardboard boxes. As soon as we arrived home, we put the boxes down in the living room and opened them up. Out popped the cats. We gave them time to get acquainted with their new home.

Göran knew what he wanted to name his cat. He named her Cleopatra, after another cat he had once had who was all white with one green eye and one blue eye. Since he had picked a name from antiquity, I decided to do the same. I picked a Biblical name for my cat, Tabitha.

Cleo's fur was all black and fairly short when she was a kitten. But it gradually got much longer and fluffier, and turned shades of amber and gray around her tummy. She was so fluffy, she had fur growing out of the bottoms of her paws, that made it look like she was wearing little fluff mitts. She had big golden eyes, and the sweetest, most delicate little meow. Sometimes it was more of a squeak than a meow. We always knew when Cleo was calling.

A cat always has many names. Her given name was Cleopatra, but we also called her Cleo, Cleo Cat, Cleo Catra, Cleo Puss, Puss Puss, Fluff Monger, Monster Cat, Fuzzer, Cleo Meister, Pretty Kitty, Princess, Your Meowjesty and lots of other names. We also knew she had her own names for herself that she kept to herself.

Another of her nicknames was Fizzgig. That's because the first thing she did when we brought her home from the Humane Society was crawl into a little cat house. She was all black, so all we could see was her bright yellow eyes peering out of the blackness of the hole in the cat house, and she reminded us of the character Fizzgig from the movie The Dark Crystal.

I did a Tarot card reading for the cats. The cards told me that Cleo had already suffered in her short life, but that her suffering had made her stronger, and forced her to be more independent. Cleo would go through life on her own terms.

Cleo was more independent. Unlike her sister Tabitha, who liked to spend every minute she possibly could with us, Cleopatra enjoyed finding little nooks and places in the house where she would just sit by herself. Sometimes she would come join us in the living room when we were watching TV, but she didn't usually need to sit in our laps, like Tabitha did. She would sit off by herself, usually on the top of the backrest of one of our couches by a window.

By the end of our first month with the cats, my allergies were becoming a problem. My asthma was getting almost unbearable. We thought we might have to give up the cats. But by then we had both fallen in love with them. I didn't want to give them up, despite my health problems. A friend of ours referred us to a mail order company that specialized in products that helped people who had allergies live with pets. We bought a special anti-dander shampoo for the cats. We bought dust-mite-proof bedding and pillow covers. We bought air filters. We kept the cats out of the bedroom. Finally, I went to a doctor and got some medicine to help keep my asthma under control. Eventually, I was able to breathe freely and we were able to keep Cleopatra and Tabitha.

Though Tabitha and I got along grandly, Cleo and I didn't get along so well at first. When I tried to pet her or pick her up, Cleo would hiss at me or even snap at me and try to bite me. She tried the same at first with Göran, but he wouldn't put up with that. He hissed right back at her and told her she would just have to put up with him. She eventually did. Göran and Cleopatra were always close to each other. It took a few years, but eventually Cleopatra took a liking to me, and would let me sit next to her and pet her. I always had to be respectful though, and do it on her terms. When she was done being petted, she would let me know with a hiss or a little nip to the hand.

When we came home from work, both cats usually came to the door to greet us. Often Tabitha would come greet us alone, and Cleo would stay curled up comfortably wherever she was sitting and just look at us. But there was a little trick Cleo used to do with Göran that she would never do with me. Göran would pick her up, and then she would lean her little forehead against his head or under his chin.

It took a while for Cleopatra and Tabitha to get along with each other too. At first, whenever they got close to each other, Cleo would hiss at Tabser, and then Tabser would hiss back and then they would bat at each other with their claws. This continued for quite a while, probably about the first year we had them. One day, we noticed what we thought was a cat fight. There was hissing and batting and chasing. But then we realized they were playing. After that, we often noticed them curled up together on a couch or a chair, and even cleaning each other. Cleo and Tabitha became best friends.

One day, Cleo and Tabitha were having one of their play fights, batting at each other. Cleo reached out suddenly with her paw and planted it right on Tabitha's forehead. That stopped Tabser dead. Tabitha looked at Cleo stunned, as if to say, "Oh, no you didn't!" She looked totally defeated.

Tabitha was the more well-behaved of the two. Not that she didn't occasionally get into trouble or do bad things, but she was much better at hiding it, or much more concerned about what we would think about it. Cleopatra was less good at, or less worried about, concealing her crimes.

Cleopatra's first arch nemesis was a small planter full of assorted cactuses that Göran bought. The cactuses were beautiful and Göran was very proud of them. But one day we came home to find that Cleo had attacked the cactuses and batted them out of the pot. Göran was able to save the cactuses and replant them. A second time, we came home to find that Cleo had uprooted the cactuses again and batted them around the house. After the second incident, Göran put the cactuses up on top of the fridge, out of reach of the cats. Or so we thought. One Sunday we came home from church to find dirt from the planter scattered all over the kitchen floor and cactuses everywhere. Göran managed to save the cactuses and replant them again. After that, we put them in our bedroom, the door to which we kept closed at all times, where they would be safe. Or so we thought. It only took once forgetting to close the bedroom door. Cleo would sneak in and attack the cactuses. After repeated attacks, the cactuses finally succumbed and died.

In 1996, about a year after we had adopted Cleopatra and Tabitha, we moved into our first (and present) house, near Powderhorn Park. The move was a trial for the kitties. We put them back into the cardboard carriers we had brought them home in from the Humane Society, and put them in the back of our friend Lee's station wagon on the drive from our old apartment to our new house. The cats did not like being alone in their carrier boxes in the back of a moving car. By the time we had driven the mile and a half or so from the old place to the new, the cats had shredded their carrier boxes and broken free.

After we had unpacked everything, the cats found a hiding place where they could feel safe. It was under the futon upstairs in a room we had designated as the guest room. They stayed under the futon for about a week, only leaving in order to eat and use the litter box. Eventually, they felt safe enough to venture out and explore. Soon they had claimed the whole house for their new territory.

It took a while for the cats to get used to their new home. They had never seen stairs before. At first they climbed the stairs very carefully, one step at a time. Eventually, of course, they learned to bolt up and down the stairs at top speed, sometimes right between our legs, threatening to assassinate us by tripping.

Cactuses were not the only arch nemesis that Cleopatra had. Göran and I sang in the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir for many years. One year, as a fundraiser, the Gospel Choir had a silent auction. One of the items at the auction was a beautiful, large raku vase. Göran had to have the vase. After a long bidding war, we got the vase for something like one hundred eighty dollars. We were told it was valued at three hundred sixty dollars. Göran loved that vase. He displayed it on a pretty stand in our living room. One year I was on a business trip in Chicago, and Göran was out with some friends. He got a call from the police on his cell phone to inform him that our home alarm system had gone off. Göran met the police at our home. Though both cats were hiding guiltily in the basement, Göran knew who the culprit was. Cleo had knocked the raku vase off its stand, and it was lying on the floor in numerous pieces. The sound of the breaking glass had tripped the alarm, which notified the police that Cleo was up to no good. Göran was very upset about the loss of the vase. I encouraged him to try to glue it back together. He did, but it was never the same again.

Christmas trees were also an inevitable target. Cleo loved to bat at the pretty decorations until she had managed to knock them down. Then she would bat them around the house. From time to time we still occasionally find a long lost Christmas tree ornament. One morning, Göran and I were awakened by the blaring of the house alarm. Göran, assuming we had an intruder, leapt out of bed, grabbed an aluminum baseball bat, and, naked, crept down the stairs to face the would-be burgler. He found the Christmas tree completely knocked over on its side, and the cats nowhere to be seen. In its fall, the Christmas tree had broken a plastic cat toy, and it was the sound of the breaking plastic that had set off the house alarm. We knew who the guilty party was. It was Cleo.

Cleo left her mark on her favorite perches. She would jump up onto a place where she wanted to sit, and she would extend her claws to help steady herself as she climbed up. So she left claw marks on the arms of the leather chair and our leather couches where she loved to sit, and claw marks on the window sill in the upstairs hall window, which was her favorite spot in the summer when we opened the window and a breeze blew through. It drove Göran crazy because he always wanted everything perfect, but we just had to resign ourselves to claw marks in those places.

We bought lots of scratch boards for the cats. Tabitha has always loved the scratch boards and used them, but Cleo didn't care for them. She preferred to scratch the carpet in our entry way, and later, a beautiful white carpet we bought for the dining room table. We tried everything. We tried a special spray. We tried infusing the scratch boards with catnip. Nothing worked. Cleo preferred the carpets.

In fact, Cleo really didn't care for store-bought anything. We wasted lots of money on store-bought cat toys. Cleo never touched them. But she could entertain herself for hours on end batting an old, dried leaf around the house. Another favorite of hers was old twist ties. We would often find Cleo intrigued by something small, chasing it wildly around the house, batting it in a corner with fascination. Was it a mouse? A bug? No. Just a twist tie. One day, Göran discovered Cleo's twist tie stash. He lifted up a corner of the carpet, and found at least a dozen twist ties Cleo had hidden there.

Cleo's antics sometimes made Göran angry. After catching her at some destructive act, he would lift her up by the scruff of the neck and scold her. Sometimes she would be banished to the basement. But his wrath never lasted long. One look at her cute face, or the sound of her delicate meowing from from behind the closed basement door, and Göran had to forgive her.

We always said that Cleo was the "cold" kitty and Tabitha was the "hot" kitty, because Cleo preferred places that were breezy and cool while Tabitha seemed like she could never be warm enough. While Tabitha could never get enough of sitting on our warm laps, or would leap onto a blanket as soon as we covered ourselves with it, Cleo preferred to sit alone on our armchair, or on the floor of the stair landing, or on the mantle next to the stairs, or even down in the basement. While Tabitha would position herself in front of the warm air vents in the winter, Cleo would beg to be let out on the porch, even on days when it was freezing cold.

Each cat had her own special places in the house. Cleo liked sitting on the chairs or in the window sills in our study. She also liked hiding under the dining room table. She loved the basement. She had many little hidden spots in the basement that we didn't know about. If we couldn't find Cleo anywhere no matter how hard we searched, she was usually in the basement. Her favorite place in the basement was a cat tower our friend Lee gave to us. Cleo loved hiding in the little compartment at the bottom, and she loved perching herself up at the very top of the tower.

One day Cleo's tendency to leap up onto the mantle next to the stairs almost got her in trouble. Göran had invited a few co-workers over for a party, and to set the mood, he lit a few candles and placed them around the living room, including on the mantle. Cleo jumped up onto the mantle to sit there, as was her habit, and the flame from the candle lit the fur on her side. Fortunately I noticed that Cleo was on fire before she did. Without even thinking I patted the fire out. Cleo got scared and ran away, leaving behind the stench of singed fur. We could only imagine what a disaster it might have been if she had panicked and run before I put the fire out.

Probably Cleo's favorite past time was sitting on the back of the couch next to the front window and watching the birds and squirrels. Her tail would flick, and sometimes she would get so excited she would meow out loud.

In the morning first thing after waking up, I would get up to go to the bathroom, and both cats would be camped outside our bedroom door, waiting to be fed. I would go down and put food and fresh water in their bowls. Cleo was usually the most eager to eat. She would hover over the food bowl and start gobbling up the little kibbles literally as soon as I poured them into the bowl. If Tabitha tried getting in there first, Cleo would push her out of the way.

After the kitties had eaten their fill, Tabitha was usually content to follow me around the house and sit on my legs while I did my morning writing on my laptop, or go upstairs and watch Göran iron his work clothes or wash himself. Cleo, on the other hand, liked to go out on the porch. She would stand in front of the front door and meow, and look at the door, and then look up at me until I opened it for her. Her favorite place to sit on the porch was the ledge in front of the southwestern window next to the porch door. She also loved to roll around on the floor of the porch.

Once we were ready to go to work, Cleo would usually still be on the porch. We would turn on the security system, and it would start beeping, and then we would open the door. Cleo knew exactly what the beeping of the security system meant. When we opened the door she would run back into the house, sometimes so fast all we saw was her fluffy black tail, straight up like a flag, zooming past. We called her the "Black Flash."

Tabitha hated being out on the porch. It was a punishment for her. If we put Tabitha on the porch even for a few seconds, as soon as we opened the door she would bolt back into the house. Tabitha preferred to be in the house with us. But Cleo loved the porch. She would stay out there for hours on end. Sometimes we'd wonder if Cleo wanted to come back in, and we'd open the front door and find Cleo sitting calmly in the window sill, staring back at us as if to say, "No, I prefer to stay out here. You may close the door now." Cleo let us know when she was ready to come back in the house. We could hear her unmistakeable meowing outside the front door. We'd open and then she'd calmly meander in as if she didn't particularly care one way or the other.

Sometimes in the winter, when it was extremely cold, Cleo would beg to be let out on the porch and I would open the door, only to have her poke her nose out on the porch, sniff the air, wrinkle her nose, and then look up at me with a confused look on her face. It was almost as if she were saying to me, "Why is the porch so cold?" Then she would just stand there, while the cold air came into the house, trying to decide what to do. Sometimes I had to decide for her and just push her away so I could close the door. But usually she turned around and walked back into the house on her own. But then five or ten minutes later, she would be back at the door, begging to be let out. I would open the door again, and she would sniff the air again and give me the look, and then she'd turn back around and go back into the house. Sometimes she'd repeat this a few more times. Maybe, she figured, if she just waited ten more minutes it would get better out there.

Once, Cleo let Göran know that she wanted to go out and look at the snow, so Göran took her out on the front sidewalk one winter's evening after he had finished shoveling the snow. She loved it.

In the summer, both cats got stir crazy and would beg us to be let outside. They would both camp in front of the door and meow raucously until we gave in and let them out. We did not want to let them stray far, so we would personally go out and supervise them. Their favorite thing was to eat grass. Sometimes they would eat lots of grass and then go back into the house and puke on the floor. So then we learned that we had to make sure that they didn't eat too much grass, though despite our best efforts, they would usually nibble at least a little.

When it was time to go back inside, Cleo was always the more insistent of the two on staying outside. Sometimes she would run and hide under the lavendar bush in our front yard. Sometimes she would just hunker down on the sidewalk, refusing to stand up and hissing or growling at us if we picked her up. Like good parents, though, we didn't let her intimidate us. We just picked her up and carried her in.

A few times we tried taking Cleopatra and Tabitha out on a walk in Powderhorn Park on leashes. We were surprised that they actually seemed to like the leashes, which were designed to strap around their chest. But taking them on a walk in the park was a different matter. Being indoor cats, they were both extremely nervous. Cleo tried running up a tree. If we hadn't had her on a leash we might have ended our walk by having to call the fire department!

Cleo was definitely more independent and aloof than Tabitha, and was more of a loner. But she could be very affectionate too. If she sat next to anyone, it was usually Göran. She liked to sit on the couch next to Göran when we were watching movies. Sometimes when Göran was working upstairs on the computer, she would come sit in his lap while he typed. Much more rarely--maybe once or twice or three times in all the time we had her--Cleo sat on the couch next to me. She would look at us with her "butter eyes," purr, and let us pet her. Or she'd roll over on her back and let you rub her tummy. But once she'd had enough loving, she went on her way. When our friends Peggy and Alex came to look in on the cats while we were on vacation, at first Cleo didn't usually give them the time of day. After they had been doing it for several years, Cleo eventually took a liking to them and would let them pet her or sit next to her.

My favorite moment with Cleo was one night about a year ago, when I woke up in the middle of the night. I felt the need to write something down I had been ruminating over the previous evening, so I went down and got my laptop, wrapped a blanket around myself, and curled up on our love seat and started to write. Cleo was sitting there on the back of the love seat and started purring very loudly. I reached up and petted her and she purred even louder. She stayed with me the whole time as I wrote, for about two hours. I was amazed that she stayed with me for so long and was so affectionate. She was often affectionate like that with Göran, but less so with me. I always cherished the few times when she spent time with me in that way.

You could only hold Cleo for so long before she started growling and squirming. That was the sign to let her go. If you ignored it, she might hiss or try to scratch you. We first learned this just after my allergies were getting bad, and we tried shampooing the cats. Both Tabitha and Cleo actually let us shampoo them without too much fuss, but when it came to the drying part, Cleo got impatient with all the drying and eventually just jumped out of the towel and went on her way. (The shampooing didn't last more than a couple of times.) Ever since Tabitha and Cleo were kittens, Göran has trimmed their claws using fingernail clippers. Tabitha acted as if she were in a salon getting a manicure. Göran could clip as long as he wanted. But with Cleo, Göran had to hurry. He had only so long to clip before he got the warning growl, signalling that she had important missions to attend to. Occasionally, Cleo's fluffy fur got tangled and matted. Göran could sometimes comb out the tangles. But every once in a while they got so bad, he had to cut them out with scissors. It usually took several sittings, because Cleo had no patience for that.

We enjoyed celebrating our holidays with the cats. They had their own Christmas stockings, and we usually got them special food or other treats. We often were out of town for the actual holidays themselves, celebrating with my family in Utah or Göran's family in Iowa. Last year we were home for Thanksgiving and we baked our own turkey. We bought special food for the cats, and they shared in our feast, eating at the Thanksgiving table with us. We took hilarious pictures of Cleo and Tabser politely eating their Thanksgiving meals. We still look at those pictures and laugh and laugh.

Cleo didn't just like kitty treats. She would actually eat just about anything Göran gave her to try. But her favorites were corn chips and Pringle's potato chips.

A few years ago, Göran noticed that Tabitha had some dark spots on her teeth. We took both of the cats in to the vet to have their teeth checked up. Tabitha had a few cavities and needed to have some teeth removed, but apart from some tartar Cleo's teeth were just fine. I think the two visits to the vet--first for a check up and then second for the dental work--was more traumatic for me than the cats. I put them in their cat carriers and strapped them to the back of my bike and then walked over to the vets on Cedar Avenue. They complained and yowled the entire way. The trip home was much worse. I couldn't stand to see them looking so anxious and exhausted.

About six months ago or so, I noticed something odd about Cleo's face. I couldn't tell what it was, but it made me look more than once. Eventually I started to notice that Cleo was often tearing up in her right eye. I pointed this out to Göran, and we thought maybe she had a cold. But the tears continued for a long time. In October, after we came back from a trip to Utah, we noticed that she wasn't eating so much. I looked carefully at her face, and then realized what it was that had been bothering me. The right side of her face was swollen. Then we knew something was wrong.

Our friend Lee suggested it might be an abcessed tooth, so we took her to the vet. The vet found five decayed teeth, but when they removed them there was no abcess fluid. The vet suggested that the swelling might actually be cancer, and that the tooth decay may have been caused by the cancer.

The doctor told us it might not be cancer, and the only way to know was to send a biopsy in for testing. We asked the doctor what our options were if she did have cancer. The doctor told us that if she had cancer, we might be able to prolong her life for about a year through expensive, stressful, and unpleasant chemo- and/or radiation therapy. We knew that was not an option for us, so we decided to hope for the best and see if the swelling went down once the infected teeth had been removed.

The swelling did not go down. After her pain killer medication was done, we noticed that Cleo lost her appetite again and was spending a lot of time hiding in the basement. We asked the vet to send in the biopsy for analysis. Soon after we confirmed that Cleo had cancer, and a very aggressive form of it.

We agonized about the possibility of further treatment. Ultimately we decided against it. Instead, at the doctor's urging, we continued to give Cleo anti-biotics and painkillers to help her live happily and normally for as long as possible. Our last few months with Cleo were some of the best times we ever had with her.

At first it was stressful, because Cleo hated taking her medication. We gave it to her in liquid form, which we would squirt into her mouth using a syringe. Göran would hold her, and hold her mouth open while I squirted the medicine in. At first, she took her medication very patiently. But over time, she started to struggle. Gradually she would squirm and growl and claw and fight, and twist her head back and forth so much it was almost impossible to give her the medicine. Even after we gave her the medicine, sometimes she would spit some of it out. She looked so sad. We could tell she thought it tasted awful. We called it her "acky" face. Then she would run down into the basement and hide all day and we would never see her.

Finally, it occurred to us to just put the medication in her food. We asked the doctor if that would be OK, and she said it would be, so long as we made sure she ate it all. We bought special soft food and mixed in the medication. We fed her a little in the morning and a little in the evening so she would be sure to eat the entire amount and take all of her medicine. Cleo liked this much better. After that she stopped hiding in the basement and would come up and spend her days with us.

This was hard on Tabitha. Tabitha knew we were feeding Cleo the yummy soft food. She could smell it, and did she ever want some! But she wasn't allowed to eat it. We would feed Cleo in the basement, and close the basement door so Tabitha couldn't raid Cleo's food dish until Cleo was done eating. Tabitha would stand outside the basement door and complain loudly. Sometimes after Cleo was done, Tabitha would run down and lick her food bowl, just in case there were a few little morsels left. Sometimes I'd let her lick the spoon I had used to mix Cleo's food, and sometimes we gave her a little treat. We didn't want her to feel completely left out!

In these last months, Cleo was the most affectionate she'd ever been. Instead of sitting away from us, she would sit on the armrest of the sofa closest to us. She let both of us pet her a lot, and she purred a lot and rubbed up against us. My favorite time of each day was in the morning and in the evening, when I fed her. She would go stand in the kitchen, pacing in front of the basement door. I'd turn on the basement light, and she would run down and wait for me. If I took too long, she'd come back up to the top of the basement steps and wait for me there. As long as Cleo was hungry and eating healthily, it meant she was doing OK, and I was happy.

The swelling on Cleo's face broke, and turned into an open sore that often oozed blood and clear liquid. The right side of her face gradually grew more and more disfigured until her right eye was swollen completely shut. But it didn't matter to us. She was always beautiful to us, though we hated the cancer that was slowly eating her up.

Cleo did fine through Christmas. But around New Year's, we noticed the signs that the doctors had warned us about, that the pain was exceeding the capability of the pain medication. One day she threw up her whole meal on the basement floor. A few days later, she would sniff at her food and nibble, but not eat much. She started to spend her entire days in the basement. We gave her a double dose of the pain medication, and that helped her to eat, but we noticed that when she ate, her whole body shuddered. When I petted her on the head, I could feel cancer lumps growing on the back of her neck. The doctor had warned us that the cancer would spread throughout her whole body, into her lungs, her esophagous, her stomache, her brain. The doctor said it might be better to put her to sleep before it spread to the brain.

Göran and I were faced with a horrible choice. How long could we keep her before it was unbearable for her? If we put her to sleep before then, would it be too early? We couldn't bear the thought of that.

After we made the painful decision to have her put to sleep, I almost couldn't bear it. It was impossible to believe that right now she was living and breathing and sitting next to us, and by the same time the next day she would be gone. I stayed up late, just petting her, while she purred and looked at me affectionately. Later that night, Göran woke up in the middle of the night and went downstairs to be with her.

On January 3, 2007, while we were waiting for the vets to arrive, Göran combed her fur, till she looked just beautiful. When they arrived, the vets laid her down on her favorite blanket on the floor. We sat next to her and Göran petted her head gently. Cleo was calm and dignified and did not fuss while they shaved her leg, or even when they stuck the needle in. They didn't need to use the sedatives. It's almost as if in her own way she knew what was happening, and in her own way was ready. While they put her to sleep, Göran continued to gently stroke her head, and the tears streamed down our faces.

Göran and I still feel her absence. We've cried every day since then. We see the landing at the top of the stairs, all empty. No delicate little meows in the morning to remind us that it's time for food. No Cleo sitting in the window, flicking her tail at the sight of the squirrels. No Cleo coming to greet us at the door when we arrive home from work. It's worst for me in the morning, the time when I always fed her, and the time when I felt closest to her.

It helps me to think of what the Dalai Lama said about the meaning of life:

We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety or one hundred years at the very most. During that period, we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. If you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.

I learned from Cleo that all living creatures have lives full of dignity and meaning. Cleo's time with us was far shorter than the time most humans have on this planet, only a bit less than twelve years. But in that time, she contributed to our happiness more than we can tell.