Bebop was quite a cat. A fighter, a reflexive biter. Not mean-natured—in fact, he liked to be held and stroked and never bit hard enough to do us damage. He just liked to mix it up some.

As he got older, he had some low spells. He lost weight, his head hung low and his coat became dry and scruffy.

A new cat came to town, a young yellow tom with powerful shoulders. He would show up in the corner of our yard and gaze toward the house. Some days, he got more daring and would approach the deck, park himself just under the edge.

Bebop soon got a whiff of this bald intrusion onto his turf. He took to spending more time outside, returning home with battle-scratches he got from showing the tom where to go. Then came the torn, bleeding inner eyelid that had to be snipped off by a vet.

But Bebop, eye surgery and all, had come back to life. With renewed purpose, he swaggered, ate his food with gusto, regained a shining coat, kept an alert eye on the perimeter. He was happy.

About a year later, two summers ago, he died. We’d been unaware of coyotes in the neighborhood. We grieved terribly, we missed him deeply, we loved him.

It's still hard to think about how he met his end. Yet, Bebop was not an animal to back off from risk. He would not have appreciated being nursed across a long period of time. I suspect he left at full tilt, being exactly who he was.