By Sue Julian Vollert

Let me tell you a story about Freeman the cat. He was very special to all who knew him.

My son, Don, and I had just moved into our new home in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. We decided to get a cat to add to our new home. One day while driving to work, I saw a sign with a picture of a beautiful black kitten. We brought her home and named her Sadie.

Meanwhile, one of my co-worker friends brought a black-and-white kitten to work because I had spoken of wanting to get a cat.

She didn’t know I already had Sadie when she brought him in to work with her. She said some neighborhood kids were trying to find a home for this kitten, and she remembered I was looking for one. He was so cute, I had to keep both.

The black-and-white tuxedo kitten had a broken tail, and the end looked like a stump. That is why we started calling him Stumpycat. I know this is not the greatest name for such a handsome kitten, but it seemed to stick. He was covered with fleas, but we got him all cleaned up.

They both looked very young, and not yet knowing their history, I guess I waited too long to fix them. Sadie got pregnant. We ended up with four kittens. Two females that looked just like Stumpycat, and two males that looked like Sadie. We named them Stella, Violet, Striker, and Freeman.

Freeman was very small. My son Don took a liking to him and would carry him in his t-shirt pocket. Well, Freeman started to grow and grow and grow and grow. When he was about a year old, he was up to 20 pounds. He became a gentle giant.

We rescued a tiny, abandoned kitten with a deformed leg, not developed at the knee. Freeman took care of her, He never got mad when she would play with his massive tail.

He liked to sit next to my husband Larry and watch TV. He would sometimes look over at Larry and meow as if he was commenting on the show they were watching. Sometimes he would steal my husband’s chair, so my husband bought Freeman a chair of his own.

As time went on, Freeman started to show signs of slowing down and acting like he was tired. We took him to the vet to be checked out and found he had numerous tumors in his lungs. He was unable to stand on his own any longer.

My husband and I knew it was time to say goodbye. Freeman was twelve years old when he went to the Rainbow bridge.

He was the sweetest cat I have ever known. He was truly a gentle giant who started out his life in my son’s t-shirt pocket.