Abiu Miu (1996 - 2011)

Abiu Miu died just before noon today, aged 15. He went peacefully, and I held him as he passed.

Abiu was the smartest and coolest cat I've known. He was my buddy.

When we brought Abiu and Kemiu home, they were frightened kittens, newly weaned and terrified of their strange surroundings. As Kemiu shivered into a little ball, Abiu stood over him, shielding him with his body against the unknown.

He was like that.



There are several eyewitnesses to his ability to teleport, sometimes distances of over a mile just as fast as you could drive it.

He and his brother once herded a deer through my backyard. They were a fearsome squirrel-hunting team.

Abiu was proud, he was smart, and he was certainly contemptuous and dismissive of anybody he considered a fool.

Abiu in his later days had retired, rather like an old soldier back from the Raj who had settled into his Oxfordshire estate.



He never really recovered from the injury to his ear, and these last few weeks saw his inexorable decline.

I loved that cat, and I already miss him terribly.

Godspeed, Abiu.