BELLA VISTA — This is a very sad day in The Weekly Vista office.

We just learned that our beloved office cat, Miss Print, was euthanized not more than an hour ago.

We had seen signs in recent days of Miss Print having difficulty breathing, so this afternoon (Oct. 21), office manager Barb Paulos took the cat to Sugar Creek Animal Hospital in Bentonville to be checked out.

The news obviously wasn’t good. The veterinarian X-rayed the cat’s chest and found that her lungs were restricted by fluid on the outside to nearly one-quarter their normal size.

He told Barb he could treat the cat by draining her lungs and puttingher on antibiotics, but he would have to repeat the process over again and again without ever really curing her. Barb was left with a most difficult decision, one I am sorry she hadto make alone.

But if anybody should have decided Miss Print’s fate, it should have been Barb.

You see, while Miss Print liked all of us, she loved Barb.

After all, Barb’s the one who fed her each morning and evening, brushed her whenever she could and cuddled up with her several times a day just to tell the cat how much she loved her.

On those rare occasions when Barb took a day off, Miss Print wasn’t herself. She seemed to mope around, not too interested in doing anything but sleeping.

Once Barb returned to work, there was no running to meet her at the door. No, Miss Print wanted to make sure Barb knew she wasn’t happy with her being out of the office.

We had Miss Print a little more than three years. She was a stray that walked up out of the woods one day looking for something to eat. We fed her, as we do any stray that wanders anywhere near us.

Over time, Miss Print began to trust us, particularly Jenny DeShields, to the point that one day she went from outside stray to inside “queen.”

The term queen isn’t a misnomer when it came to that cat.

We used to joke that we were here just to take care of her. And sometimes I think Miss Print believed it.

One of Barb’s main duties each week is to reconcile the ads in the paper. As she would go through the invoices, comparing them to the ads on the pages, she would place an X across those she had verified. Every time she performed those duties, Miss Print would jump up on the desk and lie down on the newspaper. Everything would come to a halt until the cat decided to get up and move on.

With all the love she had to give, Miss Print had two things she didn’t care for - dogs and children.

Not only did Miss Print have us, her office mates, she had a true following among Bella Vistans. Many people used to come to the office just to see her.

Her favorite visitor, though, was the one who came on Wednesdays. Joe Head, from Signature Bank, would stop by every Wednesday to drop off articles and photos from this newspaper that he had cut out and laminated. If he couldn’t find the person in thestory or photo, he would bring the items to us so we could help locate them.

I think he used that as an excuse to come see “Missy P,” as we called our beloved friend.

Joe would wait at the front counter for his four-legged friend to come, usually from her napping spot in a chair in Jenny’s office, or down the hall, where she would visit with our neighbors in the building. Miss Print would jump up on the front counter and wait for Joe to pet her.She loved Joe, and it was clear how he felt about her.

One of Miss Print’s favorite things to do, besides sleep, was to watch the wildlife outside of the big window on the north end of the building. She wasn’t much for the little critters, like birds and squirrels. It was usually the raccoons and groundhogs that got her attention.

At one point several months ago, there was a gray and white cat that came by regularly for a free meal. We called him Miss Print’s “boyfriend,” although we didn’t know if it was a male or a female. Missy P would sit at the window and watch that cat for the longest time. And he would stare right back - from a safe distance, of course.

Miss Print was cared for seven days a week, even though we’re only open five. Usually, on Friday, we would coordinate with Barb and decide who was available to drop by and feed the cat on Saturday and Sunday. Those weekends when one of us from the newsroom was working, we would volunteer to do it. Quite often my wife and I would do it on Sunday, since we had to pass by the office en route to church. We all pitched in and cared for her.

Everybody who knew that cat loved her. You couldn’t help it.

We are still reeling from the news of her passing, and we will for quite some time.

But all of us here at the newspaper have animals, and we have all lost one at some point in our lives. We realize that part of pet ownership is their leaving us. We don’t like it; we just understand it happens.

We know in our collective hearts that Miss Print was loved and well cared for during her time with us.

We know also that she was a very happy cat.There is no doubt.

Miss Print will forever be missed by all of us. But we have one thing that keeps us going, that keeps us smiling when we think of her. Our lives are much better for having known and loved her.

Now that I had a relationship with Missy P, I can’t imagine what my life would have been had I not known her.

Stay strong, Miss Print, and we’ll see you on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

As for Miss Print picking football games this season as one of our Pigskin Procastinators, we have decided to continue using her photo.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 10/28/2009

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