When a woman brought you to PAWS that day so many years ago, she put a loudly meowing box on the counter and filled out a form to give you up for adoption. On the line marked "Reason for Surrender," she wrote only one word: "Unacceptable." How lucky for me that she thought so, because for the next fourteen years, you filled my life with comedy, warmth and love.

I named you for the character in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, but had no idea at the time just how fitting that name would be. Like the woman of Joyce's creation, you loved to eat almost anything, to lounge languidly in a patch of sunshine, and to give your purring affection to just about anyone with a friendly hand or empty lap.

Together, we moved six times and added several members to our family: a kitten, a husband, two Lab pups, and a middle-aged beagle. Undaunted by the changes in my life through the years, your spirit was irrepressible. You saw the others in our family not as competition, but as additional sources of food and body warmth. I will never forget the looks on the dogs' faces as you ate brazenly from their bowls, and nudged them out of the way to claim the best spot on the couch, on the bed or by the fire.

But in the last two weeks of your life, I watched helplessly as you grew weak and dispirited. Even your favorite treats - canned tuna and my husband's homemade smoked salmon - could not entice you to eat. Your once-portly frame became a sickly shadow. You endured a four-day hospitalization, only to come home to tell me without words what I already knew: that it was time for you to go.

Goodbye, Molly Bloom, my "unacceptable" friend. I will always remember how you slept curled around my head on the pillow, like a furry, calico hat. Maybe some night when I'm sleeping, you will curl around my head in my dreams.