CHAPTER 1
OUR CAT IS GONE!
One day, somewhere in 2015, our cat Simba disappeared. It is rare that he has not been seen in the area for more than one day, but two days have passed. We look everywhere possible around the house, in the garden, on the balcony, in all the places he likes to lie on in the street... but nothing. Two days passed and he just was not found. We check inside the house, maybe he decided to sleep in some corner and we missed him, looking under the beds, inside the closets, everywhere… no cat. By this point it was already clear that something had happened to him. We pass between the neighbors, none of them needs a picture or other description of him, everyone knows our Simba, a lovely redhead cat with a calm behavior. No one has seen or heard him in the last two days. We're starting to get really worried.
Three days pass, we are on the verge of despair, and then my wife Sarit has an idea. She takes a box of pastrami, of the kind our Simba likes, takes it to the street and begins to open and close it again and again without a break. Then, about an hour later, she hears a weak meow behind a bush of one of the neighbors' gardens. Usually such a sound of a box opening makes him leap and reach us without thinking twice, this time he does not move. Sarit goes to the bushes and sees him there, weak and tired. A large bubble filled with a thick liquid adorns his neck.
At home, even after two hours with us, he does not eat or drink anything. The vet finally arrives, checks and touches, and immediately concludes that it is a blister that caused by a fight with other cat. "He is very lucky that you found him today and not tomorrow or next week" he tells us, "such a blister like that is toxic and if it does not rupture, it simply been penetrated eventually into the body and to the bloodstream and this is very life threatening". Big luck for him! And for us! It is impossible to imagine our life without him (without Simba, not without the veterinarian... (-:)
At this point I can not help but think what would have happened if...
-
If Sarit had not thought about the idea with the box...
2. If his fight with the other cat had ended differently...
3. And worse than that (if there is a "worse than that") here: what would have happened if we had not been at home at that time. if we had been traveling for a few days, what would have happened then? When we are not at home we always have nice neighbors who come to our garden and feed him in turns, but in such an extreme situation you don't always know what to do. In fact... we hardly knew either. What would Simba think then? How would he interpret the situation? Where are we? Why don't we come help him?
As I think about it, I notice that I do not remember ever seeing a movie with a story like this. There are many movies with animals that get lost and return home, but a movie where a cat waits for his family to return home and does not know where they have gone... I do not remember seeing one like this.
Sounds to me like a good idea for a movie…
To be continued…
CHAPTER 2
WHY THERE ARE VERY FEW FULL LENGTH MOVIES WITH CATS?
Since that situation, i have been toying for a while with the following idea for a film: a cat waits for his adoptive family to return home after suddenly disappearing for a long time, and finally facing a dilemma: whether to abandon them and go look for another home that will provide protection and food or keep waiting for them, hopefully they will return one day. But… why a cat? Since when do cats show loyalty to their owners? Why not making it a movie about a dog? So this is the whole point: from years of acquaintance with my cat I can conclude:
1. That cats want to express love to their owners, only they do not see them as owners but as friends.
2. That cats show affection in their conditions. Cats know how to miss and seek closeness to humans, but like humans - they want to do it in their space and time.
Loyalty is something that humans tend to expect from an animal when they bring it into their home and raise it, regardless of it's nature, but cats do not have the perception of loyalty and what is the nature of it as we, humans, understand it. There is nothing wrong with that.
So if cats are so adorable and charming, why are there so few full-length movies with real cats (not computer generated) in the lead role, compared to dogs movies? Very quickly I find two reasons:
1. Since it is difficult to almost impossible to tame a cat but mainly to manipulate it, it will be very hard to observe its behavior or control it during filming. In other words: an average film production, (that involves with dozens or even hundreds of crew members and costing a lot of money per day of filming), can not take a risk with a cat actor in the main role, as it can greatly delay filming and make parts of them impossible to perform.
2. Feature films are usually filmed with a shallow-focus cameras and lenses, which can perfectly isolate the actors from the background. That means that the camera assistant (focus puller) should adjust and change the focus during the shot, according to the movement of the actor.
When a person or trained dog is supposed to move from spot a to b during filming, the focus puller knows about it in advance and prepares himself for it during the rehearsals. But how do you keep a cat in focus if you can't tell where it will move during the scene? I guess this is why in most of the close-ups where cats appear in movies we see them standing / sitting / lying in a static position, next to a chair, window or edge of a bed, until the moment they get up and leave the frame. No complecated performance.
So how can this idea be implemented? As I think about it seriously I encounter another big challenge: our charming Simba is very suspicious about people who are not part of his adoptive family and tends to distance himmselve from them, which means it would be very problematic to put together a film crew around him... So I guess I have to approach the subject from a different point of view: what if... this independent film will be produced as a very very small independent film, and will be managed by only few staff members who are me, my children and my wife? Since I have a profesional experience in the movie field, I can provide the technical angle here and my kids and my wife will help too. But will the cat cooperate? How much patience can he have on set?
Regarding the challenges that the cat character is supposed to go through and the "dangers" he is supposed to face, I immediately understand that the green screen effect cannot provide a solution to all of the digital manipulations. In situations where our cat Simba is filmed standing or sitting in one place this is indeed the right option, but what can I do in a scene that involves a long running from point a to b? As a solution I test the MOCHA PRO software (which I will talk about later) in order to create a rotoscope (Cutting the character from the background without using green screen) on the cat, and understand that this is the ideal solution.
The last big challenge is deciding which camera to shoot the film with. Pretty soon I realize that an "all in focus" camera is the only option, (because the majority of the frame in these kind of cameras is in focos most of the time, so that way my cat won't get blurry when he moves back and forth). And even more then that… It will be more efficient and productive to capture as many angles as possible for each scene, because I can't expect a cat to repeat exactly each action and movment again and again. so I need at least .... 4 cameras.
In Israel, the majority of film productions (these who directed to the big screen at least) are based primarily on government film funds, and I try to imagine how I "sell" to the lectors in these film funds the economic viability of investing in this project: Let's see ... I shoot a film with my children with 4 standard hand held cameras (which even can't be dslr cameras because of the focus Issue (and the main actor here is… my cat. And what if something happens to him before the end of the filming? Would you invest money in a movie like this?
I probably have no other way to make this happen ...
After a long time with so much ideas popping up, I sit down to finally write what I understand should be the screenplay of the film. But... how can I write a screenplay for a feature film in which a cat will play a lead role? How do I get him to move from here to there? Will he be able to stand in one place for five minutes without moving? Very quickly I realize that the only way to make this happen is to treat the script as an option and hope for the best in the production, depending on the circumstances.
Going fishing instead of directing ... that's the spirit.
To be continued…
CHAPTER 3
GOING OUT FOR FILMING (THIS EPISODE CONTAINS SPOILERS)
So this is it! We are starting shooting!
On 21.7.17 at early evening hour we start, me and my two children Naama and Savyon, a session of the first 3 weeks of concentrated filming, (in which the first two weeks were night shootings + one week of daylight filming.) The initial goal of this session was to cover all the filming in which Simba participates in and that way to take the film out of "risk". What I mean by "risk" is to understand that no one is guaranteeing me that my main actor will stay around tomorrow or next month. As a cat that freely goes out to the garden and the street and returns to us to sleep, he is exposed to countless possible dangers and this is something I have to take into account when I shoot this movie. So my goal is to cover on these three weeks every major shot in which he participates and find out… that this film will take us to shoot much far beyond three weeks.
Finally, after 4.5 years of filming, we covered the shootings with 118 inconsistent filming days, that contain over 50 full days (nights and days of 8-10 hours) and the rest contain a few hours every time. Most of the filming days were actually days when I tried to shoot shots over and over again where Simba did not act as I had hoped. During those days I won the opportunity to get close to him in ways I had never met before. I will always remember long, funny, sometimes exhausting, (but very unconventional) moments in which I surrounded him with 4 cameras and desperately tired to get him to run from point A to point B. At a certain point a piece of meat or a toy that I throwed to the point I wanted him to go… didn't make any impression on him anymore. And then comes the moment when I realize that I did not actually go out for shooting a film, but ... for fishing. To fish for special moments with him that hopefully will be combined eventually for an entire and coherent film, and if Simba has decided that it's not right for him at the moment to move to point B, then I can act in response in two ways:
1. Keep trying to do the same, hoping to get the result I wanted.
2. Just waiting patiently, until eventually he will get to point B at random, or something else will just happen ... maybe even better than I planned!
And many other things happened! Lots of moments that are worth gold, authentic, full of Simba's expressions, moments that are easy to see that they did not happen as a result of manipulating him but because he reacted in those moments to something external. And a lot of them got into the movie and occasionally changed something from the screenplay, because Simba would rewrite it for us from time to time. There are lots of examples for that in the movie, here is one of the best:
Three minutes before the end of the film, (when Mango realizes that the family has finally returned home). Simba usually likes to approach and cuddle but on the trampoline he is for some reason less devoted. Then, on the fifth filming session of that scene, he suddenly left Naama, Savyon and Sarit quickly, ran to the edge of the trampoline and looked with lively curiosity at a distant point... that located very close to our parking lot. In fact I guess he saw a dog that passed by very close to the parking lot, but when I saw it in the edit I realized it would be for the best to show him looking actually ... at the family's car, what actually provides reliable proof that they did indeed return home. More than that, a moment later, as he shifted his gaze toward the door of the house, I realized it would be right to show him looking at the grandparents that talking to him. All this when the characters of the grandparents were not yet planned (in the first version of the script, a friend of the family that passes around to feed Mango replaces them). It all came from Simba.
And there were also quite a few problems. One of them happened on one of the first nights of the shootings, when we filmed the moment Mango climbs into the kitchen's window in the opening credits scene. So I positioned the 4 cameras and the lighting, while bringing the main keylight from outside to imitate the street light, as close to the window as possible. But Simba did not agree to go up to the window this time, even though he use to go up there on his own free will. Even when we take him and put him on the windowsill he never resists, at worst he just goes down from there after a second. But this time he refused, and stubbornly! And at the second time Naama tried to put him on the window he just scratched her hand (!), a deep scratch, something he almost never does! No scratches and no bites. So why did he do it?
After I bandaged her hand, Naama realized what I did not understand before: the kitchen's window serves for Simba as a high and safe place from the surroundings, and as soon as we illuminate the place with a strong light we threaten his safe area. so what are we doing? Well, I have decided to shoot the background alone first with full light like I planned, and then move the main light a few feet back in hope that Simba would agree to come up again. Just after three hours later, around four in the morning, the little Prince agreed to return to the window, when I was carefully hiding behind him a smaller light that would give a subtle backlight behind him.
Another moment I fondly remember was when Savyon and I stayed awake to watch the sunrise, after an exhausting night of filming. I do not remember what we shot that night and how and in what way Simba exhausted us this time, but I will not forget that it was the first time my son stayed awake 24 hours in a row and closed for the first time the circle of sunrise - sunset – sunrise.
And another event I will never forget was when our car was stolen, the same one that was shot for the movie as the one that was destroyed in the accident. Two weeks before that I managed to shoot the scene where it comes out from the parking lot, and also the moment of the accident itself (most of that was done with special effects on my computer of course, but the filming part was done where we filmed the accident scene). Now i have to shoot the middle of the scene ... and i have no car! (One morning we got up and the car was not there). So what are we doing? For various reasons we had no intention of buying the same vehicle again, and the new vehicle we bought could not be filmed as if it was the old one. So that was our solution: to shoot the middle of the scene with identical vehicles that look similar to our "Volkswagen Polo". So for two minutes in the middle of that scene, you can see identical vehicles we filmed instead of the one that was stolen, passing by for a second and serving as a replacement. And we also added the temporary car that we received from the insurance company to the movie (which was used by us from the moment of the theft until we bought the new vehicle)... In the movie this is the "Kia" that Mango actually sees when he imagines the family "returning" home one evening. And more than that... the new car we bought eventually ("Seat Ibiza") is filmed at the end of the movie as the yellow car, standing in the parking lot... when in reality it is actually white).
And we knew more hardships later... I will not describe them all but just say briefly that we renovated the house after I was sure we had finished filming, and then I found out I needed some more shootings in the kitchen. But I have found creative ways to overcome it.
I can't believe I'm succeeding to pull this off so far!
To be continued…
CHAPTER 4
DO NOT MESS WITH YOUR WIFE...
A tough dispute has started this week between me and my wife Sarit over the question of how clean a house should be in a movie with a cat. Every animal, by its very nature, behaves as it knows and feels like and not the way humans expect it to behave. And in our case, a dog or a cat naturally brings home fingerprints, mud, fur and more with it. In houses with cats, it will also be possible to see black marks on the corners of the walls (a result of the cat rubbing himself against the wall as a way to mark it's territory), entering the house from the kitchen's window, standing on the table with wet feet from rain and so and so...
My point of view is that all of these things produce more authentic, realistic and believable look for the plot, and above all: gives the audience a way to see how much the family loves their cat so much that they are willing to give up a super clean home for him. And it's worth more than a routine and corny declaration of love between them.
Sarit on the other hand has a hard time accepting the possibility that anyone who waches our film will see a dirty house. But I do not give up here, in my opinion it is necessary for the film.
What do you say? Who won this argument?
:-)
To be continued...
CHAPTER 5
THE AMBIVALENT CHARACTER OF THE HOMELESS
(THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SPOILERS)
After almost half an hour of film, Mango pretty much finishes to deal with the variety of challenges and dangers that a cat character should face with in the movie. Therefore at this point, to raise the plot and the drama level to a higher gear, a human factor must enter to the movie. Someone whose intentions towards the cat will seem vague and unclear to the audience in the first moments we see him, whose kindness and his good will to help the cat will be hidden under layers of craziness and slapstick comedy. It should be someone who knows how to empathize with Mango's situation, could create the feeling that he understands Mango's mental state by the very fact that they are both in the same situation or close to the same situation (this character lives in a garbage dump... the last place a cat would like to be, but unfortunately many of them find themselves there) and by that his character will be reflected in Mango's character. And at the same time this character should create a natural repulsive and rejective feelings from the very title he carries... "homeless".
That's how this character was born in my head. In my opinion, there is something ambivalent in the cinematic representation of such a type - the heart is automatically in his favor (because of the way he was forced to live) and on the other hand, he will always cause us negative emotions due to the very fact that he lives outside of our rules, so naturally we will find it difficult to fully trust him. The homeless person has another importance in the plot: he is supposed to eventually move Mango out of his comfort zone as a spoiled cat and face a difficult dilemma: whether to follow him to a safe life, where he (the homeless) will provide him food and a roof over his head, or continue waiting outside the house.. to his beloved family... that may never return back home.
The first decision I make about him is that he will not speak in the film - his appearance, the environment in which he lives, the interior of the space where he spends his time, the occupation he chooses to himself for making his living and so and so... all these will be the things that will define him even without words.
And from the fact that I don't have a budget to pay to an actor, the second decision I make is... that I will play him myself.
So:
1. For that role, I grew a beard for 2 months.
2. I took the most "homeless" clothes I could find and put them at the back of my garden for a few months, letting the sun, rain, wind and dust abuse them. Once in a while I poured a pot of black coffee on them, and little by little the sweater, coat, pants, shoes and hat were faded, and finally got a believable and convincing look.
3. I built a dump environment, part of it from a small pile of scrap and boxes and the other part I made by using computer effects.
4. To create his living environment, I have looked for the perfect location where he lives. And while trying to bypass all the possible clichés of a homeless living under a bridge, in a bus, in a warehouse and so... I suddenly find out what I was looking for on the Internet! An old and rusty train! The real dream! This is an old train that the Israeli railways company sent to retirement many years ago, and since then it stands in its place on the tracks, letting time and rust make it fade... and at the same time " beautiful" in a way that you can't take your eyes off of it! This is the place the homeless will live in! In this abandoned train!
Ok… enough with the preparations, now lets talk about the practices: how do i film this character? So for the first two days of shootings the homeless scenes, including all of his long shots, I invited Daniel Rezitzky, a friend and an excellent cameraman and perfectionist. This is with the knowledge that I can take the rest of the shootings later by myself alone against a green screen background. So on the first day we shot the scene where the homeless arrives in the rain at the family's house. My thought was to shoot the scene after the rain stops for having a wet road in the scene, but the rain doesn't stop and I'm losing patience. Then Daniel comes up with a brilliant idea: "Let's just shoot in the rain!" Sounds great and adds a lot of drama to the scene, but we have to take into account two things:
1. The rain may stop at any moment, and then we will be left with a part of the scene without rain.
2. Every shot I add to this scene later in the filming must include rain, even if I add it digitally later.
Eventually… believe it or not... the rain accompanied us throughout the whole scene (with Daniel holding the camera in one hand and umbrella in the other) and stopped 5 minutes after we finished shooting it. coincidence? luck?
On the second day with Daniel (almost a year later) we went to shoot on our next location: the train. It was a hot day, even too hot, and at first it even paid off, because all the sand and dust I had put on myself started to run off and turned my face into a paste of sweat and mud. Yes!!! This is a real homeless! But then we tried to get on the train's car to shoot the next scene inside it, but it turns out that the heat inside does not allow us to go into the car, and not even to step on the hot iron floor of the car. When I visited this location a month earlier, on a cooler day, this problem could not be taken into account.
Two months later I came there again, this time alone (Daniel couldn't come that day and the suddenly pleasant weather that arrived by surprise didn't allow me to be too picky. The weeds and plants around the train are starting to wilt quickly as the winter approaching, so I have to hurry if I want continuity. I just couldn't find another cameraman the night before so I came there alone). I will forever remember with a smile how there was not a living soul in a half kilometer radius around me when I got into the car's train, put on the homeless clothes, placed the camera + light, and simply shoot myself alone... doing this: (gets hit in the head from a frying pan - photo 1)
And this is how it looks in the final movie: (gets hit in the head from a frying pan - photo 2)
Afterwards I continued to shoot the rest of the homeless shots, as well as the rest of the film, together with Savion, with the majority of the shots of this character being filmed against a green screen background. It provided me many hours of raw materials, that enabled me to test and explore the boundaries of this figure, make mistakes and correct again at the editing, wondering and trying to understand who is this homeless character.
In the end, over 4.5 years of filming, I grew a beard 5 different times for the role.
Sarit could not stand the beard...
To be continued...
Gets hit in the head from a frying pan - photo 1
Gets hit in the head from a frying pan - photo 2
CHAPTER 6
POST PRODUCTION AND WE'RE ALMOST DONE
During the long filming period that stretched around 4.5 years, I simultaneously organized all the materials on the editing table. These are huge masses of raw materials and at some point I stopped counting how many hours of it I have here. Some of the days and nights of filming include free improvisations with Simba, when I place the 4 cameras around the spot that I want him to be, put him in the center and then leave him for an hour or two, alone with the cameras, with the intention of watching the materials later with the purpose to look for moments that can serve the film.
After a while I have finished a first rough cut, which currently lacks shots that have not yet been filmed, the mix is temporary, most of the effects are still in basic condition and temporary subtitles replace Mango's voice (which has not yet been recorded), but everything that is needed to understand the plot already exists in this copy. So I started showing it to people for getting reactions and comments. And that is a great gift! Because after a long time when I am all inside the film, I need fresh eyes to see it as I am no longer able to see it, collecting comments and points for improvement. A rule of thumb guides me: if two people who see the film (and have not met each other) make the same comment, it is very worth listening to them.
Budget limitation did not allow me to use a musician so I decided to use the excellent original music service "Filmstro", which in my opinion is the closest thing to a composer I can get. Imagine entire collections of melodies written especially for this service, all of them at a very high level of production and sound quality, and you can change, process and "sculpt" all of them from a quiet and peaceful state to a stormy and dynamic one, and mix them together so they can fit like a glove for the film, and you don't even have to be a musicians to use it... I have worked with several musicians in the past, and although there is no substitute for a flesh and blood artist who gives his soul to my film and wraps my work in his work, "Filmstro" does a great service for my film!
As far as creating the special effects, I now understand where I got myself into. In my film, I have a cat that has to run away, "get caught" in a garbage truck, and then run 100 km away back home safely in the pouring rain, and all this without moving a meter from the house - garden - balcony, without getting wet And without endangering him whatsoever. How do i do that?!
So, as I wrote in chapter 2, the possibility of putting a green cloth behind him for using a green screen seems reasonable only to a small part of shots - mainly for close-ups and moments when he does not move from his place in any case. But what about more complex shots that involve running for example? So i'm starting to think seriously about using the Mocha Pro software for this purpose, which allows me to perform rotoscoping (which means to cut the character from the background after the shootings, without the need for a green screen). But what seems simple and easy in theory, turns out in the editing process to be indeed possible, but sisyphean and very tedious. It turns out that cutting 25 frames per second of a shot with a creature that has 4 legs and a tail and separating it from the background… is a very complex task. To achieve an optimal result, I rotoscope each part of his body separately and it takes a lot of time!
For the final movie, that will eventually reach 78 minutes, I have about 40 minutes of special effects, but the parts that show Simba moving or running through a large space are the most challenging to perform.
Good luck to me...
For the dubbing of Mango's character, I hear a lot of options and eventually choose Josh Bloomberg, a great actor who gives the main character a lot of uniqueness and charm! Mango couldn't have sounded better! In two separate sessions that sums up to 12 hours of recordings in total, in his studio in Tirat Zvi, Josh and I explore together, hesitate, search and finally find the right tone and the right way to express each word and sentence. Afterwards, when I add Josh's voice into the film, I am amazed by the amount of options he gave me. Regarding to the tone of the voice, the presentation of the character, the different interpretation each time, I have a whole treasure here in every take and I don't really know what to choose. good trouble.
In those sessions i have also recorded Josh to a mockumentary film which describes a fictional "behind the scenes" of "Saving Mango – A cat's story". In this movie, which I'm still working on and which is a kind of funny alternative to a standard "behind the scenes" film, Simba is not only the star of the movie but also its editor, and with a lot of ego and disagreements I have with him, we fight like two spoilt children and almost ruin the movie.
Two other actors, The one and only Eli Gorenstein, along with wonderfull Michal Goldberg Ayal, joined later to play the roles of the grandparents. I have filmed both of them separately, two weeks apart from each other, and I was happy that in the last scene of the movie (where we see them for the first time "together") it is impossible to notice that they were not actually filmed together at the same time. More than that: In most of the scene where the grandfather tells Mango what happened to the family, I combined with Eli's shots - some green screen materials of Simba that I shoot half a year earlier. So when Eli talks to Mango he actually talks to a teleprompter placed in front of him (which I later deleted in the edit. (I worked this way thinking that Simba would not want to cooperate with Eli when we will try to shoot them together later). But there are some close-ups in this scene that we took just in case and I didn't even think they would turn out so well: these close-ups of the grandfather's hand petting Mango - these are shots in which Simba nevertheless agreed to cooperate with a stranger to him... for only a minute! It was worth every second, because in this minute Simba changes looks and looks thoughtful and not satisfied - you can really see it in his eyes (he probably doesn't understand who Eli is and what he wants from him - and these are exactly the expressions I wanted to get out of him).
I edited the film on "Premiere Pro", and in addition to using the "Mocha Pro" software (where I created the most of the special effects), I have also used "After Effects" (mainly for complicated motion tracking shots), "Trapcode Shine" (for special light additives, complex ray lights and lighting softenings), and for the last step of the post, for the final touch, I used "Topaz Video Enhance AI" (for optimal softening and enhancement of the video).
There was also a lot of work related to the sound editing, mixing and mastering. I licensed the majority of the sound effects, including the background noises and footsteps from a professional sound effects library, and created the rest by myself. While working on the color corrections and the light balance in the final copy, I suddenly found the color tone that the film needs: a specific bit of pink with slight contrasts and a bit of overbrightness. This is exactly what I need to convey to the viewers some hope in the subtext, which will provide a contrast to the dramatic and moving plot.
And... that's it! The movie is finally ready. Now it's time to release it to the world and see others react to it. I hope that it will be loved, I hope that it will speak to the audience wherever they watch it, that it will find its way into people's hearts, will make them excited, moved and amused... that it will justify all the time, sweat, tears and love that we invested in it.
I wish.
Working on the special effects
With Josh Bloomberg - the actor behind Mango's voice
Eli Gorenstein - the grandfather
Michal Goldberg Ayal - the grandmother
The final editing timeline of the movie - ready to export!
Either way, a period of almost 7 years (along with writing the script) is finally coming to an end. Everything looks perfect.
Except for one thing...
.
.
.
.
.
.
On 21.4.22, at late afternoon hour, our beloved Simba closed his eyes for the last time.
It didn't come as a surprise, time had prepared us for it, he was no longer young, but still, saying goodbye to a beloved pet that has shared the almost absolute majority of its lifetime with us is not an easy thing.
A lot of memories and experiences we accumulated with him, (since he entered our lives when Naama was five years old and Savion was two and a half), are folded into a long and beautiful period of almost thirteen years. We lost a dear friend who stood stubbornly every morning by the fridge, came through my home studio's window at the least expected moments, used to seek our closeness when we sat together outside in the garden or the balcony and always used to mew enthusiastically at the door when we came home after a long absence... just like in the movie .
Dear Simba, we were privileged with this film to go through experiences with you that no one on this planet has been privileged to have, and we also have a lot of special memories to take with us from this special relationship with you.
We are lucky.
We had you!
One of our last photos with Simba
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SAVING MANGO - A CAT'S STORY Not only dogs miss their families
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