Fur persons

I've been thinking about this post for several months, but never had the heart to write it. Today I read Phlegm Fatale's eulogy for her "doglet", Valentine, so maybe now I can at least start.

Not the best picture ever of The Bright Huntress, but pretty good.

She moved in with us back in '95. Ran away from all of two doors down, where there was a menagerie, and a little girl who thought the way to love a kitty was to hold her tight and squeeze.
When she first moved in--after two weeks sitting on our back porch watching... and watching... and watching... And getting skinnier... and skinnier.. and skinnier... she was the most polite kitty you could imagine. Stayed on the tile in the kitchen until we told her it was OK to come further. Then she sat in front of a chair and waited for permission to get up. Amazing.

We had a wood stove in the master bedroom that year, and she loved to lay stretched out full length in front of it.

Always an outdoors cat, it was not until the last two years or so of her stay with us that she started using the box instead of going outside. When she first adopted us and we took her to the vet for her first checkup, we had to lock her in the house for 4 days to get a stool sample...

She had a beautiful singing voice, too, until a couple of years ago; we assumed she had strained herself telling Stumpy (see below) where to go and what to do, but in retrospect it may have been related to the cancer that killed her. The vet had done a complete work-up on her just two or three months before, and had seen nothing, so maybe not. In the end, however,we had to have Our Princess put to sleep ion January 2nd, 2008, due to cancer in the larynx that was blocking her throat to the point where she couldn't drink, let alone eat.

Here's one of her on her third favorite bed--Mrs. Drang's laptop. Her favorite bed was my lap, although Mrs. Drang's lap was a very close second. (Mrs. Drang has shorter legs than I, and therefore a smaller lap, which is probably the only thing that let's me edge her out...)

This cell phone shot is of her in either my lap or Mrs. Drang's; not sure which.

We also lost our other Princess, the Fluffy Kitten. She remained Our Kitten until the day she died.
We had no papers on her, of course, but Mackerel Tabby Maine Coon is obviously the way to bet.

She was abandoned on our front lawn in a cardboard box. Pet store tag, the story was that there was a nasty divorce, and an apartment with a "no pets" rule, versus a household with a dog and a "no cats" rule. Ordinarily I hate people who abandoned pets, but in this case, I bless the people who brought this bundle of love into our lives. She was never a very loud kitty, except when she was purring... which she did a lot. A friend who "cat-sat" for us one summer while Mrs. Drang came to visit me in Korea gave us a run down on the behavior of the cats; Bright Huntress never let her near, and hissed every time, but "Fluffy Kitten thinks love is all there is!"

At the time she was just a little ball of fluff who barely filled my hand. She never got as large as people assume Maine Coons "always" do, but it seems that the huge Maine Coon is a product of breeding.

Another cell phone shot, not great but such a classic pose!

One night I got home from work after midnight, and Mrs. Drang was already asleep, so I laid down on the couch to read a bit before going to bed myself. Woke up a while later with Fluffy Kitten sleeping on my chest, her head tucked under my chin and one paw on either side of my neck!

We lost Fluffy Kitten on December 27th, 2007, also to cancer. Vet thought there was a chance, based on the X-Rays, so did exploratory surgery. Turned out that it was all through her abdomen, squeezing off her stomach and bladder, and there was simply no chance.

Finally, a pic--the only one I have on the computer--of the cat Mrs. Drang had when we met.
Zoozie was a stray that Mrs. Drang picked up at a picnic for Woodland Park Zoo docents. She may have lived with Mrs. Drang at the time, but she regarded me as hers, and condescended to share me with Mrs. Drang. This is the way Mrs. Drang tells it. We lost her to hyperthyroidism, except that it seems that it is not an uncommon condition for cats not to have a thyroid gland; instead, they have some tissue in the chest cavity which generates the hormone, but no discreet gland. So when she suddenly got hyper-active at a fairly advanced age, she could be put on medication, but her days were numbered.

We are now accompanied by Stumpy the tomcat, so-called due to some dirtbag having broken off his tail (and shaved him, and cut off his whiskers, and starved him) before he escaped and moved in with us.
For all that he has a pretty good attitude.
Well, sort of.

And Silver Grey. Moved in in October. Made Stumpy unhappy, wanting to play, and Fluffy Kitten hated the sight of him, but he was amazingly solicitous of Bright Huntress, so he was allowed to stay. (After attempts to try to find him a new home failed. We tried. Honest.)It's really easy to say "They're just cats, just dogs, just ferrets, just an animal" but we let them into our lives, our hearts, our families, and make them an integral part of our lives, and when they're gone, they leave a huge, gaping hole.