On Saturday evening a friend of ours was over, and our cat, Eliza, who is a sociable creature, came out to say hello as she always does. We gave her some attention and some love and chatted about where calico cats come from — how tricolor cats are almost all girls, and this makes us even more fond of them.
I happened to wake up several times in the night because I sliced my finger while helping to make dinner on Saturday, and it was throbbing painfully. Every time I woke up Eliza was at my feet at the foot of our bed, her favorite place to sleep. At seven Dan woke me up to say he found her curled up on the living room rug after breakfast. He couldn’t wake her.
We are all so sad — and shocked, too. She was getting up there in years, but we hadn’t noticed any changes in her eating or behavior. On Thursday my daughter’s Girl Scout troop made some cat toys to donate to an animal shelter, and my daughter made an extra and brought it home for Liza, who attacked it with her usual vim and vigor. A couple of days ago she was leaping around the window seat, chasing birds and falling leaves through the glass as she always has. I feel bad for not noticing any signs of discomfort or illness — she just seemed like her normal self. I hope she wasn’t in pain.
She was a truly great kitty. Dan and I adopted her from the no-kill shelter in Raleigh shortly after we moved to Durham. It was the first time we’d had a house of our own, the first time we hadn’t lived in an apartment building that forbade pets, and I was excited to get a pet because, to me, a household just doesn’t feel homey without one. Eliza had been abandoned in a cardboard box, along with her three tabby brothers, then found and brought to the shelter. She was the prettiest cat I’d ever seen, five pounds and 90% fluff (she only ended up being nine pounds, full grown, though all the fur made her look bigger), with a loud, rumbly, easy purr. She talked to us, would do call-and-answer in an almost conversational way, and chirruped aggressively at birds and squirrels.
She adjusted beautifully when our first daughter was born and was terrific with both our girls, especially when they were little. When they cried she would come find me, wherever I happened to be, and stare at me as if to say Your young one needs you. She seemed to understand they were just kittens, and was unfailingly patient whenever they chased her or grabbed her tail or tried to pick her up or sit on her or hug her. Among the girls’ first words, after “Mama” and “Dada,” were “tee-tee” (kitty) and “Za-za” (Liza). She’d come when you called, play fetch with bits of crumpled-up paper. She had a tiny orangey-brown patch under her chin that Dan and I referred to as her “coffee stain”:
She was playful, always, but also had a sweet dignity about her. We all loved her and will miss her a lot. I know you guys will be thinking about us, because you’re kind and full of empathy and, let’s be honest, most of you probably have cat hair all over your cardigans right now. What I’d really love today is to hear your stories about your favorite pets, living and gone — so please let’s talk about our best animal friends, who should really live forever, or at least exactly as long as we do, to the day.
I traveled several hundred miles over the weekend to say goodbye to my childhood dog. He’s 14 years old, and maybe still has a few weeks left or maybe has only a few days. We got him when I was 11 and going through a personal crisis, and I am deeply devastated. He is happily spending his last days eating the piles of snow on my parents’ yard. If there is a heaven, I hope for his sake that it is filled with milkbones and peanut butter.
<3 <3 I’m sorry! I hope his last days are wonderful. I’m so glad you got to say goodbye and it was good of you to travel that far to do it.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about pet heaven and if it exists from my older daughter.
My beloved family dog passed away when he was 16 and I was 18, right before I went off to college. It was officially The End of My Childhood.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Losing your childhood pet is so hard. The day my childhood cat had to be put to sleep is still one of the worst days I’ve ever had. I hope his passing is gentle and without pain.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Calico kitties are really wonderful. I have a shorthaired calico; she was born in a feral cat colony that was living in an abandoned schoolhouse; when she was still a kitten, the local animal rescue live-trapped her and some other kittens in the colony, and I adopted her and her brother, who unfortunately is no longer with us.
You’d never know that Jack used to be feral – she is so sweet and sociable, and loves to make new friends. Last night she gave me a scare; I was out of town the night before, and as I was driving back my brother texted me to let me know that Jack seemed ill. She was puking a lot and was lethargic, with a lot of eye discharge. I couldn’t get home fast enough! When I arrived I smothered her in love and affection, which she seemed to appreciate. Eventually she ate her dinner, and this morning she bothered me for breakfast like normal. So I think she’s okay now.
I’ve always loved calicos! My grandma had a short-haired calico when I was little. I didn’t set out to adopt a calico, but I was really glad we found Liza in the shelter. She was the only tricolor cat in the place on the weekend we went to look.
I hope Jack is okay and has no more trouble! <3
Calicos are so sweet. My childhood cat was a calico named Ophelia; she was very shy around strange people but very loving to her family. She lived for nineteen years!
My theory about feral cats is that either they haaaaaate people/ are terrified of people, or they are so happy to be inside that they love everyone. My Tig was a former feral cat who came to me after she started attacking the cats of the people who took her in. Despite her antipathy for male cats, she has never met a person she doesn’t like.
I have actually just gotten my first pet ever, a hedgehog named Finn. She is very adventurous and curious and I can spend hours just staring at her and she likes to crawl inside my shirt and poop and I am already terrified of the day when I will no longer have her.
Oh my goodness, Finn is a most adorable hedgehog! What a perfect little button of a snufflenose!
Big love to you and your family, I am so sorry.
One of my favourite stories about my horse, Petal, is the time that one of the other owners had flu, and had struggled out to feed her own horse, who lived in the field past Petal’s. It was cold and rainy and muddy, and on the way back Lisa slipped in the mud, had Just Had Enough, and just burst into tears and sat in the mud howling. (We all know how that is!) Petal, who didnt’ really know her or have anything to do with her, left her food, came over and started nuzzling and licking her face until she stopped crying (probably in self defence) and then let Lisa use her to heave herself upright and then accompanied her all the way to the gate and back out of the field.
This is a great story.
Oh that is a lovely story. I miss being around horses a lot, but one of the things that I miss the most is being at the barn when I was having a rough day and just being able to lean full onto my horses, maybe cry a little, maybe just sit there breathing in their warmth and horse smell, and just be comforted.
That is so sweet! My horse is just an asshole unless you have treats. I remember going into his stable to have a cry one day and he moved to the other corner so he could eat his hay in peace.
Your comment made me lough out loud in the middle of getting teary about Nicole’s cat. I love moments like this.
<3
Dear Kitty. He used to camp out on the car and sun himself when I first saw him, but he wouldn’t let me get close to him for a year. One evening I was sitting on the porch, reading a brand new book, when he came over and plonked himself on my lap. He adored being snuggled, held, and picked up. We remained friends for the next five years, and he was “the neighbors’ cat who comes over and says hi”. Then the neighbors broke up. One took five of the cats and moved across the country, the other kept the other five and stayed. Kitty was not happy with the new order, and made it clear he wanted to move in with us. He banged on the door and cried every night at 2 AM. During a cold snap, we got permission to take him in from the landlord. A month later, his official owner asked if we’d like to adopt Kitty. Oh hell yes.
So, for four happy years, he was OUR Kitty. I’ve never known a more docile, friendly cat. I could scoop his curled-up body on my hands and carry him around the room like a platter. He loved to hold hands, and the acme of bliss was lying on a human. He was also a notable chair thief. Whatever chair (at random cat logic) was the chair he wanted, that was HIS chair.
He died in 2014 of liver cancer, very calmly and peacefully. We miss him and love him every day. He was the most beautiful cat I have ever seen, and certainly one of the most loving. I love you, Kitty.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I loved reading about Eliza’s life, though! Her personality sounds exactly how she looks: lovely, gracious, with an occasional dash of silly.
I’ve nearly always had cats but I’ve never actually decided to adopt one, they have just arrived in my life. Behind the reply for length: the story of how my mom and I accidentally adopted five strays.
Well, it actually goes a bit further back. When I was 8, an orange-and-white catling wandered up to the house, and although my brother and I were given strict orders not to engage, my dad (who professed to hate cats) went outside and fed her a hot dog. Obviously at that moment she and her impending four kittens became ours. We kept two of the kittens.
Eventually, we inherited a crotchety old longhair from a great-uncle who was moving into a pets-free facility.
Fast-forward to the summer before my senior year in college. Most of those cats had passed, but we still had one of the “kittens,” who had become a grumpy old man. I was about to move into an apartment-style dorm and wanted an additional bookcase, so my mom and I stopped to look at yard sale–and the bookshelf had a little black kitten on it.
We got to talking with the woman holding the yard sale, and she told us that the black kitten had been unofficially adopted by an orange mother cat who had two kittens of her own, about a month younger than the black kitten. The yard sale woman expressed distress at being unable to feed so many cats, and pointed at the orange kittens who were playing with the wing from a bird their mother had caught for them to eat. Long story short, we did not buy the bookshelf but got into the car with a box loaded up with a mother cat and three kittens. As we prepared to drive away, the woman came running over to the car yelling that we’d forgotten one, and put a black-and-white cat with a broken tail in the car with us.
We called my brother (who was living at home) from the driveway. “Don’t be mad….” we said.
The new cats all moved into the backyard and enjoyed regular meals while we put up signs in local pet stores. We found a home for the two orange kittens together, and a home for the mother cat. We found a home for the black kitten but his new owners returned him to us the next day, and we found that we had missed him so much that we were thrilled. The broken tailed cat refused to meet anyone, so we ended up keeping her… and the two kittens she had before too long. So, new headcount: one grumpy old man, one teen mom with a broken tail, two new kittens, and one wonderful black kitten who actually helped groom and watch the new kittens when their mom needed a break.
Twelve years later, the broken-tailed cat that was thrown in at the last minute is still my mom’s very loving companion.
I moved far away to start a grad program and lived in a tiny shoebox of a studio. In the spring of my first year, one of the few friends I’d made needed to move to her family home, and could not take her two cats with her. I said I could keep one of them until she found a more permanent arrangement. She showed up one day with two, and never came back for them, so they have been mine for ten years.
They are sisters. The bicolor one is friendly, curious, eager to please, and very clever. The gray one is skittish and occasionally looks quite wild, but is a dramatic and silly show-off when she feels relaxed. Both love affection, lying in sunbeams, and a predictable schedule–they’ll very gently nudge me awake when I oversleep. They are wonderful companions and I am grateful every day that their former owner didn’t know anyone else who would take them.
these are great stories and I love that photo of your darlings!
I am so sorry for your loss, Nicole.
My cat’s name is Charlie and he is a big cuddly ball of fluff – he’s not very bright but he seems to know when I need extra comfort. He also enjoys eating bugs, and my old housemates didn’t have any issues with mice until after he and I moved out. He came into my life at a time when I would never have taken on the responsibility of having a cat on my own, but it was exactly when I needed him, and I’m so glad that he’s around.
most cats are pretty sharp, but the not-so-bright ones crack me up. so pretty, so loyal, so very confused.
My grandfather bred and trained black labs for a while and had two of his own as pets, Major and Lady, who were my first babysitters. They were flawlessly trained, sweet dogs. Before I could walk or even really crawl my grandma would plop me on a blanket on the grass and Major and Lady would stand guard over me, one on either side.
Many years later, my grandma, who has always liked small dogs, got a terrier who was hit by a car. She lay there not moving for hours and they thought she was gone, so they buried her in a box in the backyard. That night they heard scratching at the back door. The dog had woken up and DUG HERSELF OUT. She needed stitches and she had lost one eye but she lived 8 or 9 years after that.
When I was 10 or so, a beautiful stray fluffy tortoiseshell kept coming around my grandparents’ house looking for food. She’d only been hanging around for a few days when my aunt, visiting from Virginia, fell in love with her and decided to adopt her and take her home on the plane.
This was before my time, but my parents’ first cat after they were married was named Turkey because they left him alone with the Thanksgiving turkey (cooked!) and he ate half of it while they were out for a walk. I don’t know what his name was before, actually, but from then on they always referred to him in stories as “That Turkey cat.”
My first cat, the first family pet who was really mine and not my parents’ first, was named Sebastian. He was partly an outdoor cat, and if I opened the back door and hollered he would come when I called — for some reason I’ve always had cats who acted just a little bit like dogs.
That terrier is a BAMF and my hero.
That terrier!!! Omg!!!
It’s terrible and NOT FUNNY and yet my first question when Dan told me he’d found Liza that morning was “are you SURE she’s dead?? WE REALLY NEED TO BE SURE.”
That terrier is some IRL Pet Semetery shit.
After a lifetime of longing for a cat, we finally adopted one from a shelter almost exactly two years ago. She is a sweet-tempered tabby, shy with other cats and humans, but completely devoted to me and the two boys. She follows me around from room to room, cuddles up whenever she gets the opportunity and is content to watch me write all day (although she will occasionally jump on the desk and try to type).
She has edits!
I found my cat Rosie and her brother when I was 4. Long after we’d all moved out, Rosie’s preferred space was my old bedroom. When I would visit my mom at the holidays in my early 20’s, she would never leave my side, despite usually being pretty shy/preferring to hide all day. When Domino died a few years ago, my mom was pretty sure Rosie was going to follow shortly after. I flew home to say goodbye for a weekend and she passed the following Tuesday. She and her brother both lived to be almost 22. <3
We’ve had lots of pets over the years, though I haven’t had one of my own yet because I’m not permanent and settled enough yet. My mom’s two dogs (my dogs in my heart) are also very good when they babysit my one year old niece. They don’t get mad that she doesn’t really know how to pet nicely yet. But one of the dogs (the small white fluffy one) really likes to try to lick her ears, so maybe that’s his revenge. I’ve had cats who like earwax before, but it’s the first dog I’ve seen do it.
My room is in the basement. When I come home to visit once a year or so they can hear my door open from upstairs and will often wait at the top of the stairs for me. When I leave my mom says they spend a few days going to sit there and wait for me.
We’ve also never had a dog we’ve had in that house voluntarily go into the basement. It’s like there’s a ghost there. But one of them started following my mom down there this year, so maybe the ghost left.
I did kind of coparent a cat in an apartment once. We lived on the first floor. She used to sit in the window in the living room and we’d hear people talk to her as they walked by, unaware there were people in the room.
I am so sorry for your loss, Nicole. I have had pets on my mind even more so than usual because I am dealing with a rough chain of events (got in huge blowup/possible break up fight with my boyfriend, work has been particularly awful this past month, and then my grandma died), and I sincerely believe my dog has been trying to tend to my sadness. The other night in bed, I was feeling particularly heavy and sad, though not outright sobbing like a couple other days, and my little rescue mutt scooted her front half up to my face, licked my nose twice, and rested her head on my chest. I was not in a comfortable sleeping position like this, but i was comforted.
Pets are the best. It’s clear from your words and these pictures that Eliza knew that you knew that and that you particularly felt that way about her. She had her last night among family, in her home filled with love, which is the best end we can hope for, for any creature we care about, human or not.
I’m sorry you’re going through a rough time, but I’m really glad your sweet pup is there for you! I absolutely think pets can tell when we’re upset and the best ones will try to be comforting in their own way.
Some nights Eliza is off doing her own thing and I don’t see her, so I was really glad she came out and was friendly and sociable with us and our guest the night before she passed. We all admired and petted her.
The vet told us she’ll be cremated and her ashes will be spread with some others pets’ ashes at an orchard. And they will make a paw print for us to keep.
Sorry, hit the post button sooner than I intended. I wanted to add how sorry I am for your loss. I haven’t been through a loss yet, but already cannot imagine life without Zoe anymore.
My puppy, Holden (he is almost twelve but I still think of him as a puppy), once ate an entire beautiful golden loaf of challah bread I had just baked. He also scraped all the toppings, including most of the soft bread, off a homemade pizza. He doesn’t much care for meat, but he loves bread. A dog after my own heart. Also, his entire body wiggles when he wags his tail after not seeing you for a long time.
I’m so sorry, Nicole.
I adopted a cat two weeks ago named Jaws. He’s 4 years old and FIV+. He was hit by a car before he arrived at the shelter and that left him with a misaligned jaw (hence the name). He is so sweet and affectionate and already I love him fiercely. He has just discovered the bathroom, and has been hanging out in the tub lately.
Tearing up over here reading your beautiful tribute. I’m so sorry for the loss of your sweet girl. Pets should be healthy and happy forever.
I’m so sorry – it’s really crushing to lose a beloved pet. My current cat-buddy, Gato, is a a huge fluff ball who just wants to be around. He follows me through the house, not always sitting on my lap or begging for pets, but just to be in the same room. When I come home from work I see him looking out the front window, and he runs to the door when he sees my car pull in. He always tries to get out in the morning, not to run away, he just wants to follow me where-ever I’m going. My husband jokes that he thinks I spend all day in the “big outside room” and doesn’t understand why he can’t come with me. I will miss him terribly when he eventually goes, just like I miss Darlin, my previous cat-buddy, and REO Speedwagon, our giant, gangly greyhound.
Ok tried to resist commenting but I CAN’T (and my cardigan does have cat hair on it).
My little catbaby is a fluffbutt sans dignité who often slides off the back of the sofa while attempting to do ecstatic rolly-pollies on it. He believes he is entitled to infinite dinners each evening and communicates this with long carolling miaous and soulful glances at his empty food bowl.
He is scared of sheets, water, vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, toasters, people who are not me or Mr Britomartian, and the other cat who lives in the mirror. He enjoys snuggles, kneading his special blanket, chasing his catnip mice and hoarding bottlecaps in corners.
I LOVE HIM SO MUCH YOU GUYS
(rest in peace, Eliza <3)
Bottlecap cats! Vinca, of blessed memory, would follow anyone around with a bottle, hoping, hoping. Years after she’d gone, we were moving the piano — and found a HUGE bottlecap graveyard behind!
I’m so sorry, Nicole. She seemed like she was a really rad cat.
I’ve never been able to have dogs or cats (my mother generally dislikes animals and loathes cats, and was very much not into taking care of things she knew would probably be her responsibility even though they shouldn’t be, which is fair), and have lived in a series of houses or apartments that either don’t allow pets, or with people who don’t like cats or dogs or whatever. Someday, though. Some beautiful, beautiful day.
But! I was allowed to have fish, and had a small series of them over my childhood. My fish bro, though, was Diablo (nine year olds should not be allowed to name things). They were a tiny little zebra tetra who outlived their fishy comrades by a wide margin, survived my dumb father leaving him outside for a week in a Syracuse spring (aka winter) when he moved, and was, in general, an aquatic badass. I would spend hours just watching him being chill and swimming around. I think they lived to be about four or so. I haven’t had any fish since, but I’m really eager to start up a new aquarium.
She sounds (and looks) like a very sweet cat. I’m sorry for your family’s loss.
My sweet tortoiseshell girl Dandelion died late last autumn (put down after she had reached a very low point of a months-long decline involving numerous mini-strokes). The last time I saw her, she was having periods of losing the ability to walk, and was mostly deaf and blind. I was catsitting for my parents while they were away, and got myself fish and chips from a nearby takeaway. Dandelion was sleeping upstairs, but the second I had got home with my food and sat down, she appeared at my feet, lured by the smell of fish, extremely eager to get as much as she could. Her priorities remained in order.
Man, Nicole, that made me cry. Eliza was a beautiful kitty.
People who know me know I’ll never pass up an opportunity to talk about Calvin and Hobbes. Three years ago the boy and I had a three step plan: a) find jobs b) buy house c) adopt cats. So just two weeks after we’d moved in, we went to the shelter. I really really wanted kittens or at least one kitten and a grown cat. But the shelter ladies were smart and plonked me in Calvin and Hobbes’ cage (at that point they were named Dumpty and Humpty). Within a minute Hobbes was on my lap, Calvin was curled up next to me, they were purring up a storm and we were sold.
That was July 2014. The vet estimated that they were about 14 years old then, which would make them 16 now. I don’t believe it, to be honest. Sure, they have bad teeth (Hobbes only has 3 left), but they still see and hear perfectly well, they’re both still playful very regularly and they’re just full of life. They also love cuddling: Calvin especially occasionally gets so caught up in being petted that he falls over and vainly tried to regain his dignity. And Hobbes is such a proficient hunter (even with just his 3 teeth) that we put a bell on him for the sake of the neighborhood birds.
We think they’re brothers: they have similar coloring and were abandoned together, left in a box in front of the shelter (which makes me furious when I think about it). I do wonder about them dying sometimes, though. I hope Calvin goes first, because while Hobbes is fairly independent, Calvin isn’t: when Hobbes is gone for too long Calvin goes outside and meows pitifully for him to return. And when they stayed at my in-laws over Christmas, Calvin would only dare to enter a room if Hobbes went first.
Mostly I hope we have some time with them still.They’re the first pets that I’ve ever been the one responsible for, and while I loved all the cats I had as a kid (Timmy, Eva, Toulouse, Tommie, Gypsy*), it feels different with these two. And the boy adores them, too, spoils them terribly. They didn’t use to be talky cats, but they are now, because he encourages it – and I have to admit it’s nice that they’re so present.
*I cringe now, but when I named her, which was about 15 years ago, I didn’t know it was a slur.
Edited to add a picture. Hobbes is on the left.
I’m so sorry, Nicole. 🙁
Admiral Rufus Q. Fuzzbutt is a chinchilla. His adopt-a-versary is coming up within the next week or so, I believe – he was eight when I adopted him from a former coworker looking to rehome him two years ago and is ten or so now. (Apparently chinchillas do not do well with small children.) He is apparently a rare color for chins, so I like to think of him as a shiny Pokémon.
Rufus is definitely up there in years, but if healthy chins can live to be nearly 20, so I’m hoping I have plenty of fuzzy years with him still. He is a pain in the ass but I love him so; he is 500% floof and loves raisins and dandelion drops as well as escaping and hiding under the refrigerator.
Oh, Nicole, I am so very sorry. Sending huge loves and hugs to you and yours.
My Diesel-cat has been my rock for the last eleven years. He is a melanistic Bengal, and as such, I adopted him at a slightly older age and significantly lower cost than is typical for a pedigreed cat. I will always consider him to be a rescue–because he’s non-standard, he wasn’t “wanted,” and that’s beyond tragic because he is just the best cat.
When I went to meet him, I was supposed to adopt his littermate, a little girl cat, but the breeder brought out Diesel and his brother littermate instead, and let my ex-fiance and me spend some time with the two of them. Brother-cat was a little wary of us; he wasn’t terrified, but he didn’t do what Diesel did, which was to immediately go limp in my arms and make the biggest purrs I’d ever heard in my life out of such a small cat. He was very clearly My Cat from the start. When he came home, he developed a fascination with champagne corks, and as a baby cat would spend hours fetching corks that I’d toss around for him. At the same stage, he also developed a fascination with my hair. He’s slept with me since I brought him home, and when he was little he’d knead biscuits into my hair and try to suck on it, so more days than not I’d wake up with giant wet rat’s nest on my head courtesy of my tiny kitten. He used to shred cardboard boxes for fun; luckily he’s grown out of that. He and I have been tightly bonded for what seems like forever–he is so, so sad when I leave, and so, so happy to see me come home.
These days, Diesel is super content to chirrup at birds through the window and have zoomy yowls after he has a poo, bother his brother from time to time, and aggressively cuddle MrChouffe and me at every opportunity. He is the type of cat that MUST BE IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH PARENTS AT ALL TIMES or else the world will certainly come crashing to a halt, so the holidays, when we’re home more, are his very favorite time of year.
I love this boy so much.
Oh, and he is big. 18 pounds of solid, non-chubby, musclecat.
Plus, you have a solid reason to drink more Champagne, right? Gotta keep the cat happy!
I used that as an excuse for years. Now I work in a sparkling wine tasting room, so he has many corks and I have many fizzy wine AND IT’S ALL JUSTIFIED
He looks like my late Monty Python, giant and black, and dedicated to squirrel eradication
I’m so sorry about Liza, but glad she brought you joy!
My boyfriend and I have a six year old shih tzu who is very sweet and a little stubborn (I joke that she’s 20% cat – and that’s my favourite 20%). In the park where we walk her there is a little bandstand/gazebo and one sunny day I let her off the leash and we played chase around the pillars and up and down the steps. It wasn’t something I’d ever done before, but it was lovely.
Four months later it’s an unexpectedly sunny Saturday morning and she starts tugging my toward the gazebo. She stops and looks at me, then looks at the gazebo and tugs at her leash. It couldn’t be clearer if she spoke English. “Come on, this is where we play!” So I let her off the leash and we chase around the gazebo for a few minutes.
A few months after that she does the same thing with my boyfriend – who she’s never played with there before but who knows what she wants from hearing my stories.
I’ve done some research and the consensus is that dogs don’t really have event memories, but they have emotional memories. They remember how a place or activity made them feel.
So a few times a year, when the weather is nice and the park smells right, our dog remembers running around the gazebo with her favourite humans and decides it’s time for another game.
My dog is half shih Tzu (the other half is Japanese Chin) and she too is very stubborn and cat-like. I guess it’s a trait of the breed? (I’ve not interacted with shih tzus much before)
I am so sorry for your loss. Liza was indeed lovely.
Feline Julie Andrews is my first “real” pet.* She was named Julie Andrews by the good people at the shelter, and I thought it was too funny to change.
I have two alarms in the morning; one to feed Julie, and one to wake up if I have gone back to bed instead of going to the gym. If I do go back to bed, she gently pats me awake ten minutes before that second alarm goes off. If I ignore her, she grabs my nose.
This morning, she was sitting on the toilet tank when I exited the shower. I left her there and went to dress. Then I realized I had left my dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, so I went in and switched on the light. Julie yowled in protest, and I found myself apologizing “Sorry sorry sorry” and hurrying back to the bed, chastened by a cat. She owns me, and I love her.
*I had a guinea pig at age 9, but he hated me and would only let Mom near him, so he does not count.
Exactly one week after I graduated college, I moved to a new town where I had accepted a job and knew no one. Exactly one week after moving to a new town, I adopted Kiya. All of this was exactly according to plan. I only looked at apartments that allowed cats, and the thought of waiting any longer than one week post-graduation to adopt a cat was absurd to me.
Kiya picked me. I had my eyes on a tiny calico kitten, but when I picked him up, it was all scratches and hisses. When picked up the little tan ball of stripes then called “Tumbles,” she immediately started purring and fell asleep. A middle-aged couple who was also there at the time said “Oh you have to get her! Her fur matches your hair!” They definitely only said this because they had THEIR eyes on the tiny calico kitten. But they were still right. I had to adopt “Tumbles.”
Tumbles was so named because she would fall over with a thump whenever she was playing with a toy that required her tiny back legs to kick it. But I renamed her Kiya, an ancient Egyptian name I picked out based on the fact that the black lines around her eyes looked a bit like ancient Egyptian art. I’m reasonably sure that I have been pronouncing it wrong the entire time.
Kiya was a terror kitten for a few weeks. She would jump on my chest or face in the middle of the night. When I tried to confine her to the kitchen at night, she would CRAWL UNDER THE TWO INCH GAP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DOOR. No one else ever witnessed this and no one believes me.
She settled down eventually, and aside from her habits of chewing wires and licking people with her SANDPAPER-ROUGH tongue (I have been around other cats; her tongue is the worst one), she is the best cat in the world. She was my best pal until I made friends in the new town. She cuddles with me basically every night. Still does, even despite the fact that I like kitty cuddles more than the now Mr. Ksek, and a cat’s natural tendency to cuddle the less-agreeable human. She’s super nice to me when I’m sad. Rarely makes a mess and is nice to her sister cat that we adopted when she was 6. And she’s eternally grateful that in all of the three homes that I’ve taken her along to, she’s always had plenty of squirrels to watch out the window — from the red ones in PA to the black and gray ones of Ohio.
Baby Kiya
Adult Kiya (now 7) with “adopted” sister Poppy (who is also deserving of her own story, but it’s still just beginning 🙂 )
My decision to buy a house was probably 50% wise investment strategy and 50% “Now I can finally have a cat!”
My sympathy to you and your family Nicole. What a sweet, pretty kitty Liza was.
I adopted my tortie Smudge from the SPCA in January 2009. I never had a pet growing up but after making various friends with cats I realized I had what it takes to be a cat lady. She was very shy (and skinny!) those first couple of weeks and just as she was warming up to her new home I came down with the flu and pneumonia. Up until that point she had been sleeping under the bed but in those first 48 hours of my flu delirium she never left my side. She snuggled right up next to me and followed me closely on my path from bed to bathroom to bed. She was a little guardian angel and ever since thise days she never strays too far from me.
(Except for the time during my move to NYC when she escaped from her carrier and bolted from the car at a gas station in Roscoe, NY off Rt 17 and a biker had to help me extract her scared and panting lil chubby body from behind the ice machine. It still scares me to talk about that day and I haven’t stopped at that gas station since.)
Every parakeet I have had for the past 15 years has adored Diane Rehm. One of them even said “GOOD morning!” just like her.
My family lives in the absolute stonking turn-left-at-the-back-of-beyond, simply-miles-from-the-nearest-lemon middle of nowhere, so we have four dogs and two cats, minimum. My little brother has a beloved cat, whom he fed with a medicine dropper when she was a kitten and made us sit with whenever he had to go out of the house (the cat bit holes in my books to get my attention, so my Lemony Snickets are dotted with vampire-like marks).
I have a West Highland Terrier named Macintosh, obviously after The Dog Macintosh from Jeeves and Wooster. Every time I visit my parents, she follows me around and sits on my lap and generally makes it clear who she belongs to, which is wrenching because I cannot have her in my tiny flat in Brighton, where I both work and take a full-time degree. But she is a very good dog, and one day she will live with me again.
I’m so sorry for your loss. My boyfriend and I also adopted a calico last August, Sunny Baudelaire. She likes to bite on things, like the Lemony Snicket character, it is either a very fitting name or like, destiny. She is a people cat and likes to lay on the bed next to me while I read or watch TV. I didn’t know anything about calicos before getting her and now they are my favorite type of cat.
My sisters have three cats, Cati Perri, the oldest, Leucocito and Serina (those last two are science names. My sister is in med school.) Leuco and Serina are best buddies, they lick each other, hug and sleep together. It makes me want to get a friend for Sunny B.
ugh, thought I had figured out how to attach an image but I didn’t. Here’s a link https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1…
I had a beagle growing up; went petless for a good 15-20 years, became a cat person about 10 years ago after being allergic as a kid (I seem not to be allergic to cats I acquire as kittens, which is handy), and had really completely forgotten how to love a dog until my husband decided we should get a puppy. In early December ’15 he brought home this honey-colored chihuahua/corgi/who-knows-what mix from one of the customers on his FedEx route. When I first saw her I said “She looks like a cartoon dog!” We named her Zouki and it is just stupid how much I love her. Her tail wags in a blur practically all the time; she jumps in circles when she’s REALLY excited. She loves all treats including bites of cat food and licking peanut butter off the knife after I’ve made a sandwich. She adores our hefty orange tabby Tiger (he returns the affection but only if he thinks no one’s looking) and wants to be friends with our tiny black cat Mackie (who is having none of it). Her specialty is carrying/dragging purloined items around the house in her mouth: a bath mat, discarded socks, half-empty water bottle, and–on one memorable occasion–a toilet flapper that Husband was in the process of changing. She gets away with it because the sight of a dog galloping around with toilet parts in its mouth causes paralyzing laughter and makes reprimand impossible.
Pets are, indeed, the best, and Nicole, I’m sorry for the loss of your sweet kitty.
I’m sorry for your loss, I had a very sweet calico from the age of 4 and whenever I think about someday having a cat again, it’s a calico.
I now have two cat-like dogs, retired racing greyhounds. Our girl dog is very food motivated and too smart/sneaky for her own good. She managed to snag a raspberry out of my yogurt this morning (I left her unattended in the living room with food before dog breakfast, neither of us will ever learn). Here is an incomplete list of human food she has snuck since we adopted her in July of 2014:
– uncertain number of Clif bars fished out of my purse
– strawberry goat cheese honey toasts
– 8-10 Ricola cough drops (she unwrapped every one)
– Babybel cheese red wax
– at least two sticks of butter (suspect a third but I never saw the wrapper)
– hashbrowns
– ginger chews (also unwrapped! less elegantly than the Ricola, but still)
– about 3 raw cauliflower florets
– the plastic swatting part of one pink, well used fly swatter
– one entire loaf of unopened cinnamon raisin bread
– hot sauce (just licked it up off the floor without reacting)
– red wine
– champagne at New Year’s Eve party
– tried all four of the hummus in the sampler, prioritized consumption of the roasted red pepper
– one six ounce package of Lindor dark peppermint truffles (unwrapped all, caught because one wrapper was left in the foyer, all other wrappers and the package were under the sofa)
– apple slices
– shredded several empty plastic grocery bags, debated whether she did it for fun or looking for food
– snagged a bacon cheddar green onion scone while my husband was in the kitchen, somehow caught only because of crumbs and guilt face
– cookie dough batter (out of mixing bowl)
– chicken and carrots fished out of stir fry, unwanted veggies dropped on floor
– one tall bag of kitchen garbage
(note: many of these she was given hydrogen peroxide to throw up after, her sneakiness is astounding but so is her guilt face and our boy dog’s propensity to tattle on her)
I love cat-like dogs almost more than I love dog-like cats. She sounds like a handful, in a good way!
It’s hard unwrap ginger chews!
Right?! These were the ones individually sealed with a crimp in the plastic, not just twisted in a wrapper (the bag has a lounging ginger dude on it). I kind of want to put out bait and a camera to see how she managed to get them open. I also want to know if she’s deliberately shoving evidence of food contraband under furniture.
Apparently, you & I have very similar puppydogs!!
We adopted two ex-racing greys in June 2014, and the little one will nab & eat ANYTHING. She has eaten several of the things on your girl’s list, in fact. (What is it with whole sticks of butter!?)
The big one steals things and hides them in his beds, completely undamaged. For a while I had plans to keep a secret Tumblr of all the things he has stolen. Here is a selection of stashes I found July-November 2014:
– box of strawberries
– 8 packets of burger buns, neatly stacked
– tub of organic low-fat plain yogurt
– loaf of whole-wheat bread
– box of tea
– two raw corn cobs
– Thai Sweet Chili crisps
– sheepskin rug
– large matchbox
– bag of brown rice
– aluminium foil roll
I think we have extremely similar pairs! Our boy dog, who we adopted with the girl, is a loving hoarder, but usually only for things we leave on the floor (laundry in a basket on the floor is fair game) because he is so afraid of getting in trouble. He slowed down dramatically after the first 6 months, but we saw a resurgence this December when we put up our first Christmas tree – I came home to find his bed full of ornaments.
I’m looking at your avatar and it looks like you have at least one brindle! Here are my buddy puppies:
Girl dog on the left, boy dog on the right.
Indeed, the little one is a brindle girl! We fondly refer to her as “Tiny”, “Trouble”, and “Stinky-Pants”, which is a fair representation of her character. The big one is a black & white boy, and as Best Puppy in the World he is absolutely sure he never will do anything to jeopardise that crown. But some things are just so tempting he must take them for safekeeping. Yes.
Oh, my heart. I love seeing other people with dogs who are excellent pairs/ foils of one another. We didn’t mean to get two but I’m thrilled every day.
Oh, good Lord. I, too, have experience with the Greyhound propensity to steal, sort, hide, and/or eat (or any combination of the above) the least appropriate foodlike items in the vicinity.
The late, great Buckminster Fuller (nee Aquila Adventure) ate broccoli florets, drank vodka, sorted the contents of any number of trash bins, and once ate an entire pound bag of prunes (with pits) and a half a bar of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. He also ate a bag of Tootsie Rolls (unwrapping them) and tasted and rejected most of a two-pound box of Russell Stover candy. He didn’t like fruit creams.
This is all incredible. “He didn’t like fruit creams.”
Did you see him unwrap the Tootsie Rolls? My girl pup is pretty nimble at handling things with her dewclaws and has a very gentle mouth, but candy wrappers seem excessive even though she’s clearly capable. (Gentle mouth proof – if we come home later than she finds acceptable she will show her displeasure by messing with things but never harming them, the most exceptional one to me being when she pulled a single tissue out of the box and had it placed on her bed when we came home. There was not a single indentation on that Kleenex.)
I know this isn’t the point here, but…
strawberry goat cheese honey toasts sound incredible.
Is this a thing you made up? Recipe somewhere? <3
Toasts c/o best couple friends, no idea where they got the idea. If you would like to make yourself, lightly toast slices of baguette/ fresh bread (I prefer sourdough), smear with goat cheese, cover with sliced strawberries, drizzle lightly with honey, consume, don’t leave unattended with pointy dogs.
This is good even when strawberries are out of season because the honey and goat cheese do so much of the flavor work.
I’ve got a 10 y.o. ginger cat named Connor. He is kind of an asshole, but he has gotten better with age. Only attacks me every 4 or 5 months now, and is very cuddly the rest of the time. Falls asleep on my lap for at least 2 hours a day. Woke me up at 4:11 this morning, so my praise is not effusive today.
We lost our dog, Bailey, 2 years ago to cancer. He was my soulmate, no joke. Bailey was a Wauzer (Westie/Schnauzer) mutt with one ear up and one ear flopped over, and he was the best. I will never love anything else the way I loved him. We’re about to start looking for a new dog to adopt, and the more I think about it the more emotional I get. I expect to cry a lot during the transition period. But I want to help another dog, to have another companion, and to give Connor a friend.
Eliza is just so beautiful, and it sounds like she was a perfect cat. If I’d ever met her I’m sure I would have fallen in love instantly. <3
My cat Fantasia tries to hide how smart she is, presumably because she knows that if I had proof I’d put her to work. I’m fairly certain she understands English. She is the sweetest damn kitty in the entire universe and as soft and silky as a chinchilla, and bonding with her has been one of the most rewarding long-term experiences of my life. I’ve had her for almost four years and she’s still finding new ways to open up to me. When I adopted her, the shelter told me she’d been waiting for a home for a year and a half. Nobody who has ever met her can understand how she could have spent five minutes waiting for a family, let alone over a year, so I am forced to conclude that she was waiting for me.
Fantasia is only the second cat I’ve had; the first was my childhood cat, whose name was Earl. He was a sleek gray kitty my parents adopted as a kitten, when I was about a year and a half old, so we grew up together. He was ridiculously tolerant of my little brother and me, like it sounds like Eliza was, patiently suffering the doll clothes we put on him and so on. When he was middle-aged he contracted a pretty severe form of diabetes and became very sick. He puked all over the house multiple times a day (we had a brown shag carpet in the family room at the time; it was disgusting) and pulled all the fur off his hindquarters. Near the end of his life the bald spot took up over half his body. He died when he was 11, and as much as it was a relief in some ways, it broke our hearts. We loved him so much.
Fantasia and I are bonded strongly enough that a lot of my pictures of her are really of the two of us together.
Nicole, I’m so sorry. She seems like such a great cat–her personality really shines through in the pictures you included.
We currently have two cats. Linus is a five-year-old tuxedo who is very dignified and sociable–he greets everyone who comes to the door and subjects all bags and packages to a thorough inspection via sniffing. When we first got him, we lived in Vermont and there was a big yard, so we were able to take him out for walks on a leash, which he absolutely loved and which I think he misses. Unfortunately we now live in an apartment building and outside time is pretty much out of the question. Cordelia is a three-year-old calico who is the sweetest and cuddliest of lap cats when it’s just me or my fiance, but is terrified of all other humans and will hide under the bed until she is sure they are gone. Every morning when I wake up she follows me around chirruping conversationally while I get ready for work.
They adore each other and will often trade baths or sit together for hours in exactly the same pose.
LOOK AT THESE PERFECT CATS
cannot resist posting another one:
Nicole I am so sorry for your loss. Eliza sounds like a very wonderful kitty and she was lucky to be so loved.
My cat is named Captain and he is an extremely handsome tuxedo. He is four years old, my boyfriend adopted him from a shelter in New Hampshire when he was six months old. He picked Captain because of how sweet he was playing with the other shelter cats. Now that boyfriend and I live together, Captain is my cat too and I love him with my whole heart. I never had cats or dogs growing up because my mom is allergic, but I always desperately wanted a cat. Captain is the greatest. He is good natured and friendly (he LOVES strangers and is very tolerant of being manhandled) and always seems to know when I am sad a need a cuddle. He is a long and lean sort of kitty and one of his favorite things to do is to stretch alllll the way out on the floor, paws fully extended while we coo “you’re soooo loooong” at him.
Once Captain ate a third of a pan of congealed bacon grease that we ill-advisedly left on the stove one afternoon. I was a little worried about him but he seemed pretty damn happy and also he had bacon breath for an entire day after.
Currently, the family has two pups- Fitz, who is a rescue and has the most adorable underbite, and Piper who many of you recognize from Twitter and is obscenely cute. Both of them are the snuggliest dogs in the world, but Piper was a holy terror up until recently. She’s one of those dogs who pees when she’s excited, so whenever my sister and I come home to visit, we have to greet her outside so she doesn’t flood the house. A few months ago, my sister was there for a long weekend and forgot to shut her bedroom door all the way. She rolled over to find Piper sitting in the middle of her floor. They locked eyes, at which point Piper began to wag her tail and pee freely from the sheer joy of seeing my sister conscious and awake (and ready to pet her).
So sorry for your loss, Nikki.
I had some truly excellent cats growing up. One of my best stories (I don’t remember this, but my mom has told me many times): as a toddler, in the spirit of scientific investigation, I once pulled out an entire handful of our cat Ivan’s whiskers. Mom returned to the room to find me clutching them in my tiny fist and Ivan bleeding a bit on one side. “Mommy!” I said. “Kitties don’t have lips!”
Despite that, when I was extremely ill with asthma a few years later, Ivan spent every night with me, just being a comforting presence as I coughed my little lungs out. His favorite food was Doritos, his favorite song was Away in a Manger, he survived a house fire by hiding in a piano, and he lived to a ripe old age of 19. What a champion.
Our other cat Tasha was my baby and I loved her with my whole heart, but she was definitely less of a character than Ivan. She used to sleep under the covers curled up behind my knees all night, and once, she peed in my little brother’s shoes. Bless. I felt terrible for abandoning her when I left for school, and she died the year after I graduated college, but she’d had a good long life too, and she still had my dad’s lap after I was gone.
Now I live in a building that doesn’t allow pets, so I get my kicks petsitting for my friends. And also, I know my brother reads the Toast, so hello, brother, if you’re reading this, let’s pretend you haven’t found out my username.
Doritos! That’s delightful!
She sounds like a crackerjack lady-cat. She was lucky to have someone who loved her so much and knew her so well as you obviously did! I lost a fur-friend about eight months ago, who’d been with me as many years. Thinking about her never fails to make me smile and feel so glad I got to know her. Our new kitten, has helped me remember that so much of our time with our pets is joyous. His boundless energy helps remind me not to dwell on the end, and to remember all the great middle bits.
Thank you, this is really helpful to read right now!
I’m so sorry for your loss! She sounds like an awesome kitty.
I had to help my family say goodbye to our dog, Max, a few months ago. My dad found him on the side of the road when he was a puppy. I was 16. Dad came home, told me “go look in the back of the truck. We’re not keeping it.” Within a week, I caught my dad microwaving leftover sausage gravy to give to the puppy. “I’m just taking the chill off,” he said, as if the question wasn’t whether he was warming up food for the puppy, but the degree to which he was warming it up.
That was so beautifully written. I’m sorry for your family’s loss. A beloved pet is as much a family member as any human, in my book.
I said goodbye to my cherished companion kitty of 18 years, Melody, in late 2014. I adopted her from a shelter when she was only 4 months old and I was 25. She was with me through various roommates, boyfriends and jobs. She handled three cross-country moves beautifully. She loved to be held and was delighted when I carried her around the house. She adapted well when, after 8 years, I brought home a second kitty and again, two years later, when my husband-to-be joined our household. Melody (aka Melly Mel, Melodious, Meluna, Missy von Bitchy) lived 18.5 years, always chatty and cuddly, running around and playing with kitten-like energy bursts until her final few months. We were with her when she was euthanized at our vet’s office, where we all petted her and cooed to her as she drifted off peacefully.
She was my other half, my comfort, my friend, my baby. I will never forget her.
I’m so sorry to hear about Eliza, but I’m glad that so much of your time together was happy and healthy.
I want to tell you about our cat Annie, who is a combination of teddy bear and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Annie was discovered at 13th and Pine in Philadelphia, near where sex workers hang out. I like to think that she learned a lot about life among all different kinds of people from her formative experiences as a Philly street cat.
Someone I knew professionally posted about finding her, and about how he didn’t want to have to put her outside since a storm was coming (Snowpocalypse 2010!), but that he and his family already had five cats and a little kid in a rowhouse and she wouldn’t be able to stay there forever.
As soon as I met her I fell in love. She’s a tortie manx, with a round face and big, concerned eyes and rounded ears. She jumped into my lap and purred like crazy. There was definitely something weird happening with her butt (it turned out to require a surgery I could barely afford but the vet was PSYCHED about because she got to practice her favorite surgical technique) and it turned out she was pregnant (her spay became a kitten abortion which is still something I feel totally weird about). The vet was pretty surprised that I was willing to take on such a crazy financial burden with a dirty street cat, but it was too late — I already loved her.
She’s always been sweet and pliant and conciliatory. She’s never brought out her claws with me and she spends most of her time on my lap or snuggled against my abdomen when I’m sleeping. The only time she has ever hissed at me was when I had to pick up our other cat, Archimedes, to put her in the carrier to take her to the vet and I like to think that Annie’s hiss was out of sisterly solidarity.
In January 2011, our apartment in West Philadelphia caught fire. It was a five-alarm fire, and firefighters poured water on it for hours and hours on a sub-zero day. Firefighters rescued Archimedes as soon as it was safe to go into the building, but Annie must have been hiding.
We were devastated. We were also living in a hotel and trying to get our lives together. I was about to start a new job, and my husband was having a hard time dealing with the trauma of losing our home. We were worried about our neighbors (luckily, no people were hurt in the fire) and about our future, and we all wondered what happened to our pets.
When you take a pet into your home, you make a promise that you will keep her safe. She has absolutely no control over the situation — she’s completely dependent on you to make sure that she has what she needs. I knew that I wasn’t to blame for the fire, but I just felt so sad that there was nothing I could do for Annie. I imagined her cold and hungry and scared. A week went by, then two, and then it was a month since the fire. We began to come to grips with the idea that Annie might never come back.
Then, one morning, very early, we got a phone call from Lou, the amazing animal rescue activist who had been agitating for more action. She had Annie!
You’ve got to read the story for yourself here: http://citykitties.org/2011/02/another-survivor-a… , but suffice it to say, we’re pretty sure that Annie was leading gangs of marauding cats on dumpster runs and staking out warm spots until she decided that she had had enough and went to find the most direct route to her people.
Annie has since enjoyed a boring life of naps, looking at birds through windows, and carrying tennis balls around the house like she’s a dog. I tell her every day how grateful I am to have her in my life.
CITY KITTIES IS THE BEST RESCUE I AM SO GLAD ANNIE IS FROM THERE.
(eta the City Kitties/Cat Doctor FB pages give me life on a daily basis.)
How would I get through horrible meetings if I couldn’t tab over to Cat Doctor cat photos?
SADIE MONSTER.
Hoorah for City Kitties and Cat Doctor! My cat is actually from PAWS, but I take her to the Cat Doctor for her biannual checkups–I spend our time in the waiting room alternately making sure she’s okay in her carrier and chatting to the Cat Doctor’s resident kitties.
My favorite is Archie.
WAIT YOU HAVE MET ARCHIE??? *cat heart eyes emoji*
(ngl, I am having a similar reaction to this news as I would if you regularly ran into, say, Mallory.)
Even better–Archie has sat with me and Chetta a few times while we waited for our appointment. He’s such a spindly, dignified gentleman.
He is SO spindly. I am kind of dying of jealousy right now.
oh my gosh, what a brave and smart girl! And cute, very cute.
Oh my god this is AMAZING. Your cat is an incredible badass and I am so, so happy she found you again.
I was bracing myself for a very sad ending and I am amazed and delighted at her resilience and the persistent shelter people. Good kitty.
My sweet little Tia was a foster kitty, from back in the day when I was moving around a bunch, looking for new jobs, not real sure about a cat-lifetime commitment. She was even more shy than she is now and was impossible to photograph, plus her name is at the end of the alphabet, so I don’t think anyone ever spotted her on the adoption website, anyway, I never got a single call about adopting her. Poor girl had been kinda living in a basement in DC where people sometimes fed her, but no one actually owned and took care of her. Finally I was like, what was I thinking, long commitment and all that but I can’t NOT have a kitty in my life. She’s still super shy but she demands all the love and pets on her terms, like I’ll be sitting around the house and she’ll walk up and give me a very intense look with loud purrs (she drools when she purrs, of course, my gross girl). Also, she has tufty ears like an owl. She’s about 11 now and only has one fang, which gives her an adorable sneer.
Amka is my little doofus boy. He’s a shelter baby and a defining part of his personality is that nothing bad has ever happened to him and he’s certain it never will. He lay in my arms like a baby and turned his purr up to 11 when I met him, and, better yet, a lady was at the shelter looking for two girls to adopt and he had two sisters, so no one got left behind. He’s so dopey but so loving. I mean, look at this. His name comes from a friend suggesting that since Tia is Spanish for “aunt,” he should be named “Uncle” in some other language. So his name is (approximately) what Google tells me is Turkish for “uncle.”
They are both gonna live forever, right?
Those EAR TUFTS! What a gorgeous critter.
Next best thing to actually having a friendly pet owl!
(oh wow somehow I typed all of this and did not even mention that Amka has a heart-shaped nose.)
I am tragically allergic to cats, and sudden_spouse goes into anaphylactic shock around all fur-bearing animals.
HOWEVER, I grew up on a farm and in addition to the farm animals (not cuddly) we had a ton of pets, including pet goats – most especially the matriarch, D. She had a wicked sense of humor and would act on it unexpectedly, biting a tomato the visiting 12-year-old was holding out to her at just the right spot, so that tomato innards would splash all over the person who was trying to be nice to her … She also would get mad at our father, who was constantly thwarting her, and if especially peeved she would wait until we were all out, break into the house – still no idea how she did it – and pee all over his bed. Eventually we just had to give up on that mattress.
The baby goats bounced around like Buttermilk and were just insanely adorable.
When D. died at 15 the vet said she was the oldest goat he’d ever seen.
And now I’m all nostalgic and homesick.
Goats! Goats are the best–my best friend was in 4H in middle/high school and raised/showed Nubians. The first time he invited me over to his house, it was with the words “hey, do you like baby goats?”
I mean, who doesn’t.
Exactly! Nubians! Ours were registered Nubians and I too was in 4H – somewhere there are prize ribbons (my sister and I were pretty much the only people showing goats in our county, so we always won something).
Some people say pets can’t feel complex emotions, that they are reactive or only show the sorts of behaviors that get them attention or rewards and we interpret it as emotions. I have experience that negates this. When I was in 5th grade we moved to Iowa and bought a farm which came with a marvelous collie dog named Sam. It also came with a beautiful barn cat who had long gray fur who we eventually named Delilah. Sam and Delilah would, when they thought we weren’t watching, walk around the farm together and Delilah would actually rub herself on his side. If they saw us, he’d pretend to chase her so he could show us he was doing his job. Eventually he realized we didn’t care (unlike the previous owners, I guess) and they would walk the farm together and snuggle in front of the house. Delilah eventually grew to trust us and she was the sweetest cat–always purring and always up for a pet or a cuddle. She was not, however, an indoor cat and had no desire to be one. We set up blankets in the out building and fed her and she was happy. Unfortunately one day she was hurt–probably hit by a tractor–and the vet couldn’t do anything. We buried her in the back yard and I swear Sam knew, and he would mope by her grave. It broke our hearts and especially his–you could see it. He was still a sweet and loving dog, but his friend was gone. He lived a good, long life.
It’s a sad story, but it’s one I tell to say that I have no doubt that your kitty knew she was loved and that she loved you. I’m so sorry for your loss.
Same thing happened with one of our dogs. He grew up with two neighborhood dog buddies (we lived in a rural neighborhood and all the dogs just wandered around without much regard to fences or property lines.) They were both adults when he was a puppy, and I imagined the two of them kind of like Shadow to our dog’s Chance. Both of them died within a year of each other my dog was depressed. I was very obvious. He would just lie around and sigh…
So sorry. She sounds like a fantastic cat.
Growing up we had 2 family cats. Truffles, 6 toed, black and white, ate like sumo wrestler but stayed tiny, sweet, and dumber then a box of hair. He was the lap cat. Our other cat was Mac, about 13 pounds of solid orange muscle. He had been a feral kitten, and never really got used to people. In 13 years I can count the number of times he sat on laps on one hand. But he and I got along. Whenever I was stressed out (which as a depressive child who hated school was often) I would go lay my head on Mac and he would purr, and things would feel a bit better.
Oh, I’m so sorry – she was beautiful, and sounds like a wonderful friend and companion. My heart goes out to you and your family, especially your girls. That first heartbreak is always so hard.
My fellow is a handsome mix of border collie and ?, and is a joy and a trial and I hope he lives forever. This morning we were very concerned about his appetite after a bout with some sort of gastro thing, as he wasn’t eating his recovery food (boiled chicken and rice) but picking up his dish and dumping it on the carpet in the living room. That is, we were concerned until we realized he was simply doing this the better to sort the chicken bits from the rice. His appetite is fine. He’s just a precious dandy.
What a good Eliza she was. We’re so glad to have had you in this world, Eliza.
My favorite pet story so far, about my elderly bulldog Smoosh: I had pushed the bathroom door closed to shower in peace, but apparently not hard enough to latch properly. Dejected, Smoosh laid down to guard/wait with her butt against the door, so that when she unleashed one of her unholy bulldog farts, it seeped through the gap and spread through the steamy bathroom; I choked out a dismayed, “OH MY GOD, SMOOSH”, which of course she took as a call for help and burst heroically into the room and then the tub. She caught the shower curtain on the way in, though, and since I only have a tension-rod, the whole thing pulled down with her. Smoosh was terribly sad not to be welcomed as a hero.
LOLOLOL BEST STORY.
This is the most bulldog-y story ever told. <3
I’m so sorry, Nicole.
My favorite pet is a dog belonging to friends of mine with whom I stayed for some months. She’s getting deaf and stiff and old now, but she had Georges Sand levels of vivacity. She’s a beagle-corgi mix (the corgi part is very obvious around her jowls, and when you hold her ears up they are corgi-ear-shaped) and going around with her was like being part of the entourage of a great star: she charmed everyone. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and lives in perfect harmony with large numbers of cats. The friends she belongs to have big dogs now and even though she’s a fifth of their size she’s top dog by power of intelligence and personality, like Judi Dench’s M telling Bond what to do.
I feel this so hard. When people’s pets die–even the ones I never met myself–it destroys me.
We had a ton of cats when I was growing up, but Snowball was definitely My Cat. She was an all-white kitten with a black tail, and we bonded immediately and loved each other so much. She got hit by a car, I think before she was even a year old, and I was just talking over the weekend with my mom and sister about how in some ways none of us really got over it. It was my first real experience with death.
I’m so sorry, Nicole–Eliza seems like the most wonderful kitty companion.
My beloved dog is a long haired chihuahua named Paris (I was young and stupid when I bought her but the name is appropriate). She is dumb as a post with regular dog commands (not to bark, stop barking at me I’m your mother not thief breaking into the home!) but incredibly skilled at getting what she wants most in life: attention. She sits on people’s laps and yips at them to pet her, and growls if they do not pet her “properly.” She prefers to be carried than walk herself, and is prone to flopping dramatically on lush grass during a walk to suggest that she couldn’t possibly be asked to move one step more. She is more prone to flopping on the grass if she has an audience. She hates the snow and the only way to get her to exercise during the winter is to encourage her to run between two people indoors, who reward her with lavish petting and attention. When my roommate and I graduated and moved apart, she went on a hunger strike that ended up costing me $5k due to an unnecessary surgery. She is the most temperamental jerk and I love her so much.
My two friends and I thanked her in the acknowledgements of our PhD dissertations without ever acknowledging that she is a dog, not a person. I hope one day her historiographical importance will be a matter of discussion among Canadian historians!
Oh, goodness, I’m so sorry. We lost our exceptionally beloved ginger gentleman Cronkite (the most trusted cat in America!) last summer, under somewhat similar and equally surprising circumstances. My wife adopted him when he was six years old and 32 (!) pounds, got him down to a healthy weight, and got him through diabetes. He was the most love-filled beast on Earth; whenever anyone in the house was upset, he would silently make his way over to them, sit next to them, touch them ever so gently with his feet, and then purr with all his might.
Miss you, Cronkers.
32 pounds, oh my gosh!! What a perfect face, it is just screaming out for cheek pets.
That is a spectacular cat name. He is beautiful.
My cat Rosalie died almost two weeks ago, while I was studying abroad. It was a weird coincidence because I was almost in the same place as back when I was on vacation with my parents and I met the cat that I borrowed her name from. I rushed back as soon as I could after my dad told me, but I was and still am so heartbroken that I wasn’t with her at the time. She had tooth surgery and it turned out there was a tumor underneath and the doctor insisted it would be better not to wake her up. I don’t think I ever cried about anything this much in my life, I got her 17 years ago when I was 7. She was such a big part of growing up and shaped my life and my personality in so many ways. It felt like I lost a part of myself. Up until the end, she was the cuddliest and most gentle baby, like most cats she loved sitting on suitcases and in boxes and she also had a really weird obsession with feet. At dinner time, she would lie stretched out on her side right in front of the kitchen with her little paws pulled up under her chin, so you would inevitably trip over her and not forget to feed her. It will never be the same now coming home to my parents’ house and I miss her very, very much.
I am so so sorry. I love calicos, and she looks like she was a beautiful cat. I also just love that her name was Eliza. It’s a fitting name for a cat that looked so regal and yet sweet.
I currently don’t own my own cat, but my roommate has a cat named Snacks that I am basically an Aunt to. Her name is Snacks for a reason, because she is a gigantic black and white spotted, gigantic marshmallow cat of love. She has a purr that is monster truck loud. Whenever she hears my key in the door, she rushes down the hall and paws at my leg, meowing at me until I lie on the bed and pet her. She loves to lie on my chest and purr continuously, and it’s the most soothing thing ever after a long day. She also loves burrowing near my legs when I sleep, for warmth.
Sometimes, she is incredibly aggressive in her love, like when she wakes up in the middle of the night and tries to sleep on my head, and then paws at my face to pet her, or refuses to let me type on my laptop because she keeps nuzzling my hands for more pets, but she is also the sweetest and most adorable cat. I basically want to clone her so I can have a second Snacks of my own.
So that’s my current, sort of pet story. Again, I’m so sorry about Eliza. Snacks and I are sending lots of love and loud purrs your way.
ETA: I also constantly refer to her as Lady Meow Meow, and randomly sing a song to her about what a marshmallow cat she is, because why not?
Awww, Snacks is such a cute name!
I don’t know what is it about pets that makes one break in song! I am not a good singer, but I have really elaborate operas about Sunny and her adventures.
I don’t know how to load a picture in this comment section so i will just post a link. She is my Mishtuni, the last one from a long line of cats that I grew up with.
I know cats don’t always have the best of reputations, but Mishtu is one of the most gentle souls I have ever come across. About 2 yrs ago, on a certain night I was having a melt down at my parents’ house, and no one was aware that i was a blithering, sobbing puddle of tears in my bedroom. Mishtu was curled up into a floofy ball and sound asleep beside me. But suddenly she woke up, looked at me, I wasn’t wailing, i was barely making any noise, I don’t know what woke her up. She looked straight at me, mewed and came towards my face (i was lying with my head on the pillow), and for the next ten minutes, she kept on purring, rubbing her face against mine, making biscuits with her paws on my arm and licking the tear stains down my cheeks with her sand-papery tongue. She did not rest till I stopped crying, and I will never forget that. I had never been consoled with such care ever before.
She is 9 yrs 7 months running now, and I know that her end is not too far away which breaks my heart. I just hope she doesn’t suffer when it happens, https://scontent-sit4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash2…
ohhhh, what a perfect girl, everyone should be so lucky to have a kitty like this around when they are sad.
I wish everyone does 🙂 .
Also she is completely goofy otherwise, running around at top speed in the wee hours of the morning, banging into doors and toppling stuff off the tables, sleeping with her tongue out, jumping on my neck from the top of the cupboard and throwing my mother’s eye drops out of the window on the streets. She does them all.
Oh man, I’m so glad you had her. That story reminds me of this gif-artwork:
I have lost both of my childhood English Setters and both experiences were incredibly painful. One of my dogs died suddenly in a car accident after he climbed over our fence for the 1000th time; the other lived to old age and we had to said goodbye to her this fall. I am so sorry about Eliza, Nicole. Losing a beloved pet, especially as a small child, is absolutely heart-breaking. If you or your daughters are having trouble coping, I highly recommend buying a copy of Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant. My mom read me Dog Heaven after the passing of both of my pets and even though it made me cry it was incredibly cathartic, regardless of whether you actually believe in a Heaven for humans or animals.
What I remember most fondly about Toby, my second dog, was how ridiculous he was. He came from a puppy mill and had lots of early health issues, including hip dysplaysia, which meant he galloped instead of ran and developed incredibly strong front legs which he could use to climb trees vertically. We called him a goat because he would eat anything (shoes, grass, his own poop on one gross occasion). Playing with him was so much fun. If you gave him a rope toy he would grab on to it and refuse to let go; we could hold on to one end and drag him around the entire living room.
Animals are such wonderful companions and they have so much love to give, we should never have to lose them.
I’m so sorry for your loss, Nikki.
When my mom was a girl her mother wouldn’t let her have cats because they had a dog, so after she married my mom took the opportunity to have as many cats and dogs as she wanted. At one time in my childhood I remember having six cats, three dogs, uncounted fish and a tortoise.
My first adopted by myself cat, Monty Python, best of cats, was a rescue in that I saw him in an intersection, limping, when my then boyfriend,now husband was driving me home from a date. I made him stop and we caught the kitten. There were no homes nearby so my guess is someone dumped him. He had a broken leg, but didn’t scratch or hiss but curled up inside my jacket, purring. I had him for 19 years,and he was the best. He would fetch too.
He was a mighty hunter, and also a Prince of Thieves. Once my mom heard him yowling at the door to come in and he laid a whole raw ready to cook chicken at her feet. He had obviously stolen it from one of our neighbors’ kitchens. My mom didn’t want to go knocking on doors asking if anyone had had a chicken stolen, and besides, who would want it back at that point? So she washed it off, cooked it , took all of the meat off and fed it to our dogs and cats.
He went away to college with me, and he loved to sit on the ledge of my apartment balcony and watch the action on College Avenue.
After we had children he was endlessly patient with them, never scratching or growling; he’d just leave if they were out of line.
He was coal black with green eyes and was huge, like a small black panther. He weighed almost 18 pounds, and it was all lean muscle.
He died of old age a few years go and I still miss him.
Cheers to big black mini-panthers that love us so much. <3
I love this story and I love your mom!
I accidentally got my puppy when I was working in India as a research fellow. My neighbor, who knew my affection for street dogs, had found a sick abandoned puppy and brought her to me to foster until we could get her healthy and find her a family. The dog is now two and is sleeping on my feet on our couch in Chicago. I can’t imagine losing her.
Eliza sounds like a perfect cat. My partner’s parents lost their cat two years ago, and he too wasn’t showing any signs of distress or changing behavior – they just came home from work one day and the cat was curled up on the couch like usual, but he was gone. It’s unexpected and hard.
We weren’t a cat family growing up – my parents are still kind of biased against them. We got a Schnauzer when I was five, since my mom had a few growing up. She was great, but became increasingly attached to my mom as she grew older and suffered a lot of health problems toward the end, which was hard to watch. (The end being 17 years old, which is pretty ridiculous and a testament to my mom.)
We also had a chocolate lab, who is the standard to which I hold all dogs. She was originally my uncle’s dog, and the same age as me. She scratched and jumped on me as a child and I was terrified of her, until one day we were visiting my uncle’s apartment and toddler me told him “it’s time for me to get to know Moon Dog.” (Greatest name.) After that, we were buddies.
My aunt got sick when I was 11, and we adopted Moon Dog from my uncle. She had so much attitude throughout her life – she stole and ate immeasurable amounts of human food, plus non-food like bars of soap; ran away from our house and my uncle’s beach house only to scare neighborhood children, chase tiny dogs and pop basketballs with her teeth; and she was also the sweetest dog ever once you got past her demeanor – when my baby cousin was born, she would watch over him and gently remove his socks with her mouth when no one was looking, which scared the shit out of my grandmother.
I was sure she understood way more English than you’d ever give a dog credit for. My entire family called her “he” accidentally, but constantly.
Due to her insatiable hunger and trickery, Moon Dog became extremely obese in her old age, which resulted in a number of fatty tumors sprouting all over her body, which we’d measure with fruit sizes (tangerine under her throat, grapefruit on her belly). My aunt used to say that if she ever needed to put the dog down, she’d want her to go out doing what she loved – eating herself unconscious. She eventually did need to be put down when she (and I) were 16 – her spleen exploded while she was chasing a squirrel in the back yard. She was fully badass until the end.
Oh Nikki, I’m so sorry! She was a beautiful cat.
We always had at least one pet, my entire life, and most of my friends and family members have them too, so I have a LOT of pet stories. Sad pet stories, happy pet stories, weird pet stories….which to choose….
I’ll pick one from college…two weeks before I left for school, my mom got a black pug puppy. It was my “replacement.” (The 7 year old lab mix we already had was none too pleased by this development.) Anyway, the pug puppy, which we named Sawyer (after Sawyer from LOST – these were prime LOST days), had insane energy. He would run circles around the house all the time. So when the weather was nice, my parents put him on a tether in the front yard and he would run back and forth barking at every bird or vehicle the passed us by. He did it so much that he wore a little track into the yard. I came home the summer between freshman and sophomore year, and one day I was alone at the house and had put him on the tether. Sawyer had a buddy, a giant bull mastiff named Bullitt, who wandered the neighborhood at his will. He often came and would literally pick Sawyer up by his harness (in his mouth) and try to take him away to play. Sometimes, he would shake him a bit and Sawyer would actually slip loose from his harness. So on this summer day, Bullitt did exactly that, and he and Sawyer scarpered off without me noticing. Eventually I looked out the window and saw the harness on the ground, sans pug. Suspecting what had happened, I immediately ran out of the house calling for both of them. I tore down our little dirt lane and caught a glimpse of them running right towards the highway. I start LOSING MY SHIT and running and screaming their names more frantically (which is the wrong thing to do – I’ve since learned.) They kept running away from me and broke through the underbrush right onto the highway. I thought, “This is it, I’m about to see my dog die right in front of me….” I’m crying and screaming on the side of the road, and then PRAISE GOD, someone stopped. It was a mom and her 12 year old son and they helped me wrangle both dogs and shove them into their mini-van. Then they took us all home. Turns out, the woman knew who we were, my mom had taught another kid of hers at some point. Small town life. Anyway, I now laugh about this story and the pug is still alive (despite several other near death episodes involving bags of M&Ms), is fat as anything and enjoys a life of luxury and full mastery over the chaise lounge on my parents’ back porch.
I’m so sorry about Eliza, Nicole.
Here is my pet story:
The end of 2014 was a rough time for my family- I was having my second spine surgery in a year, my father was in declining health, and our beloved 15 year old dog, Bea, was not doing well. By early December, some days she couldn’t get up on her own, her appetite was waning and we knew it was only a matter of time before we had to say goodbye.
Two days after my surgery, my mother had to take my father to the emergency room, leaving me with my sister. I should not have been out of bed but, high on pain killers and concerned about my father, I decided to walk through the house to find my sister and get the latest update. By this time Bea was pretty much not getting up and walking around except to eat or go outside (and even that was very difficult), but as soon as I got out of the bedroom there she was by my side moving around like her old self. She walked behind me the whole way through the house, weaving from one side to the other, obviously trying to protect me from falling (and my own stupidity). She was like one of those mothers who get a rush of adrenaline and are able to lift a car off their child, except she was making sure a 33 year old dummy, loopy on Percocet, didn’t fall and break her neck.
She died one week later, but it makes me smile that up until the end she was looking out for me.
This is just the first story that came to mind, but Bea was a very special girl. She started out life as my uncle’s Seeing Eye dog, and after he passed away she retired to live a life of leisure with us. I miss her every day.
I have two dilute calico sisters and they are the best most wonderful cats ever. I could talk about them for hours. But my heart will always belong to my first cat. I got her when I was 5 and she haunts my entire family’s nightmares because she was so mean to everyone but me. Well, she wasn’t always nice to me, but I mostly deserved it. Because sometimes I wanted her to take a bath with me or wear doll clothes (NOTE: DON’T EVER GIVE A FIVE YEAR OLD A KITTEN!). But she was my baby, forever and always. She lived to age 21, purely out of spite I am sure, and I keep her ashes on my dresser and I think about her all the time. Now I’m getting weepy at work.
This hits so close to home because we just lost the best, most polite cat ever. Sora literally came with the house- when we arrived to move in she was in the front yard like ‘sup. When we went inside, she was already in the kitchen.
She never would use a litter box, and we live in the country, so she was mostly inside, sometimes outside. When she had to potty, she would tap at the door and politely meow. If you didn’t notice, she would come up and tap you ever so cordially. She brought us murder presents on the regular, and watching her hunt little squeaking things outside remains the best-worst thing ever. She loved to lay on your legs if you napped on the couch, but never the bedroom. That wasn’t Her Territory, I guess. And oh God she loved milk. I know milk is bad for cats, and none of our others ever get it, but Sora would politely tap at the fridge until you poured her some. She’d drink it and be on her merry way. If you were making coffee she’d hear it bubbling and know milk wasn’t far behind.
Two weeks ago she went outside for her morning bathroom break and never came back. I’m absolutely heartbroken, and so are the other cats. We love you, Sory-chine.
Oh.
:'(
So much :'(. So, so much.
Oh no, I’m so sorry
Thank you, so much.
The first pet I had as an adult was TickTock. My parents and I got him when I was 18. He was 3 months old, and as most French Bulldogs are at that age, he was like 75% ears. We expected he’d grow into them, but he never did! I’ve had many dogs, but none like him. He was just so smart. He would bounce back and forth between an overwhelming sense of dignity, and moments of pure goofiness. My favorite was the time he found a mouse trap in the garage. It was baited with peanut butter, which we also use as a treat for the dogs, and he came trotting back out of the garage, trap dangling from his lip (bulldogs don’t seem to have a whole lot of sensation there), acting for all the world as though nothing was out of the ordinary!
Next best would be the time my dad caught him on the dining room table, flat face wedged in his beer glass, trying to get at the dregs in the bottom. And he was the absolute best cuddler! He would settle into bed, or on the sofa, and stay in your lap absolutely all day long if you let him. He figured out how to curl up on the heating vents in winter, and was deeply incensed every year when we move our coat rack on top of his favorite to accommodate the Christmas tree. In the summer, he’d go on the patio and sprawl, belly straight up, and soak in the sun (he even got a tan, every year!). He ruled our pack of eventually 4 Frenchies with an iron paw, wrapped in a velvet glove.
Sadly, he didn’t live to see his 10th birthday. Brain tumor. Frenchies are great dogs, but so full of heartache because they tend to die so young. I miss that dog so, so much. Top of my list, if heaven is real, I’m going to go find my Tick.
I’m so sorry for your loss; she was a beautiful lady cat. The hardest thing about having companion animals is their short lifespan. I had a feline friend live to 25, and ever since, I feel cheated if any cat I know dies before 20. (Logically, I know he was an exception.)
I’m sorry for your loss. It’s so hard to lose them.
My Boy, a.k.a. my crotchety old man cat, is a blotched tabby named Jack. He’s 16 this year, and I’ve had him since he was about 3. He was a rescue kitty, and had apparently been abused–they told me, when I adopted him, that it had taken them a solid year to rehabilitate him to human contact. You’d never know it from the cat who must always be near me, being skritched under the chin. Also he’s recently developed this thing where he must keep a paw on me at all times when I am using the laptop. It’s quite sweet but does make it hard to type.
So sorry for your loss, Nicole. She sounds like a wonderful cat and part of the family.
I lost my childhood cat, Missy, 2 years ago. She was a calico-tabby mix – my favorite part of her coloring was that one of her front legs was orange striped, and the other was gray striped. She looked like two tabbies in one! Even though technically she was the family’s cat, she was really mine. Every morning, my parents let her into my room and she’d sleep on my bed and watch me get ready for the day – and when I got home from school, there she’d be, waiting for me to spend the afternoon doing homework in my room.
She wasn’t a very affectionate cat – I can count the number of times she willingly lay in my lap on one hand, but as she got older she got more affectionate. One time when I was home from college on break, I woke up on my stomach with her sleeping soundly on my butt in pure cat-loaf form. It’s a silly small memory, but one of my favorites.
Sending your family love and hugs, Nicole. She sounded very wonderful, and very well-loved.
We’ve always been a family of animals – we lived in a rural area and had horses and dogs and barn cats all through my childhood, with occasional standouts (including Coco, a calico cat who showed up one day as an adult and was the sweetest – she was always a little rough-looking, definitely not a beauty, but was very talkative and would accompany the dogs and us on our frequent walks.)
Now my husband and I live in Chicago and have two rescue dogs, both from the same rural animal control but adopted a few years apart. The more recent, Onyx, is a loafer and a sweetie who loves pets and naps and making Chewbacca sounds at the door as she waits for us to get all our winter gear on to go for walks.
The other, Elsa (for the lion in Born Free, I am always compelled to add since Frozen came out) is my heart dog. I got her after graduating college, while living with my sister and job-hunting, which is an inadvisable time to get an animal but it couldn’t be helped. She is my buddy. She comes to bed when I do and won’t get up in the morning until I do and we share a lot of qualities. Some dogs are Very Good Dogs (Onyx) but Elsa is among those – I don’t know if it’s being part cattle dog/herder or what – that seem like More Than a Dog. There’s just something about her eyes that tells you there’s more than usual going on in there, which leads me to talking to her in full sentences.
Anyway. They’re going on 4 and 3 but I already tear up every time I think about them being 10 or 12. Hopefully by then we’ll have figured out how to make them live until 60, right?
Here is them as Simon and Garfunkel:
And here is the original version of that photo in which they are very grumpy:
We had two pets during my childhood, both adopted. One was our cat from a shelter, Millie, and the other was our Japanese Akita, who had been taken in by the owner of a shelter IIRC after being bred by some dickhead who never socialised the puppies and kept them in a fourth floor flat for six months. A little background for those who have never met an Akita: this is a really bad breed to do this to, not that any dog should be kept in such conditions. Akitas act as guard dogs without any need to influence them towards it, and without strong socialisation, they can become very aggressive. Rehabilitation is very difficult and a great many dogs in her situation would have been put down.
So first off, Zeta, when my parents went to see her, never ever reacted to new people with anything but aggression… except the moment my Dad walked in the room, she inexplicably got REALLY EXCITED and affectionate and wanted to play with him. They couldn’t not at least take her for a trial after that. My mother had a little experience with the breed and my Dad had a LOT of experience with dogs, so they were well equipped to do so, but the matter of whether it would be safe to keep a potentially risky “problem” dog in the house we my brother and me was a big one. Thankfully, she ended up imprinting on both of us after a somewhat rocky start and we never had any problems.
We already had Millie at this point. Or, as we called her with great affection, the cat from Hell. Millie was a tiny, tiny black cat who spent her whole life being mistaken for a much younger cat, was very cute looking, and had… A Personality. God bless her, she loved my mother (whose cat she really was) very dearly, but she was aggressive and independent as anything, furthered by her being an outdoor cat who did a lot of hunting and some fighting. Please note that even young Akitas are big dogs. Nonetheless, Millie laid down the law IMMEDIATELY and pretty much asserted her dominance over Zeta from day one. This led to such weird and hilarious displays of dominance as that time Millie got Zeta to open her jaws so she could put her head INSIDE her mouth and leave it there. Because… she was just that kind of cat? God knows.
By contrast, while Zeta was indeed extremely aggressive to anyone not a part of our family, we came to realise that more than anything, she was intensely nervous and skittish from her previous mistreatment, rather than bad-tempered per se. She doted on Millie and had no problem at all giving Millie control. One day, Millie brought a field mouse (I think? A small rodent, anyway) in and let it loose to chase it, as cats do, because cats are assholes. Zeta promptly cornered it, very gently picked it up in her mouth, found my mother and laid it at her feet unharmed so she could go put it out safely. You cannot make this stuff up. They were the most sweetly bizarre double act imaginable.
When we had Zeta put down peacefully at home- she was around thirteen, a respectable age for a breed with a short life expectancy- Millie saw something was up and comforted her just beforehand, licking her face and cuddling up to her, then leaving when the vet arrived. We know she missed her something terrible after- she behaved very oddly for quite some time.
Sorry this is long. I just really loved those two to bits. They’re buried together in my Dad’s allotment, and we always say hello when we stop by.
We have three cats, we got the middle one from possibly the same shelter (Safe-Haven?). His name is Rico and someone found him and his brother living behind a Taco bell dumpster. Rico had kitty IBS when we got him and was super terrified of everything – spent like a week behind the toilet and then the next week under the bed. He did seem super relieved when we introduced him to the other cat (Neko, who was very excited to have a playmate), we probably weren’t going to murder him! Our friends call him Trauma Kitty, because while he has slowly gotten better over the years (he will even come out and sit near people when they are over!) he is still afraid of everything. He likes me the best, and then our friend who catsits. This irks my husband as we weren’t living together when we got him, so technically Rico is his cat. He is incredibly stupid (really really), but sweet and generally the best behaved of our cats.
I’m sorry about your kitty.
I’m sorry! Liza sounds like a good kitty!
I foster through the ASPCA, and right now I have an older kitty. Her name is Soleil and she is 10 pounds with a super great purr. The other day I gave her a new flavor of food, Salmon. She gobbled it up in 10 minutes, then jumped up on my bed and took a 20 minute nap. She then got up and was ready to play and sit on my lap.
That was the moment I realized she is my Spirit Animal and my life goals.
I’m coming back as a cat in the next life.
Man, this is timely. Two hours ago, we put down my husband’s dachshund, Snickerdoodle. She was 15 and ready. I’m trying really hard to remember her as she was before her heart got bad, a hard charging doxie who climbed trees, swam in creeks, barked several opossums to death, and would wear whatever ridiculous sweater I knit for her.
Rough day. RIP Weenie, we loved you like a daughter.
I’m so sorry. Eliza sounds like she was a sweetheart.
And I just saw this link in my twitter feed after clicking over from Facebook, which reminded me (thanks to that godawful “memories” feature) that I had to put down my cat Tony Danza three years ago today. He was only nine years old. I found him in a dumpster behind a movie theater when he was a kitten. He grew into a large grey tabby sweetheart. When I moved to a big city all by myself for graduate school, he was my only friend for a few months. I left him with my now-partner when I went to Europe for a month and we’d only been dating three months. Their quick bond convinced me that the relationship was going to work out (eight years next week!). Then one day three years ago, he started breathing out of his mouth. In a panic, I took him to the vet, where they found a mass in his chest and a bunch of fluid in his lungs. Rather than put him through a bunch of testing for a best-case scenario of a couple of months to live with cancer, I chose to have him put to sleep. It was so hard. My partner had to be the one to stay in the room because I just couldn’t do it.
I still miss him! But now I have four cats and one of them is named Liam Neeson, who is just the sweetest. He likes to climb on top of the bathroom door in the middle of the night and scare the hell out of me.
My horse Magic loved two things absolutely. Swimming and galloping. Some good memories related to these loves:
1. One late autumn we put her in a paddock which had a small pond blocked by a bunch of trees and bushes. Or so we thought. That night at dinner she came walking up with both herself and her blanket soaking wet. Not even bushes and cold weather stopped her from swimming. We quickly moved her to a different paddock.
2. Every summer when it was finally warm enough I would ride her down to the river on the property in a bathing suit and riding boots and a helmet (safety first) and her without a saddle and using lead ropes on her halter and go swimming. She loved to splash around as much as possible and would always put her head underwater long enough to make me nervous before splashing it back up. I think she thought she could breathe water like a sea horse. People hanging out on the beach across the river always got a real kick out of watching us, especially the kids. I tell you, there is no feeling like floating down a river on a horse.
3. Throughout middle school and high school (when I was young and didn’t realize that danger was a thing yet) my summers consisted almost entirely of me and a group of other young girls around my age galloping around the property for hours at a time. Summer, sun, speed, friendship, and some amazing horses. Hard to beat that.
4. A couple of times a year we would get permission to ride on the beach on the property. A nice long stretch of beach- about a mile long- meant that we could finally run to her heart’s content without worrying about having to stop. Plus we could play in the waves. Her favorite thing to do was to gallop in the waves themselves. I would get soaked, but man, you really felt like you were flying and that life would never be better than those moments.
Thankfully the last ride I had on her before putting her down was one of those beach days. Here is my beautiful girl doing what she loves best.
Seriously beautiful.
Nicole, I am so very sorry for your family’s loss. I said goodbye to my sweet girl Abbey-the-tabby earlier this year, and oh god, here come the waterworks. Liza was lucky to have you and you were lucky to have Liza. Sending a mental hug your way.
So sorry to hear about Eliza. What a beautiful girl.
I’m home sick today (truly sick, not because of the superbowl last night or the blizzard today) and it is my cat’s favorite thing. Phoebe is the best little spoon and she’s been faithfully curled up with me since last night… even if she does occasionally decide she needs to stomp across my squishy bits. She turns 13 this year, I’ve had her since I was 15. I truly don’t know what I’ll do if she dies before me, but I’ve made her promise to live forever.
Fare thee well, Eliza, and good thoughts to you and yours, Nicole. <3
Because my dad has severe pet allergies, any pets my sister and I wanted had to be ones that could be safely confined to one room of the house. For most of our child/teenhood, we had a pair of rats (always a pair so they would have a friend) that we would shuttle up and down the stairs between our bedrooms, switching off each month so it was fair. First, we had Scooter and Squeaker, then Noah and Winston, then Lars and Laszlo. They were the best little friends, and if there is a treat bowl in the sky, I hope it’s full of all the yogurt drops they can eat.
At the very end of 2013, my now-fiancee and I decided (after many months of discussion and saving up for the ridiculously expensive pet fee our landlord was asking for) to go to the local no-kill shelter and adopt a cat. We knew we wanted someone out of kittenhood, comfortable being alone weekdays while we were at work, and happy either to play or to sit quietly on the couch with us and cuddle. What we didn’t expect is for the shelter volunteer to suggest we look at “the bathroom cat”. It turned out, they’d rescued a cat who was so vehemently unhappy around other cats, she had to be sequestered in the shelter’s bathroom just so she (and the other cats) could get some peace. Her shelter name was Myrtle, since she’d been found on Myrtlewood Street, and she was perfect. We adopted her that very day, changed her name to Musichetta (my fiancee, a fan of Les Mis in both musical and book form, demanded naming rights if we adopted a girlcat–if we’d gotten a boy, I insisted we call him Tybalt), and she’s been queen of our house ever since. I love her beyond all surpassing, even when she bites me because I’m too slow filling her food dish.
I’m so sorry about your sweet kitty girl.
We have two cats right now. The older is P (names abbreviated) – she was born to a stray in my parents’ backyard, mama whisked the kittens away before my parents could do anything about them, then P came back alone about a month later, starving and on the edge of death. They fed her and kept her alive, but couldn’t keep her because they have energetic dogs, so my now-husband and I took her in. She is our fluffy sweetheart, but even three years later is still very timid with a hair-trigger flight instinct; she used to bolt if our shadows passed over her while we walked by. It was a huge, huge day when she trusted us enough to fall asleep in front of us, because it meant she trusted us not to kill her in her moment of vulnerability. She loves cuddles and lap-time now, but only from the two of us; no one else has ever seen her as more than a flash of fur disappearing up the stairs (except my mom one time when she visited, I think P faintly remembered her as a not-threat), we call her our ghost kitty.
The younger is A, and he’s the polar opposite, a bruiser of a guy who is very chatty and full of restless energy; he was also a rescue acquired from my husband’s friend who found him in a drainage ditch. He adores all humans and will sit on anyone’s lap, but clearly loves my husband the most. He gallops along like a loud horse when we play laser pointer games with him, wants desperately to eat all the human food, and just learned that it’s SUPER fun to drink out of glasses which has made life a little more fraught. Unfortunately, he and P don’t get along very well; they have a tense truce going during the day while they watch the birds/squirrels from separate windows, but when we come back in the evenings I think he gets jealous when P wants to edge in on his human time and chases her away. I hope someday they’ll be friends.
So very sorry, Nicole. My vet has seen me cry more than any other human being on earth.
Growing up, we always had lots of animals, which has carried on to my life today… And there were many great characters. Our dog when I was growing up was a keeshond named Tiger (ironically enough — he was so timid that he couldn’t be a show dog and came to live with us instead). He had a wonderful booming bark, so I felt so safe having him around at night, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, he was terrified of our calico cat Sherpa (named for her propensity to climb to the top of anything she could), who in turn was terrified of rodents — I could drop baby rats on her, and she’d run screaming…
I’m so sorry! What a great kitty-friend. I have never had a cat, but I currently have two dogs. In the past I was one of those adults who own guinea pigs. I took one, Franklin, to visit Sonya Fitzpatrick, the Pet Psychic. Apparently, Franklin knew me in a past life and enjoyed watching me brush my hair. Huh. Go figure. One day, I came home and part of the newspaper lining his cage had been chewed out and placed on one of his wood blocks, as if on display. It was a classified ad for an adoptable guinea pig. I mean, it was PERFECTLY chewed out, right around the ad. And, quel surprise, this adult owner of a guinea pig lived alone, so no, a person didn’t do this. Despite his request, I didn’t adopt the other guinea pig. He probably never forgave me. I’ll have to ask Sonya.
Nicole, I’m so sorry, and I’m feeling all of the same things because I had to put my beautiful 18-year-old calico girl to sleep on Friday night.
She always loved water. I got her when she was 8 weeks old, and I lived in an apartment with a big clawfoot tub. She was a tiny kitten, and when I took a bath, she’d walk around the rim of the bathtub, and reach a paw down to play with the water. She fell in twice but that didn’t stop her.
When I moved from that apartment, she kept her fascination with tubs but shifted to drinking from a slowly dripping faucet. She would jump into the tub and meow demandingly until I came in and turned it on for her. She liked to get right under the water so that her head would be completely wet after a few minutes. She also stuck her head into water glasses to drink the water whenever she had the chance.
Her other loves included nacho cheese Doritos, saltine crackers, and salad dressing (but I didn’t indulge her in these very much). She was a really awesome cat, and I’m looking forward to the day when I can think back and focus on the happy times.
So sorry about your lovely cat.
My family and I recently had to put down another old dog of ours. Mojo was 14, really dumb, but really loyal and sweet. He had a tumor in his stomach and it caused him a lot of suffering. Eventually, which wasn’t long, he couldn’t eat or stand up anymore, so we put him down. He was ready to go, but it was so hard. I’m just glad he’s no longer in pain.
I am so sorry for your loss. Eliza sounds like a very special kitty.
This is Aaron Copland, he is a one-eared goon who wakes me up by putting his paw in my mouth so he can get his morning snuggles. I love him more than life itself.
My beagle passed away this summer after we had her for thirteen years. Once when she was a puppy, she chased off after a rabbit when hiking with my dad, and wouldn’t come back, and then it started pouring – he thought that she was lost. But that night she found her way to the tent in pouring rain, an eight month old hound in the mountains of New Hampshire.
What a lovely fluff. I’m so sorry.
I live in fear of the day our old family dog will die – he’s old now, especially for a large dog. We got him as a 5-week-old puppy from a farm, a result of my dad telling me I could have a dog when I put the effort and funds in to acquire one and get it fully vetted. I don’t think he thought I’d do it? 12 years later Tuck is firmly his dog.
A psychic came to me unprovoked last year and saw my childhood dogs following me around.
On New Year’s Day, I drove 200 miles roundtrip to say goodbye to my family’s cat Nomar (I think it’s the law that every Massachusetts family have a pet named for a Boston sports star). He was 14, so not young, but sooner than I thought it would be. He was the head of the household: he always had to know where everyone was, what time they’d be home, and would wake people up if they were in bed longer than he found acceptable. He ruled over our other cats with an iron fist. He loved people, and even in his last night when he stopped eating and was having trouble breathing, he stayed close by everyone and talked to us.
Oranges came as a stray, hanging around our house because he probably saw the other cats in the window. He was an [obviously] orange cat, so the closest a cat can be to a dog. We’re pretty sure he left our house during the day and had a roster of other houses that would feed him. We had him about three years before he died of cancer. He was unconditional love and I miss his fat ass so much.
They are survived by Milo, a perfect tuxedo, docile and laid back, content to hide in a closet or under a bed. Milo will probably live until he’s 30.
Calico cats are wonderful. My husband was adopted by one before I came along, and after we moved in together, she adopted me, too. She was 6 pounds of pure attitude. According to my husband, she once jumped on the dinner table and stole an entire steak off of his plate. She was clearly the alpha cat in our house, bossing around my Maine Coon mix who was more than twice her size. But she was a sweetheart, too. Every night when I got into bed, she came and lay on my chest for a few minutes, as if she were tucking me in. ❤️
I’m so sorry for your loss, Nicole. <3
I got my dog, Gus, after finding out I was cancer-free three years ago as a reward for, you know, being alive. I was never allowed to have a dog growing up, despite begging and pleading and general jerk-kid antics, as my dad was and is deathly afraid of all animals big and small.
I went to see him at the house where he was being fostered, fell in love, and came back to pick him up the next day.
He loves a lot of things (snow, licking lotion off of people’s legs, swimming in pools, barking at children, getting into cars) and hates a lot of things (bicycles, people holding signs, children on scooters, people enjoying pools he cannot swim in, feeling left out, being in a moving car.) Unlike a lot of people’s pets, he doesn’t seem to know or care when I am sad or sick, but he tolerates me forcing him to snuggle and doesn’t seem to mind the excessive belly rubs or snoot kissed he receives in return.
Hilariously, my father is now completely enamored with Gus, to the point where he asks about the well-being of the dog before he asks about me (his only child.) My parents had custody of Gus for a few weeks while I moved to a new state for a new job and the two of them (dad and dog) bonded so much that I felt bad bringing Gus home with me.
He looks like such a good dog! My husband’s childhood dog was named Gus.
I’m so sorry for your loss. It sounds like she passed peacefully, though, which I hope brings some comfort. Losing a pet is so hard.
I hope this story cheers you up!
My dog Argos is totally crazy and full of personality. She is an aggressive cuddler and gets little crushes on boys who come to the house. You can tell the ones that she likes because she shows off and acts extra sweet around them.
My favorite Argos story is the brownie one. My mom made a big plate of brownies, cut them up and put them on a serving tray on the table. Argos had never shown much interest in people food, and had certainly never climbed much furniture, but after my mom went to her room for “like, five minutes” they were gone. The plate was on the floor and Argos’ tummy was a bit big and rock hard. We were worried because of the chocolate, but she was fine.
Mom had really wanted brownies, and was pissed, so she made them again the next day. She put them on the counter, and further back this time….aaaand Argos did the same damn thing. I’m still amazed that she was fine.
Leaving work early today to check on my almost-11 year old boxer who helped herself to a large chunk of additional dog food while we were at a superbowl party last night. Her most doofus move was when she was a puppy, discovered a five lb bag of onions and proceeded to eat one bite out of each in the entire bag. I can only assume she was hoping that the next one would taste better than the previous. I got her when I was 19 and I joke that we’ve grown up together. Best. Dog. Ever.
If I ever leave a bag of madeleines within cat-reach, Saffron will go into them and eat a bite out of each one.
That is hilarious about the onions. If that’s not optimism, I don’t know what is.
I’m so sorry that you had to say goodbye to her, so unexpectedly.
I am so grateful for our cats, even if they do have an annoying tendency to jump on my ankles and the backs of my knees when I am sleeping.
I have said goodbye to more than one pet that was beloved, and I don’t know if I can talk about it right now, but I will leave this image for you which, though I am an atheist, nonetheless brings me a small amount of comfort. I have it framed on my wall.
That’s cute, thank you for sharing the picture!
When I was about six or seven, my Mum found a tiny kitten mewling in the bushes while walking the dog (and the cat). She brought the kitten home, and I loved her more than anything in the world.
We found her owner pretty sharpish – they lived maybe five minutes’ walk away – and returned her to them, because she was too young to be away from her mother, but the plan was to bring her back once she was old enough. We were going to be on holiday in Spain at that time, so we were going to go get her once we got back.
My parents were still unpacking when I left, by myself, to fetch her. They didn’t realise I was gone until I was back.
The owner (a huge, muscular guy) tried to put her in a Tupperware container for transport, and tiny!me reamed him out. There were no airholes! I carried her home in my arms instead.
I loved that cat so much. She was so sweet and fluffy and mischievous, and she had huge green eyes. I was inconsolable when she died, although Other Cat and Dog did their best to help me through it.
Tupperware!!! Cats do not belong in Tupperware! >:( Good for tiny!you.
Eliza sounds lovely and I am sorry for your family’s loss.
I have not had a pet in my adult life because I’ve been too nomadic, but I had a cat when I was a kid. My memory of acquiring my childhood cat goes like this: my friend was moving and wanted me to have her cat, so I clumsily gathered said cat into my arms and carried her down the street to my house (I was four, so the poor thing was very awkwardly carried but did not protest). The move stuck, I named her Kuka, and she magnanimously allowed our house to become her source of food and shelter. She was very independent and non-cuddly, more of an outdoor than an indoor cat, but would occasionally sleep on my bed after ensuring that my moving feet under the covers were sufficiently attacked and subdued. She was a huntress in her youth, and spent her elder years napping in various hotspots around the house. I do not know how old she was – she was fully grown when she came to live with us and was with us for fourteen years. She had two litters of kittens early on, before my parents were able to have her spayed, and I remember watching one of the litters be born. And enjoying having tiny kittens around the house until they were given away.
The Saga of Fred is a book that’s currently rattling around my head (ok ok a blog post at most.).
He’s been in our family since 2002 when I found him as a stray and he’s still trucking along. Every day since last Halloween I’ve been waiting for the call from home that say’s he’s gone off to Doggy Heaven, but that little shit will not die. He won’t even let us put him down, every time we book an appointment he makes a miraculous recovery and runs around the house (or after a cat, some things never change) as if to say ’18? what, that’s nothing, I ain’t going nowhere. I believe its time for my pate brunch?’
Fred, the eternal asshole until the end.
https://www.instagram.com/p/9jxPRlBxFN/?taken-by=…
Eliza sounds like a very good kitty. And when you think about it, isn’t “good kitty” one of the highest forms of praise you could give any creature?
I have three cats and adore all of them, but I’ll share a story today about just one of them, my cat, Leia.
My son and I went to the shelter to adopt cats. While he was chasing an energetic young kitten around the room (who is now our cat, Obi-Wan Catnobi), I wandered around the cat room, looking for a friend. I spotted a very pretty, chubby black and white penguin cat and thought, “She looks nice.” I spent a few minutes petting her, then moved away to meet other cats. She grabbed my arm and pulled me back to her with her paw. And with that, Leia claimed me as her human.
My family lost our sweet Cookie in September. She was a calico cat too, though she didn’t have a coffee patch.
We adopted her and her brother, Pogo, from the humane society. Right from the start, we could tell that Cookie was kind of, well, dim. She somehow got trapped in our heating ducts that first month (we never did figure out how she got there), and she would chase after her tai, bite it, and then look surprised when it hurt. Once, she even sat in a shrub for an hour under a running sprinkler, because apparently she couldn’t figure out that she wouldn’t get wet if she just ran away from the Horrible Water Thing. She was kind of dumb, but we loved her anyway.
A few years ago, she had a major health crisis. She’s stopped eating, she was missing the litter box, and she couldn’t seem to get enough water. We took her to the vet, who did some tests and then told us that Cookie’s kidneys had failed. The vet held her for a couple days and then sent her home with a bag of fluids and a stack of needles. From then on, we took turns giving her subcutaneous fluid injections twice a day for the rest of her life.
She hated the Horrible Water Torture and the kidney pills, but she seemed so happy to be alive and was otherwise healthy, so we kept it going for another two years. She became more affectionate, she lost a lot of weight, and she would even purr while my mom petted her during the Horrible Water Torture.
Even as her vitals dropped, she acted just like any other normal, healthy cat–curious, affectionate, vaguely contemptuous of all the lesser beings who shared her living space, still a bit dim. The vet would look at Cookie’s lab results and say, “That cat shouldn’t be alive.” And yet she was.
But last summer, after we got back from vacation, her health started to steadily decline. She stopped eating while I was in town for a visit in September, and after it was clear that she didn’t have much time left, we decided it was time to put her to sleep.
I had been recovering from surgery when Cookie’s kidneys failed. She’d always been my favorite, but after we’d bonded during our mutual convalescence, I loved her even more. Her death wasn’t sudden–we knew it was coming–but it was still sad to see her go. I’m just glad I got to spend a few days more with her before it happened.
Here she is during her last year (assuming I can get the photo to attach):
IMG_1639.JPG
What a beautiful darling. I’m so sorry for your loss.
My mom hated cats, so I wasn’t able to have one until later. Husband and I looked at every kitten at the local no-kill shelter and picked the cutest, littlest one, a brown tabby with the big attitude and tummy spots. She had the biggest heart and the loudest purr. Our hearts were broken when Tyler died three years ago.
But one year ago our nephew couldn’t keep his young cat Sylvester, who we accepted and re-named Buster. I doubted I could love a cat as much as I’d adored Tyler, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to – it felt disloyal. But Buster, our sweet little black and white boy, doesn’t take no for an answer. He sleeps on my husband’s feet, but he’s a mama’s boy – he gets up with me, comes to the bathroom with me, gets in the sink when I try to brush my teeth, gets in the tub when I try to shower, and generally is the most loving, lovable thing in the world. He climbs into my arms and naps like a baby. I’m smitten.
I’m so sorry for your loss (I know I said that on Twitter, but doesn’t hurt to say again). Between us, my husband and I have four cats – he adopted two before we met, I adopted two before we met, it’s a whole Brady Bunch thing – and they’re all 10 or over, so I’m starting to worry about them even though they’re all in good health.
My two are a pair of tortie sisters, Lucy and Charlotte. Charlotte is the biggest sweetheart in the entire world, and she’ll follow me from room to room and insist on getting under the covers to nap with me when it’s cold out. She purrs like a tiny outboard motor and has the softest fur I’ve ever felt. Lucy isn’t quite as snuggly, but she’ll reach up and tap your hand when she wants to be petted. She also has an incredible side-eye and does not hesitate to use it. They’ve been with me for almost ten years now, through cross-country moves, and I love them so much.
When we first moved to the town my family lives in now (I’m off at college), we rented a house, so we couldn’t get a cat or dog. Instead, we got a rabbit, who we named Boots because he was all black except for his paws, which looked like little shoes (now when I tell people his name, they’re like “why would you name a rabbit ‘Boots’ people make boots out of rabbit fur”, and it literally never occurred to me before). He was the sweetest little thing in the world. We put up a fence to keep him out of the upstairs, but one day we saw him leap right over it (a 3-4 ft fence!), and after that, he basically had free reign of the house. I taught him to dance by holding apples above his head and moving them around until I gave them to him. Apples were his favorite snack. But the sweetest thing about him was that every morning, he would scratch at my door until my mom let him in my room, where he would jump onto my bed and scratch at the covers until I woke up. He was my buddy, and we all loved him. When we bought a house, we got a kitten, which we think stressed him out, and he died a few months (maybe a year) afterwards of some sickness. I love both the cats we have now, but I still miss that little bunny.
Another pet story–not my pet, but a beloved pet nonetheless: until I was about 6, we lived in this town where we had this older couple whose kids were all college age, and the couple became basically like our grandparents. They had this border collie mix named Annie. Annie had been fixed, so when I was an infant, I became her baby. Her one owner, Marcia, would lay me down on a blanket, and Annie would lay behind me, or I would rest my back on her, and she would lay with me for hours, during which if anyone came near me, she would growl at them! Later, she would let me ride on her back, and throughout the years, she was one of the sweetest, kindest dogs I ever knew.
I just put down my sweet girl, Boogerhead, a few weeks before Christmas. She was my snuggler and was dedicated to being warm and eating. She would wake me up to feed her at 4 a.m. and, in an effort to sleep in, I bought a food dish with a timer. At night, I would hear loud banging as she picked the dish up and slammed it against the ground repeatedly, to get the timer to jump minutes.
My new cat, Timothy, hates me because I have to give him a pill every evening. Afterward, he sits in a corner, letting long drools of spit hang from his jowls as he pouts. He’s pretty quick to forgive me when I feed him, though.
Husband’s cat, Bobble, is at the vet right now because he’s been limping for the past four days. From the vet’s texts, it appears he’s made a miraculous recovery, although not fast enough to eliminate a largish bill. Bobble is the best cat because he lets us carry him like a baby and he snuggles us under the sheets.
I’m so sorry about your kitty. I’m so glad she had a safe, warm, happy home with you.
I am so, so sorry to hear this. Something similar happened to me last month; my 12 year old cat, Emerson, died suddenly in his sleep. He was the least graceful, gentlest, most docile cat I ever knew– a lover, not a fighter, who consented to be picked up and snuggled and loved nothing more than to knead my arm while I read in bed. In his later years he took to burrowing under the comforter in my bed, where he would snuggle up next to me at night some times.
When he died, I was out of town (which I am still sad about), and he had been staying at a friend’s house. She said he was playful and snuggly even on his last day. The suddenness of his death was so upsetting, but my vet helped put it into a nice perspective for me: she said that in her experience, a really peaceful quick death– like the one Emerson had, and your Eliza had– is rare for a cat (for all kinds of animals, I suppose), and something to be thankful for. It sounds like she had a lovely life with your family, and she lived her last day in a place she felt comfortable with people who loved her. I felt, and feel, so sad about my sweet cat friend, and I am feeling for you too. Take care of yourself!
So sorry for your loss, Nicole.
Our family dog was my late uncle’s service dog, Bea. She was the kindest, gentlest black lab.She was very protective of my parents, sisters and I. Whenever one of us was ill, she would stand guard by our bedside. She was also a bit of an imp–she would eat any money that my uncle dropped (and seemed to have a taste for $20 bills) and once started eating our sliced Thanksgiving turkey when we put the platter on a side table after everyone was served. She passed away last December from cancer and it was heartbreaking.
I have my little buddy Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, so named because he’s a Dutch cat and I wanted to give him a very Dutch name (and Huntelaar is one of the few Dutch NT players I didn’t have any active dislike for at the time). I had mentioned to my friends that if I got a PhD position in the Netherlands I’d be vaguely interested in a cat, and then just about when I told my friends I got the position one of my friends said that one of her parents’ cats had kittens and I should take one. I ended up with the boy, Klaas-Jan. It’s been about three years. He’s shy around others but demanding around me, enjoys tinfoil balls and freeze-dried chicken treats, and likes to sleep on my lap all evening. He’s pretty smart but I still call him my little dumb butt because I can. He’s also the handsomest tabby there is.
I may have screwed up some residency stuff and the one thing that makes me worried is taking Klaas-Jan back to the US with me. I like to think he’s too attached to me to go to a friends’ (and my housemates always say how much he misses me when I’m gone) but it might just be me, I need him by my side.
omg bless, of all the current Dutch NT players you definitely chose the only worthy one to be your cat’s namesake!
& taking little Klaas-Jan to the US shouldn’t be too traumatic (for you), just check the regulations online & make sure he’s up-to-date with all his vaccinations.
My deepest sympathies on your loss, Nicole; losing a four-footed family member can be very, very hard.
My current (I say current because I’ll always have a dog, full stop, even if it means someone is visiting me in the Old Folk’s Home and brings their dog which then I’ll naturally assume complete and total co-ownership) dog is 85lbs of pure muscle and a gazillion pounds of heart. Alas, Moe will be the last of the PonyAlong German Shepherds because I’m getting too old for big, active and busy-minded dogs but in the meantime, he’ll continue as my Instagram Muse, my bestest friend, and trusty hiking and barn bud. He’s eight this year and I love him to bits.
As soon as I started reading this, my little cookie cat, Kitty Joe, came and jumped on my lap and started purring. Its like she knew I was going to post something about her (or maybe she’s just a little snuggle-aholic). Parents and I got her and her sister, Scout, back in Novemeber from the Humane Society. My dad initially insisted on getting another orange tabby like our first cat Berry was, but after he saw these kitties who were being fostered at a friends’ house, he changed his mind. Kitty Joe is a sleek calico cat with cool tabby markings, and Scout is a chunky, fluffy grey tabby who we suspect has some Maine Coon genes. They are both snugglebugs and love to get into as much trouble as they can.
But losing pets is hard. Back in September, I had posted on the Toast about losing my gingerbread cat, Berry. We think he had some form of cancer or something, and he was actually fairly healthy right up until the last weeks. Even at the end, he was still loving (despite growling a little at the vet, but then again he had a reason to) and super orange. Family and I miss him dearly, but we’re happy to bring some more kitties into our house to be loved. Its what Berry would have wanted, I’m sure, if he had the capacity to think about such things and also if he didn’t hate other cats so much.
I’m gonna post pics of the babies on this upcoming open thread! They’ve grown so much since I last posted about them!
My (okay technically my stepmother’s) cat bit me on the nose today while cuddling. I THINK it was a misjudged love nip…
Oh Nicole, this got me so teary (especially the last paragraph). Thank you for sharing so much of Eliza with us — I feel like I really knew her. I can tell she had a truly wonderful life that you gave her.
I’ve only lost family cats so far — now I have two cats of my own, five years old this spring, and I know I’ll be absolutely wrecked when they go.
But my two family cats were Troy and Dusty. Troy was a love bear who would actually hug your neck, purring madly, when you picked him up. He was also very demanding about his food, and once brought inside a gecko he’d caught in his mouth, unharmed. I managed to retrieve and release it back into the wild.
Dusty was quieter, less demonstrative, though he ended up good pals with my step-dad, who did not initially like cats. He especially loved rubbing against my step-dad’s beard. And he liked chewing up cardboard boxes and lampshades. He would also keep up a conversation with you with the gentlest “ah” of a meow.
Oreo lived to an unholy age, and at the end of his life, my father was feeding him gruel every morning because his teeth were so bad. Best dad. Anyway, he was the chillest, most malleable cat I’ve ever known. Also, very looooooong and skinny. His favorite thing was to hang out around my neck like one of those travel pillows. I miss him.
I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, Nicole. Your Liza was beautiful and sounds like a Very Good Cat.
My childhood dog lived to the ripe old age of 14, and right up til the last few months, acted just as much like a puppy as he always had. He was purebred and had a completely silly registered name, due to our getting him when I was 6: My parents told me that purebred dogs are named after their parents, the place where they live, and then their own name. So I named him MissT’s Hometown Rex (because I was his mommy, you see). He is down in an AKC registry somewhere with this ridiculous moniker.
There’s too much to say about him, or indeed about my current pet, a beautiful little grey cat named Lily, as there is about any life. As I’ve been trying to write this, I find that I can’t really think of any notable anecdotes that I would share about either of them; it’s more a matter of all the little everyday things that they do that make them special and bring us so much love and joy.
This is really scary because my own adorable calico cat is almost 10 and also appears to be in perfect health! I think of her as comfortably middle-aged and not at all geriatric– everyone please tell me about your long-lived cats now.
My cats have lived to 15, 19 and 17 (and I have another who is 18 this year and currently fine).
My fiancee’s childhood cat Sarah lived to the age of 20, imperious and queenly (as befits a calico) unto the end.
The only pet who was really mine was my rat, Hershey. (I love the kind of names children choose for their animals.)
She was cream-colored and had dark red eyes. She loved hanging out with me – she would perch on my shoulder and tangle up in my hair, and just chill out there while I went about my day. She lived to be 4 years old, which I think is pretty average for rats. She just fell asleep in her cage and didn’t wake up.
My sweet kitten is only 3 and I hope he lives for a very long time. But I think about his death pretty often. Barring the unexpected, at whatever point his quality of life starts to suffer, it will be an at-home euthanasia. He hates the car and the vet, so he will be in or near my lap, in comfortable surroundings.
BRB, gotta run to the bathroom and cry for a while.
Eliza sounds like a perfect lovely lady cat and I’m sorry for your loss!
I’m super hashtag blessed when it comes to my cat. I got her on sale when the humane society was doing a special adoption fair promotion that was ’80s themed, so all the staff were in leg warmers and the cat adoption fee was just $8 which was like 90% off the usual. I showed up late so most cats were gone but Mimi was still there, kneading her blanket AND her foster mom was there to vouch for her character as a total lap cat.
Ya’ll, I don’t deserve a cat this nice. I feed her grocery store cat food, and don’t get her new cardboard inserts as much as she’d like, and snuggle her when she does not want it sometimes, and YET she will still come trotting in from another room to sit in my lap when I call her. Yesterday she curled up directly on my crampy uterus for a good hour like a magical purring heating pad. Overall we do okay with each other. A couple weeks ago after DC was dumped with two feet of snow and the building fire alarm went off I grabbed her in the carrier, but left the apartment without shoes. Survival instincts are weird.
Also, no one calls their cat by name right? When I address her, which is often, it’s “Moofin” or “Butt” or “Are you a baby yes you ARE” and they all garner the usual response rate (close to zero).
I have the best cat in the world, and her name is Mina. She is a diluted calico, and I adopted her in January of my senior year of college. My roommate and I went to the humane society just for fun, I picked up this 4-month-old ball of fur, she let me carry her everywhere while she played with my necklace, and then it turned out they were having a SALE on KITTENS. So I brought her home, and she spent that night curled up in the crook between my neck and shoulder, occasionally chewing on my neck, so I named her after Mina Harker from Dracula. Now she is 9 years old, incredibly smart, and unbelievably attached to me. She’s part of me, and I can’t even think about her being gone someday.
Her sister Zillah is pretty great too, even though she really belongs to my wife and knows it. She’s more teddy bear than cat – a giant 18-pound fat black cat who wants nothing more than to stretch out along your entire body and be hugged. She’s a little dumb but it’s okay – if she were as smart as Mina, the humans in the house would be totally overpowered.
Over the weekend, I visited my parents. Their cat, whom I selected from a litter of kittens when I was about 15, is approaching age 16 and we all know she’ll be gone soon. She sort of hates me, but she loves my mom and hardly ever leaves her side. My parents also have an outdoor cat that they’ve fed for years – we call her Wild Kitty, and they moved her with them when they bought a new house last year. She’s very old for an outdoor cat, at least 14 from what we can remember, and she’s starting to claim some space indoors too. She’ll allow me and my dad to pet her (a new development), but she’s still pretty feral. Dad’s going to take her to the vet to be cleaned up, and then she will get to live in the laundry room.
Cats are the greatest. I’m sorry about Eliza – she sounds like she was also the greatest.
My sweet Maisy is also a beautiful calico. For some months after she came to live with me she was not doing well, I could feel all of her bones when I picked her up, her eyes were all goopy, I felt so much like I was failing. Then all of a sudden she started doing better! She feels sturdy now, she eats well, her eyes are clear. She is still somewhat sneezy, but so am I, so I like that we have that in common. And, she does not mind that her name is now also Hercules Mulligan!!
Oh my goodness, pets from the past! The one that stands out the most was our dog Lucky, a black lab who was abandonned and found in a pile of potash fertilizer. My dad nicknamed her Houdini dog, as she was highly skilled at espcaping from her pen.
She learned to put her front paws on the gate and jiggle the latch to open it. When my dad put a wire through the latch to secure it, Lucky figured out how to crawl beneath the space between the ground and the bottom of the gate. My dad responded by putting cement blocks under the gate and Lucky responded by dragging them away. When my dad piled them two blocks high, Lucky tested the fence of her pen for weaknesses and found that she could squeeze between the wall of the house and the fence of her pen. When my dad fixed the fence, Lucky fell ill from diabetes and had to be put down. She’s buried by the field behind our house and my dad still refers to her as the dog that was smarter than him.
I’m so sorry, Nicole — your unexpected loss makes my heart hurt. It’s not that lingering illnesses are easier to deal with or witness, but the lack of warning with any sudden loss is so, so hard.
CAT LADY NOVELLA:
My first cat was a dainty grey tabby we found as a stray in my suburban back yard when I was about 4 years old. My older sister was allergic to cats, but not dangerously so, and cats were one of the few things my brother WASN’T allergic to, and how we begged to keep her! She (Ashes) was incredibly sweet and patient with us, though she would hide from the majority of the children my mother babysat in our home. She was dreadfully soft and cuddly, though I no longer remember much of her personality; I do recall that as she grew old, she would drool when she purred (which was often). After a year and a half or so of being treated with subcutaneous fluids for kidney failure, she was euthanized surrounded by family when I was 19, in between my first and second years of college.
Not two weeks later, my mother called me at school, apologetically saying, “I never intended to get another cat, but there’s a stray kitten in our yard for the first time in 15 years, and would you come home and take her to the vet, please?”, which: of course I would. And did. (Now when my mother tells this story, which Mr. Singstrix and I fondly refer to as my mom’s “ghost cat” story, she always interjects a “Really, Ashes?” with eyes cast heavenward, because of course how ELSE would a kitten have shown up?) That cat is Puck, a mostly-white, EXTREMELY sheddy and chatty dilute calico, and she’s happily living with my parents.
My first heart cats were a pair of grey tabby/oriental mix brothers — lanky, oversized ears, talkers — that I adopted with my then-boyfriend after grad school. We’d discussed adopting cats, and I happened into a PetSmart on a day when a local rescue was holding an adoption event. I called him to come meet me there, but I’d already met my cats by the time he arrived; one of the boys was asleep in my arms, and the other was so shy he took a week of me sitting quietly in a room with them before he decided I was OK and enthusiastically head-bonked me in the face. When I broke up with that boyfriend [of 8 years], logistically it made sense for him to continue caring for Korbin and Vandemar. It was the most heartbreaking aspect of that period of my life, and I still miss them. Korbin had an undignified, extremely high-pitched mewl into adulthood, and loved to be carried around like a baby. Van would headbutt your nose hard enough you worried it might break, and only liked to be held against your chest.
After shacking up with Mr. Singstrix, we adopted 2 old-lady cats, one of whom has passed on; the other is a very grumpy-looking little old brown tabby lady whose favorite thing in this world is simply to sleep on or next to one of her people. Mr. Singstrix was impressed by these cats as being “very good cats” in that they’d “never swipe at anyone,” because apparently he’d only known tolerable asshole cats before? And then we adopted our boys Atticus (athletic/preposterous adventure cat!) and Marlowe (snuggle fluff!) and his levels of delight and enchantment knew no bounds, and now we croon “have you seen this cat!!!” at each other many times a day, always. Momo isn’t very impressed with them, even though it’s been over a year now, but she’ll sometimes grudgingly snuggle with Marlowe.
I loved reading about Eliza! Thanks so much for sharing.
One of our jokes about our cat is she takes after both my partner and me; she gets his long legs from him, her “gracefulness” (re: clumsiness) from me. We stopped by the shelter last year with the sincerest intentions of just checking out our options for a post-holiday cat. As we made our final lap through the shelter, a little paw stuck out of its cage at my partner as he walked by. We had overlooked this cat earlier because she had been sleeping; now that she was awake, she stared insistently at my partner until he reached in and took her out. As soon as he picked her up, she looked up at him and started purring loudly. Any resolve to wait until after the holidays to adopt melted away. “I can’t put her down,” my partner said happily and helplessly. It was truly a Helpless moment, although that was in our pre-Hamilton day. I filled out an adoption form for him, asking him with growing excitement “Are we really doing this!?” after each filled in answer. We were, and she’s been the best thing to us. Even though I was initially allergic to her the first week, my parents very graciously (and uncharacteristically) pretended to not notice my red eyes and constantly runny nose because they could see how much I loved her.
Her preferred method of waking us up is purring ferociously next to our heads, she’s cuddly (my requirement) and playful (his requirement), and has started to explore the hallway outside our apartment. She charms even the most ardent anti-cat guests who visit, and will sometimes lick my nose when I ask her for a “kiss”. He kind of hopes she will one day become a cranky fat cat, but regardless of what happens she will always be our Perfect Cat.
Nicole, I am so sorry for your loss. Eliza looks almost exactly like my Meli, who is a bit over 15 and was diagnosed with terminal cancer last week. I’m not sure if it makes it easier or harder to know that death is coming; I’m trying to prepare myself as best I can, but she’s been with me since she was a wee kitten and it’s incredibly hard to imagine that she won’t be around a couple of months from now (at best). She was my first ever cat – I’d wanted one for years growing up – and despite the fact that she could be cranky and yelly and never really liked anyone else but me, she is a total cuddlebug and even now will run and jump onto my chest when I go to bed. I know I’ll find a new companion after she’s gone – I can’t bear to be lonely – but it’s going to hurt. A lot.
Oh! I’m sorry to hear about your kitty’s illness! A big mental sympathy-hug to you.
I’m sorry about Eliza. I have a cat named Eliza myself and I know they are the best cats a woman can have.
Mine is nine pounds of cat on a six-pound frame so she is both objectively tiny and proportionately enormous. I worry about this but she can still run straight up a wall and do a flip off it so things can’t be too bad. She likes to look me straight in the eye while biting me on the ankle to get my attention. she howls at me any old time about any old thing. she likes to sit on my back when I lie on my front to read, and she gets under the covers to bite me awake in the mornings. she is a compact brown tabby with a tail as big around as your head, she is glossy as a rabbit. she is jealous of anything I touch that is not her. she will eat the backstrip off a book to figure out what it is I like about it so much. she likes to prance about on two legs, but only when she is hungry. she never remembers our fights the next day.
I wish I could meet your Eliza.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your sweet friend. It never gets easy.
We have three feline boys, at ten pounds, 12 pounds, and 16 pounds. The 16 pounder is our oops baby, rescued from a bad living situation after we swore we would stop at two. He has repaid us in conversation and cuddles and a purr you can hear three rooms over. We once spent $650 on him at the emergency vet’s, having impacted fecal matter removed manually from his chunky colon. Let me tell you, the sounds that emanated from that poor vet’s back room would have made the demon from The Exorcist proud. The next morning he was his cheeerful, chirpy self like nothing had happened.
We have been diligently working on removing a pound or two from said chunkster, but no matter how slim he gets he will always be our Bug.
So sorry to hear about Eliza. To echo what many have said, she sounds like a lovely beastie.
About 15 years ago my roommate/best friend adopted two male Tuxedo cats, one a kitten and the other 2-4 years old. She dubbed the kitten Spencer (or, more often, Zzzzzzzbenzzzer) and the older cat Melinko. Spencer was a tiny ball of fluff and Melinko scared me, and anyone who knows us both wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Spencer became “mine” and Melinko was hers, and each would take it upon themselves to comfort their human when required.
Spencer was a typical kitten (e.g.: a handful) and one of his most charming kitten qualities was to get his claws caught on the carpeted stairs in our apartment, such that we came home from class one day and found him asleep with his paws above his head, stuck to the stair above him. Melinko regularly skulked around plotting his escape, had an irrational fear of dinner plates, and I used to cringe when he walked across my lap because he had 6-7 claws on each paw and took pride in never fully retracting them.
At any rate, we would often return home from class and find something destroyed, such as a toilet paper roll or a plastic bag. We attributed it to Spencer and the term “Spencified” was born. Things often got Spencified, or “there was some serious Spencification in the living room when I got home earlier.” Until one day when we came in the door at the same time only to find Melinko tearing a paper towel roll to bits with Spencer watching from a distance. I kid you not, we wouldn’t have believed it without seeing it. Poor Spencer taking the fall all those months!
Melinko passed away a few years ago but Spencer is still alive and kicking and, even though he grew to be the larger of the two cats, always got stuck with the smaller box when there were two to sit in.
Oh my goodness, too close right now. I lost my soulmate cat (and first pet I had as an adult) in August, and it’s still too soon. I have mourned him like a Victorian. I’m so sorry about Liza. She sounds perfectly wonderful.
I’m sorry for your loss.
My best cat story is that we lost our 2-year-old cat Toby when he ran away from the vet parking lot (Dad hadn’t fastened the crate right). Our vet office is in a not very safe part of town, and this happened about 2 weeks before Christmas. So I spent my winter break from college prowling the surrounding neighborhoods mostly by myself and running into all sorts of interesting people and dicey situations (my parents had to work). I must have put up 500 signs. My mom shelled out a couple of grand on a pet detective, and he spent a day with me and my friend scouring the region to no avail. Eventually I had to go back to college, and Mom took all the calls from the signs and none of them panned out. Fast forward eight months to me studying abroad in Costa Rica. One evening I was sitting with a friend out by the shore and we were talking about our lives and I mentioned how I missed my cat and how I had to keep telling myself he was still alive and ok. Later that night, I went to the front desk of the lodge where there was internet, and I have a million messages on Whatsapp from Mom and most are incoherent. It turns out Toby turned up at the animal shelter and I cried for like 3 hours and all my friends were concerned about me.
Liza was so fluffy and wonderful. I’m so sorry Nikki.
I miss Pumpkin. My giant orange cat was like no other cat I’ve had in my life. I had to buy bigger furniture to accommodate him. His favorite place to sleep was on top of my feet on my ottoman. (He was too big for the old ottoman at 25lbs of tall, ridiculous orange fur.) I couldn’t figure out why I was so cold and miserable this winter until I realized I no longer had a cat that slept on my feet every chance he could.
Nicole, I’m so sorry for your loss.
My favorite cat ever, hyperbole totally warranted, is my neighbor’s cat, Pickles. She didn’t choose the name–the cat was initially owned by another neighbor, and that neighbor’s kids named him. They were going to put Pickles up for adoption when they moved, so Neighbor 1 took him in. Neighbor 1 takes Pickles with whenever she walks her other two dogs, and for a while, it was customary for Pickles to walk up to the door of my parents’s house and meow for treats. He’s the most mellow, friendly cat I’ve ever seen. He loves to be pet, adores children, and he has this wonky, twisted ear from birth (there’s a medical term for it, but I can’t remember). Pickles is twenty-two years old, and although he appears to be in perfect health, I know and worry that one day, he won’t be a part of my neighbor’s walks.
What a beautiful cat Eliza was and what a beautifully written tribute. I have two cats, one, a soft gray tortoiseshell named Boo after the little girl in Monster’s Inc., because when we adopted her as a 6 month old kitten she was just constantly underfoot. She was starved and skinny then, she is very fat and slow and happy now. Every night when I am sitting on the couch, she climbs up on my shoulder for a few minutes. And another named Hobbes (after the Hobbes in Calvin in Hobbes) who is a beautiful orange and white fluffy tabby. He is the epitome of curious, and constantly in the middle of things, except when we have a fire going. Then he passes out in front of the fire. https://app.box.com/s/zf7zoguv3zai5bkw5vw1xxlo2h8…
https://app.box.com/s/nvchtbi92495hbe7equedglq3c6…
So sorry to hear of your loss, but glad at least that Eliza didn’t seem to be in any pain and that her death was swift and free of agony.
We have two cats, Mabel and Yoko, both pound rescue kitties. Mabel, a scrawny all-black kitty, actually chose me by reaching through the bars of her pound cage and tapping me on the shoulder. It took her about a week of living with us to decide that we were OK, and a year and a half to decide that it was safe to sleep with me on the big bed. Now she sleeps exactly where lines drawn diagonally corner to corner cross, whether I’m in the bed or not. She only ever says, “Peep!” but my other cat, Yoko, boy does she have a mouth on her. She swears like a sailor no matter what you’re doing.
Both of them stand over me in the wee hours of the pre-alarm morning, Yoko biting my fingertips to let me know that it’s time for breakfast, and Mabel poking her nose into my face. I imagine her saying, “Are you dead? Because I’m hungry, and if you’re dead, I can eat you. Are you dead?”
My childhood cat came to us in a great sequence of well-timed encounters. My parents attempted to surprise us a kitten for Christmas when I was 11, but they didn’t realize that shelters don’t allow adoptions so close to Christmas. Instead, they brought us to Petsmart under the excuse of getting presents for the dog when really they were going to buy some cat toys to wrap up and promise to get us a cat once the shelter re-opened. In the aisles of Petsmart, we ran into a man with two adorable kittens that he had received in the parking lot of the shelter because he happened to be there when someone was dropping off a bunch of kittens. He was having second thoughts because one of the kittens was supposed to be for his father in California, but he realized his father probably didn’t actually want a kitten. We walked out of Petsmart with Callie the adorable black kitten, so she turned out to be a surprise for everyone involved.
Callie is really into fruit. The second my mother puts any kind of fruit on the counter, Callie is nuzzling and licking it. However, the little weirdo refuses to eat it when offered. She’s 15 now and I moved to California myself, so we’re on opposite coasts and I only see her once a year. She does still remember that I’m one of the only humans she likes and she’ll still cuddle up with me while I read. She seems to be pretty active for a 15 year old, but I’ve been dreading that call from my parents and part of my financial planning is to make sure I have enough savings for a cross-country flight in case I have to say goodbye.
I mentioned in this past week’s open thread that I lost my Sunshine on Tuesday. I got her ashes today, and it feels like a literal punch in the chest.
I adopted Sunshine when I was in my first apartment out of college. She was a kitten, and crazy from the start. One of the stories I always tell about her is the time she got herself closed in the refrigerator; she was only in for a few minutes, and given the fact she lived to 19, I’m pretty sure no permanent damage was done.
Sunshine was incredibly smart. When she was about 7 I lost her companion (Junebug), and adopted Jodie. Jodie was an adorable kitten with a very sweet meow, that I encouraged and praised. Sunshine saw this, and even though she had never been a meowing kitty before then, she picked it right up in the hopes of getting the same attention. Her meow was not as cute, and her habit of meowing from dawn to dusk continued until she died.
My Sunshine was very aggressive about getting the attention she thought she deserved. I work at home remotely from my co-workers and am in a lot of meetings; they got used to the meowing in the background whenever I would talk, and would always say ‘Hi Sunshine!’
The weekend before she died she had been diagnosed with cancer by blood test, and we were starting the process to find out what kind. She was very thin, and probably dehydrated. But she still had her spirit, and when I was laying on my side would lay stretched out with her back along my stomach, front paws folded, back paws crossed.
Aww, what a sweet kitty. She was lucky to have you for her humans.
I would like to believe she just decided “yep, this has been a good life, time to go.”
I’m so very sorry, Nikki. Pets are so worth the pain when they’re gone, but that’s for sure hard to remember at the time. It sounds like you and your family helped give Eliza a wonderful life.
I adopted my dog Murphy when he was a puppy. He loves life (and running) more than any creature I’ve ever met. He is a constant reminder – when I’m stressed, care too much about what other people think, feel like things are just too hard – that things are pretty awesome, and hey, can you take me for a walk?
This photo captures my dog’s personality better than I could ever describe it:
He is also convinced that every living thing is or will be his friend. Creatures he has tried to make friends with include: a live seal, a dead elephant seal, a coyote, and this gang of goats. This is from the time that he tried to make friends with some goats who were wandering through a park. He got head butted shortly after this photo was taken:
I am so sorry for your loss! It sounds like you lived a good life together, though. I am sure she knew that she was loved.
The boyfriend and I have two cats, Toni and Oscar. We joke that we have two entertainment awards in our house, the story of how we named them is pretty great.
Toni is my baby, he clearly chose me as his human. My sister decided I should adopt a cat and showed up one day at my flat with this tiny grey tiger kitty. He was part of a litter of cats from one of her patients. I saw him in the background of a picture and declared that he was the cutest kitty I had ever seen. She told me I could give him back if I really did not want the responsibility, but as soon as I saw him, I was a goner!
The very first night he spent at my flat, he meowed very sadly as soon as I turned off the light. I called him, he found the bed and although he was too small to jump on the bed, he proceeded to climb it like a tree. He then lay down next to my pillow and feel asleep, purring. He is now a 12 pound prince of cats, all grey stripes and muscle.
We got Oscar the fluffball as a friend for Toni and also so that my boyfriend could have a cat of his own. He was a bit jealous of the special bond we shared. Luckily, Oscar did choose him and now my boyfriend is the only person he willingly and regularly cuddles with.
My childhood dog Lucy (who died about a year ago) once ate my little brother’s birthday cake. It was when I was in high school and my mom made the cake, set it out to cool then drove the fifteen minutes or so to the school to pick me up from whatever activity. We got back and there were crumbs all over the kitchen and a very guilty-looking dog in the corner. My mom gasped and said “LUCY *OUR LAST NAME*” which we made fun of her for forever.
Hank was my husband’s any my first pet together. He had one eye and was always a tiny fat cat (only 10lbs but a chubby 10lbs). We got him from a crazy cat lady who ran a no-kill cat rescue in our town. He moved with us to 3 states, putting up with a temporary dog (belonged to a roommate) and 2 additional cats, despite not really liking any of them. He loved to sleep in the linen closet so my towels were always covered in fine black fur. I used to come home to him waiting for me at the front door every day after work, and if it was really cold he’d sleep under the covers on my stomach. He was only 8 when he died. The vet thinks it was cancer or FIV (though he’d been tested and vac’d). Whatever it was, it was quick and awful and not painless and we had to have him put down. It has been nearly three years and I still can’t look at pictures of him without tearing up, but we were so lucky to have him.
I’m sorry about Eliza – such a pretty kitty.
My cat is called Buttons. Buttons is a three-legged villain, masquerading as the cutest little pink-nosed girlcat you ever did meet. But she’s all talk and no trousers – especially as you’d find it hard to obtain trousers that fitted her handicat state. Her right hind leg is missing (road accident), and most of her tail except for a tiny stump that goes ding-a-ling when she thinks she’s wafting a full tail around. Sometimes you can see her leg stump ‘phantom scratching’ when she has an itchy face, and I dash over to scritch her chin for her.
We got Buttons from a shelter, just over two years ago. She was the cat they’d had the longest – about 7 or 8 months, when most cats are adopted out in 6-8 weeks. Terrified of the other cats in the shelter – probably because of her missing bits, which would prevent her from ever being the alphakitty in a fight – she had to be housed in the volunteers’ office instead of the main cattery. When I went to visit her, she was curled on a cushion atop the desk like a tiny Queen of Sheba. Nobody would adopt her because of her aggression – the shelter workers said that she had ‘serious behavioural issues’ – and perhaps because of her missing bits too.
My boyfriend and I busted Buttons out of solitary confinement that same day. She let out tiny ‘meoop? meoop?’ noises in the carrier home. What a quiet, shy cat! we thought. Then we got her home. MEOW. MEOW. MEEFUCKINEOW. MEEEEAAAAAAAAOOOOOOWWWW.
This tiny animal, with her pointy face and ears comically too large for her head, has a bellowing meow you can hear a block away. She is the chattiest cat. No topic too small or uninteresting. When I get home from work, she hop-gallops to the door, rubs her face on my leg, and begins talking to me. Meow? (How are you?) Maaaowow? (What’s that scent on your bag?) Mrrrp-prrrrp! (I found a hair tie on the floor earlier!)
She was definitely aggressive when we brought her home. A couple of weeks after we busted her out, she was napping quietly on the bed when I moved the duvet and it spooked her. The claw mark across my eye and cheek took two weeks to fade. She was a scared, angry, neurotic little pusskin.
Now she’s still fussy and yelly, but she knows that she’s home and she’s safe. All the scritches are belong to her. All the finest tuna in jelly. No cars running her over. No other cats to fight with.
She is Buttons. She lives with me. And I love her.
I got my cat Zoe for my sixteenth birthday. She was a small tuxedo cat, very fancy, and she ruled the house. She would sneak into my mother’s bathroom to nap in the sink since that window got the best morning sun. She slept under the covers every night and would bite my toes if I shifted in my sleep. I quickly learned to wear socks to bed. When she was 7 she had grown fat and lazy. We didn’t know her exact birthday but since it was near the end of November or the beginning of December we celebrated at Thanksgiving. Mom always cooked the giblets even though she hated them so she started giving them to Zoe as a birthday treat. Zoe adored people food and would sit under the microwave if something particular tasty smelling was cooking. Once she helped herself to the vegetable lasagna that was cooling on the counter.
Then my dad brought home the dog. We had dogs before but never a puppy. Thor was smaller than her at first and would chase her around the house until she jumped onto something. There was a cat bed she had never once deigned to use until we put it in Thor’s crate. Then she would sit in his crate and glare. Eventually she decided that someone had to train this puppy and the humans weren’t doing a good enough job of it. She began chasing him and play fighting with him. She taught him how to use his paws in a fight. Somewhere I have a picture of Thor lying on his back with Zoe standing over him with one paw on his chest. The exercise was good for her, too. She lost weight and was more active than ever before. By the time Thor was grown he outweighed her by almost 50lbs but was always convinced that he was smaller than she was.
Thor came with us when we moved out of my parents’ house. By that time we had added an ill-tempered Chihuahua named Rat to the crowd. I had my parents and grandma over for Thanksgiving the year Zoe turned 14. My mom has a picture of all three animals surrounding my dad that afternoon, begging for table scraps. A few days later Zoe stopped eating. I made a vet appointment for the next week, she had always been in good health so I wasn’t terribly worried. On Saturday she wouldn’t drink and seemed out of it. I set her up on the sofa with a blanket and the space heater nearby. After a few hours of napping there, she got up and went to bed. When the dogs and I came in she crawled under the covers as usual. In the middle of the night there was a thump that woke me up. Zoe had fallen out of bed. She was not aware of her surroundings at all and having small seizures. I sat with her in the hallway holding her wrapped up in a blanket while she shook. She died early Sunday morning. Thor sat with us the entire time.
Oh Nicole. I’m so sorry for your loss. Eliza was a beauty and sounds like such a sweet girl!
I am 34 and I have two kitties that I’ve had since I was 19. There was a third, but he had too many health problems and I had to say goodbye to him in 2012. RIP, Boo.
Gracie is a very graceful, sweet gal who will sit on my lap and stare up at me like I hung the moon. She’s a brownish tabby with just the barest hints of torti coloring, like a few of her stripes are orange or black. When she walks her tail gently undulates in a snakey S shape, like a cartoon cat, and she always sits Just So with her paws daintily together and her tail curled around. I like to tell her she is statuesque, like Julie Newmar. She is also fierce as fuck, she likes to play-wrestle with me if I pull my sleeve over my hand and “attack” her. She takes no shit from my other cat, Charlie. When strangers come over she’ll hide for a bit, then will come out and sit across the room and silently stare at them for hours.
Charlie is the nosiest, loudest little all-black pipsqueak you’ve ever heard. He’s also the best buddy. I’m sure I’ve spent hours upon hours laughing at Charlie’s antics. If you are doing a thing (wrapping a gift, any kind of craft, etc) he’s all up in your business. He does NOT like to sit in laps, he is too busy for that! He’s not afraid of strangers at all and wants to be in the middle of the party if people come over. He’s also a sleep terrorist.
They are both almost 16 and I don’t know what I will do when they’re no longer with me. I don’t know how to adult without these cats around. Charlie is not doing so hot these days, his kidneys are nearly gone and he’s gotten so so so skinny. It’s just a matter of time until his quality of life is no longer acceptable and I will have to make a hard decision. Gracie is still in relatively good health but still, 16!
So sorry for your loss.
Me and my fiancé just got our first pets – two tortie kittens – last April. They are the most beautiful, stupidest, cleverest garbage-est, best cats we could ever have hoped for. Ginko is stout and swagger-y, with a low grumbly purr, and an incredibly tubby, furry belly, who only looks graceful when she’s washing herself, which is not often. Lulu is delicate and thinks she’s much more graceful than she really is, and she can’t meow, or really purr, and has a penchant for ripping up books. They both have “tortitude” and yes, I know how that sounds.
I can’t understand now how we could have lived without them before. They are so wonderful, even at their most irritating. They are our furbabies and fuck you if you think that makes us terrible people.
I have agoraphobia and just having them in the house with me when I’m at my worst is just such a relief, and knowing I have them to come back to when I go out makes it that little bit easier. I love them so much my heart hurts. I can’t imagine having to deal with your loss. I hope you feel better soon (or, idk even how to say it, or really what I’m trying to say, but please know you’re in my thoughts.) My condolences.
When I was around 2 or 3 my family dog had died, so my mum went to the pound to find a new one. She got as far as the parking lot; in the car next to her was an old man sitting with a dog on his lap and crying.
My mum is a very sympathetic busybody, so of course she asked what was wrong: he was moving into a nursing home and couldn’t take his dog with him. He was giving it up but it was so ugly he was convinced no one would ever adopt it, and that it would be put down. (This was in the 80s before no-kill shelters were really a thing.)
My mother, of course, had to take the dog. She asked him what its name was: “Peggy”. Later we found out why. It ate clothes pegs. Just homed right in on them if any were laying around on the grass and demolished them. I have no idea to this day what kind of dog Peggy was, but she sure was ugly. My grandfather said she looked like a cross between a ferret and a goanna.
I’m so sorry for your loss, Liza looks like a blessing of a kitty
My sister got a cat named Mignon a couple of years before I was born. When I was little and got sent to my room she would sprawl in the doorway of my room. I was too scared to step over her and she’d never let out her claws, she’d just raise a paw in my direction if I got too close and I’d stay in my room and not think about trying to leave. She was not a lap cat or a cuddling cat, but if I got sick she’d get up on my bed and curl up and purr daintily (and slowly steal bed space). When my sister moved across the country Mignon was too old to go with her so she stayed with us. When I was about 14 Mignon started going downhill and got very sick. My mother absolutely insisted we had to go on holiday around this time so we left her with my father. A couple of days into the holiday he called to let us know Mignon had died and I was completely inconsolable.
A year or so after my parents got divorced we ended up looking after my cousins dog Sheba. She was a Husky cross Malamute and a giant fluffy ball of love. She would cry and whine every morning until you said hello to her and gave her some toast, would always let you cuddle her and bury your face in her fur and thought that hanging out laundry was the perfect time to lick your face. She passed away a couple of years ago and I hope doggy heaven has lots of toast and clothes lines for her to lurk around.
My earliest memory is of the day my parents brought home our Irish Water Spaniel, Moira, when I was two years old. I can remember standing on the stairs leading down to the playroom, watching her fall face-first into a much-too-big food bowl. Moira was the absolute best dog a family could ask for – wild enough to keep up with the three teenagers, and still gentle enough to babysit me and my sister and keep us out of trouble as we were growing up. She taught us how to be responsible, how to keep an eye on any food on the table (or in our hands) at all times, and how to love something unconditionally, no matter which of our toys she chewed or how many birthday cakes she stole (at least four that I can recall, a whopping three of which were for the same. damn. birthday.) I’m still convinced that I got my love of horses from the day she came running down the stairs behind me when I was an uncoordinated three-year-old, and she somehow got between my legs and ended up taking me for a pony ride the rest of the way down. We lost her to cancer when I was fourteen, and the dogs we’ve had since then have been amazing, but I there’ll never be another Lady Moira of Irish Mist, nor would I want there to be.
I got the very first pet that’s completely my own almost four years ago. My roommate showed me a photo of a litter of kittens that a friend’s stepmother had posted on Facebook, and I called my mom to ask, hypothetically, how she’d react if I brought a cat home from college with me in May. She said I’d sure as hell better not, and two months later, my friends and I were driving home from friend’s stepmother’s house with a squeaky little fuzzball named Lily in my lap. (Mom has since warmed up to her, and although she’ll insist to her dying breath that she’s absolutely not a cat person, our phone calls usually end with “I hope you’ll bring Lily home to visit soon,” so, you can draw your own conclusions.) Lily (code name Catasha Romanoff) is a massive probably-Maine-Coon mix with a bigger attitude than any cat I’ve ever met, incredibly particular likes and dislikes, a general disinterest in almost all people and passionate hatred for every animal she’s ever met; she’s also my best friend, the most persistent kind of alarm clock, and my shadow from the moment I walk in the door from work until I go to bed at night. She’s gotten me through so much in the four years she’s been in my life, and my apartment would certainly be much lonelier without her constant chirping. She’s also currently sitting next to me on the table, methodically knocking every single thing off of it.
Pets are wonderful. Cats are a special kind of wonderful. I’m so sorry for your loss; it sounds like Liza had a wonderful life, and she was lucky to have you.
My sweet babycat Pepper had a very mischievous kitten-hood.
Once she snuck up on my boyfriend while he was standing over the toilet, peeing. Apparently the stream was tempting enough that she decided to attack it, and ended up jumping into the stream of pee and falling into the toilet.
She was pretty embarrassed. And then it was time for kitty’s first bath.
So sorry for your family’s loss, Nikki.
As a teenager, I had a dog who was fiercely overprotective — she defended me from everything, including squirrels, leaves, running water, my own socks (when removed from my feet), and actual tiny puppies at the vet’s office. But she was gentle with children, and she let them pet her and tug her ears and never growled or even showed her teeth. One post-college visit home, she was very sick — could barely get up to greet me, didn’t want to play, very lethargic. She died the day after I left. I like to think that she was waiting to make sure I was okay one last time.
This is just to say that you all are the best, and I feel so lucky to be reminded of this on a daily basis. I can’t respond to every single comment today, but I am reading EVERY SINGLE ONE of your marvelous pet tales, and they are bringing me such enormous joy.
Kitlin Jo was the sweetest little cat who ever lived. (Okay, I’ll settle for a tie between her and Eliza.) As I said on Twitter, it sounds like they would have been kindred spirits. We had to put Kitty down 1.5 years ago. She’d been having health issues for a while and we had several “this could be it” moments before we had to say goodbye. She was about twelve. The last false alarm it was really bad, and also happened to be the day that I learned that there was nothing left that doctors could do for my terminally ill mother. Kitty was so close to gone, we were sure it was the end. It was the middle of the night, and we went ahead and made a vet appointment, but didn’t expect to need it. I remember holding her and crying, saying “please don’t leave me, I’m not sure how to get through losing Mom without you.” Well, she made it to the vet appointment the next day, was able to receive treatment, and went on to live several months–until about a month or two after my mom died. I’m convinced she somehow managed to stick around to see me through that.
I have wanted a cat since I was old enough to understand the concept of a pet cat, and in late September, I finally got one.
My baby Tig (named for the band Le Tigre, the comedian Tig Notarro, and Tigger who is made out of springs) was found roaming wild outside an apartment building where several of my grad school classmates live. One couple took her in, but she despised their boy cat, so my classmate called me up and asked me to come over and see her. I wasn’t planning to get a cat for a few more months, but I decided to go over anyway. She was this fierce, sweet, bouncy little thing with a jacked-up meow (the couple had provisionally named her Rex because it sounds like a tiny dinosaur roar) and I joked she was so tiger-y that she should be named Le Tigre. And once you name them, you have to keep them.
She loves people food, my leather boots and purses, giving me kitty kisses, and murdering all of her toys. She plays fetch with her plush duck. She regularly tries to kill my hands. She is so smart and the best little kitten. I love her so, and she is just over a year now, so I am hoping that I will have her for many years to come.
when i was very small we had a big dumb mutt named bear and i loved him completely. the first thing i’d do after getting home from kindergarten everyday was run to say hello to bear. one day i was told he was being sent to a farm in the country and while i was sad he’d miss me after school he’d have new friends so he’d be ok.
i didn’t realize until collage what it meant to be sent to a farm in the country and to this day i’m still a little mad at my parents.
My first cat Purley (grey and white tabby, with a brick-red nose) adopted us when I was in primary school. Literally, he took up residence under our house and eventually I persuaded my parents that we should let him inside. He was the best cat friend a slightly awkward tween/teen could ask for. No matter what happened at school, he was always there for me when I got home.
When I was away at Girl Guide camp, my Mutti would tease hime by calling out “Where’s dazyndara, where’s dazyndara”, whereupon he would RACE down to be bedroom, only to stop in disappointment when I was actually not there.
He got liver cancer at the end of my 4th Form year and got put down just before I went away on a week long class hiking trip. I was so devastated.
I have had many other wonderful feline friends since [glances down at Sky, my current cat who had never been inside a building when we trapped him from a colleague’s farm 10 years ago, and is now lying on his back on my bed with his paws up in the air like a zombie 😻], but Purley will always hold a special place in my heart.
Oh, wow. I’m at work and will read few of these stories for a break now and then, and they’re all so wonderful. A few of them also make me tear up uncontrollably, though, so maybe I’ll wait with the rest until I get home. Then I’ll read them curled up with my own kitty Luka, my first adult ‘own’ pet whom I love a ridiculous amount.
My boyfriend and I adopted Luka from a friend who didn’t have the time for her any more. When we got her, she was starved for attention and seemed somewhat disbelieving that she now had two humans who came home to her every day and wanted to play with her and pet her. During the first few months, her fur became sleeker and less sheddy, her body started to look healthier and she seemed to mellow out, becoming content and curious and very, very loving. Her favourite things to do are cuddle and play fetch and search out treats we’ve hidden around the apartment. She’s gorgeously spotted and has large green stary moon-eyes, and I’ll try to put up pictures of her in one of the open cat threads soon.
Thanks for all the stories!
She sounds like the best pet in the world. We have a bunch of cats in our small NYC apartment building, and we bring our child to visit them often. They have memorized the sound of her dainty toddler tread on the stairs and they mew insistently until their owners open the door so she can cuddle them. It’s the best part of the day and appeases my guilt for having severe asthma and being unable to adopt a cat of our own. Our building won’t allow dogs at all- which is why we won’t live here forever-but my own little dog lived from the time I was 15 to the time I was 29, and she was a loyal, funny and (slightly) kinky dog, who in the tradition of dogs loved to be cuddled, given treats, and chew on underwear. I miss her every day and I will for the rest of my life. Non-human creatures have the power to make us better humans. I hope you and your young ones get through this period of grief with reasonable speed; if that’s possible.
Having already expressed my condolences to you for your loss, I nevertheless feel that I have not done my kitties justice with my previous post.
I always liked pets, and my family had quite a few over the years: birds, hamsters, our vivacious and loyal dog named Betty and my unnamed turtle. I loved our dog but was too small to train her properly, and my parents were well-meaning, but ultimately clueless dog-owners. We ended up with a sweet dog full of quirks, fears and an intense and loud bark. I loved my turtle and tended to her aquarium diligently until she got too big and I have her to friends of my parents, who had more space to put up a bigger aquarium.
However, my first grown-up, only mine pet is Toni, most magnificent of cats. His full name is Antonio Fuzzle Mylastname.
As I mentioned, my sister took him from a litter her patient’s cat had (a surprise pregnancy of the family pet when they had enough on their plate with some life-threatening health problems). She wanted to make their life a little easier and also felt that I needed a pet in my life. Although this grey tiger kitty got plonked into my life with little warning, my heart instantly melted and I decided to keep him.
From the very first day he made my life brighter, funnier and filled with love. He is a vivacious, brave little tiger that now clocks in at 12 pounds pure muscle and spunk. He never intentionally hurt me, I’ve only ever heard him hiss when he was scared or threatened. We bonded intensely during his first few months, and to this day I am the only person he truly, fully trusts.
When I am wearing a bathrobe in the mornings, he likes to get on his hind legs and waves his paws in the air, which is a signal to me that I must pick him up and carry him around like a baby. There is no leisurely breakfast without a cat in my lap and an inspection of my food.
He does not enjoy people food, except Polish kielbasa, tuna and the dusty stuff on sour-cream-and-onion Pringles. If he smells any of the three, all bets are off.
He has a special short meow when he comes to wake me up (usually half an hour or an hour before my alarm goes off) and he needs to cuddle but ONLY if I am in the correct position on my back because he absolutely NEEDS to cuddle on my stomach and nowhere else.
We got him a buddy, named Oscar. Oscar is a stunningly beautiful Persian – Maine-Coon mix who is built like a Maine-Coon and has charcoal-and-ivory fur plus a short little snout like a Persian cat. Everyone is enamored with his looks, but he is very shy and reserved around strangers. Most times when we have guests over, he hides in the bathroom and hangs out on the washing machine.
He does not especially like to be petted or picked up, but he will occasionally come and sit or sleep on my boyfriend’s lap or chest. His tail is a magnificent bottle-brush of fur, which he always daintily waves around in an S-shape.
He is a very active, if not very accurate or successful hunter. What he lacks in coordination, he makes up with enthusiasm! Also, you can always buy a little of his time with food. Should you try to eat a roast chicken in is presence, he will come ad be all up in your face, and probably eat half of it with you.
Toni and Oscar are best buddies who groom and play-fight each other every day. Their hilarious antics brighten our day, and we laugh our heads off when one of them again tries to sneak up on the other. I do hope to spend many, many more years with them.
Nicole, so very sorry for your loss. Eliza seems like a beautiful creature, and she will be missed!
My pet-loss is of a different kind. I miss my beautiful dog, who I co-adopted with a then-partner. Since we separated, I haven’t been able to see her. I have tonnes of pictures of her, and often revisit them and post them on my social media when I’m especially nostalgic. But I miss her the most in the mornings, when I’m making scrambled eggs or toast. Yesterday I left aside the crusts (as I always do with toast), and missed the way she would have sat before me, ever-ready to gobble up the crusts, wanting bits of the egg. Tippy loves rice and dal as well, and yoghurt, and cheese. Like most dogs. I miss treating her. She’s doing fine and well, but I miss her.
That quote is by T.H. White (author of The Once and Future King), writing about his Irish setter, Brownie. He loved her more than he loved any human being. The poor man was heartbroken when she died.
When I broke up with my ex, I begged our mutual friend to sneak me into the ex’s house while he was away to visit his two cats, despite the fact that I still have no desire to speak or see my ex at all.
Now, my husband and I have a miraculous cocker spaniel poodle mix (cockadoodle, if you need a portmanteau, not cockapoo, please). Bowser gallops crookedly, something he’s done since he was a puppy. He has the type of tail wag that lifts his whole body off the ground, and best of all, he snuggles with abandon, sighing in contentment when he finds just the right position. He often stands on his hind legs to hug us or ask to be picked up. His totally relatable neuroses revolve around showers and a fear of solitude. He’s only 4, so with care, we will have many more years of love.
I had a cat named Colors who passed away about five years ago at the ripe old age of 22. I’d gotten her when I was 3, and she was a tortoise shell, hence the name. She had an accident outside when I was about 4 that left her with 3 legs, but that didn’t slow her down. After we moved (around that same year) and she and her brother became permanent indoor cats, she used to get into of our piano. We would never see her do it, we’d just walk into the dining room and she’d be sitting up there looking smug.
One summer, when I was in high school, she decided she liked sleeping on my pillow during the day. I had anther ineffectual good pillow next to mine for her to sleep on at night, but apparently that want good enough. Attend always try and squeeze back onto mine where she’d lick my head by accident and kick me in the face until I moved her back. After several days of this, I finally woke up one morning with my had just below the pillow on my bed, and Colors smack-dab in the middle of my vacant pillow looking extremely pleased with herself. She never wanted to sleep on my pillow again.
My favorite story about her, though, has to be from the first time I ever slept past 10am as a kid. It was summer again, and I’d stayed up really late watching a movie on tv with my mom. I was probably in elementary school. Anyway, I woke up the next day at about 10, sat up to blearily glance at the clock, and immediately flopped back into bed. I felt Colors get up and walk across my legs and then I didn’t feel her anymore. I thought for sure she’d jumped off the bed and any moment I would have to get up and let her out. I was pretending to be asleep with all my might in the hopes of deterring her when I feel a gentle tap on the side of my face. I open my eyes to see Colors sitting right next to my pillow crouched over to look at my face. She tilts her head and makes a sound I can only describe as “prrrrrrt?” to which I reply “I’m not getting up yet, go back to sleep.” So she did. Walked right back to the end of the bed, over my feet and curled right back up.
I still miss her.
I’m so sorry. It’s always ridiculously painful to lose a pet, but I think it’s even worse when it happens suddenly, giving you no time to say goodbye. My golden retriever, Rosie, had surgery in October to remove her spleen because there was a tumor on it — they didn’t know whether it was cancerous, but it had to come out either way. It was amazing that we caught it as early as we did, and she was doing really well after the surgery, which made it that much more of a gut punch when she suddenly got a blood clot and died. I never knew it was possible to hurt this much. I still cry. But we adopted a puppy two months ago, and she has cheered us all up (including our other dog) with her goofy antics. Pets are irreplaceable, but each new one brings its own unique brand of joy into our lives. I never want to live without one again.
Anyone who would have an animal put down just because they have become INCONVENIENT is a terrible person and should nevernevernever be allowed another pet as long as they lived.
I’m so late to this thread, but it’s been lovely reading everyone’s pet tributes. Nicole, I’m so sorry to hear about your Eliza; she sounds like a wonderful cat.
We had a couple of dogs growing up, but they never really fit in to our family so we ended up giving two of them away to homes where they’d be appreciated. The dog of my heart, though, was Lucky. We got him as a puppy and even my mother, who claimed she was NOT a dog person, fell in love immediately. He had different relationships with all of us but I most recall his bond with my Mom. She was diagnosed with cancer when I was in junior high and died while I was in high school. She spent most of her last summer with us on the couch in our family room, where she could see us all coming and going and still be at the center of things. Lucky was right there with her, on her lap, or on the floor in front of the couch. He was her constant companion and I know she was really comforted by her presence. After she died, he would go to the foot of the stairs and wait for her to come down. It still makes me weepy.
Ok, I was only going to tell one Lucky story, but that one was too sad to end on. So here are a couple other fun tales. He loved apples and would eat the whole thing, core and all. He once ate an entire bag of Hershey’s Kisses, including the foil; our backyard was all sparkly for a few days after that. He obeyed all of us and knew my parents were the “pack leaders,” but listened to my grandfather above all. He was the only one who could take Lucky for a walk without a leash and have him stick right by his side. Lucky had cancer and was put down once his pain became too much. He used to come visit me in dreams and we’d cuddle and I’d wake with the feel of his fur in my hands again.
My fat cat Pepper, much beloved grey and black (but light beige belly, a combination of cat colors that always seems correct and home-like to me now) slowpoke fuzzball has been with the family since I was in second grade and my brother was in kindergarten. He came with us from Michigan to Illinois a few years later, a move none of us liked. Then my freshman year of high school my dad left and to this day (I graduate college in a few months) he and my mom are battling it out in court! My mom did not fare well while I was in high school, the first few years of the divorce battles, lot of talk about life not being worth it, lot of meds, lot of screaming, very little sleep. Pepper was very much the rock. He’s not a lapcat – and hates being picked up – but whatever room people are in, he’ll come into and curl up and be happy to be petted and snuggled. He also begs for food constantly. Now my brother and I are at the same school in a different state, our mom is alone with Pepper, and he’s 14 years old and 20 pounds (dude’s been on a diet for 11 years and has weighed 20 pounds as long as I can remember). He’s having indoor accidents now and needs help getting up the stairs but he was there at my mom’s worst (she’s moved a few times since the divorce) and she is, understandably, reluctant to put him down.