...sometimes a thought bubbles to the top of my brain that I feel I should share with the world...
Crazy Cat Lady
At one point in my life - one very brief point - I had ten cats: I had three of my own, we fostered three for a friend who had to move to a no-cats-allowed space, and one of those three was pregnant with four kittens.
Two of the foster cats were rehomed to my father-in-law's barn; one disappeared the first night, the other proved himself a mighty hunter, and earned himself outright superhero status when he brought home the dead body of the groundhog (easily twice his weight) that had become my father-in-law's archenemy.
One of the kittens only survived a few days; the other three and their mom were sent to forever homes. I hope they're doing well.
Once all the extra cats were gone... I only got a little while to enjoy the company of a sane number of cats. My Spooky got very ill shortly after the last of the interlopers was gone - and he was definitely my Spooky; there was one night I swear he was trying to kick my husband out of bed so he could snuggle up with me. We never found out what was wrong with him, but most of the "easy" fixable things were ruled out; it wasn't his kidneys, it wasn't his heart, it wasn't his liver... but he stopped eating. The day I came home and he didn't seem interested in affection from me, I knew it was time to let him go.
Jericho was mostly Hubby's cat. He was an orange tabby, and entirely lived up to the reputation orange cats have for being a 20-pound bag of trouble in a 10-pound cat. He pulled off some astonishing feats of leaping, bounding, and knocking things over in his lifetime. He also had a taste for cotton yarn for some reason; I had to keep cotton (and only cotton) put away or when I got home I'd find a trail of yarn around the house like the little kid from Family Circus had been by for a visit. As he aged, he started to lose height off his jumps, and one day he started coughing. He had congestive heart failure, it turned out - which can be managed with a medication and avoiding stress, but giving him the medication caused enough stress to send him into a respiratory crisis. The catch-22 led to several trips to the emergency vet... and we couldn't keep doing that to him, or us.
Bella, Jericho's littermate, was queen of the household; she was very definitely the alpha cat in the family, and she was also very definitely Daughter's cat. She was 11 when she became an only cat, and she'd been upset enough about the guest cats that we decided not to get her a friend. She lived another six years, through an unexpected relocation of her kingdom (i.e. we moved house; barbarians stole all the royal napping furniture! and put it back in different places!). She learned the joys of visiting the Squirrel Room - the one with the very high ceiling that occasionally leaked badly, we humans had better get on fixing that. And we think she lost her hearing and maybe acquired a bit of dementia; every once in a while she seemed to be lost in the hallway. And a week ago she, too, started losing interest in food. The vet diagnosed kidney failure; last Saturday she seemed to be recovering a bit, but Sunday she took a turn for the worse... and she wasn't interested in affection from her girl, and so we all said goodbye to her.
So now we're catless. It didn't feel so hard when we lost the first two, because we we still had other kitties; we didn't pack up the extra food, toys, and accessories to give away. The litterbox is gone; the food dishes are gone, nobody asked me to open a door at 3 AM.
The house feels so much emptier... but I don't think I want a new cat any time soon.



