She was named Shadow. My husband called her Shallow kitty and taught her how to speak on command.
It was very weird. She's been trying to convince him for the last 16, almost 17 years, that he REALLY likes cats better than dogs...REALLY. No go. I called her kitty rat, and bitch-trichs, and bitch-kitty, and the black bitch. (You had to be there. LOL) SHE WAS the top of the ALPHA pile in this house and knew it. We were all her slaves.
When she started going downhill a few years ago the kids convinced me to take in a stray feral cat a friend of theirs had saved. He has a personality and is the most intelligent cat I've ever met. And he ended up outweighing Shadow cat by about double, but he always kowtowed to her Attitude. They somehow thought he was a female originally and called him Lilly. He's been renamed Leon... Or Lee-Lee.
Then 6 months later a little runt of the litter was brought to us by neighbors to try to save. My mom in law saved her. We named her Mystique and she adopted my son.
She doesn't weigh more than a minute and always sneaked around under queen Shadow's radar.
The dog and the fixed male cat were a whoooole 'nother story. They were ALWAYS on her growl screen.I think we would have had our Shadow kitty for a few more years, but I let a teenager put the flea treatment on the animals this last time.
We order the same brand for all of them from PetMeds. One size for the little kitty. One size for the bigger cats. And a different one for the dog. I kept the flea treatment for the cats in the bathroom, and the one for the dog in the livingroom. But the teenager hadn't ever gotten out the treatment for the animals before, and I didn't double check the tubes. You can guess what happened. The little cat got the correct dosage. The bigger cats got the dog flea treatment. It took me over a week to figure it out. I didn't clue in until I went to get the dosage for the dog and realized that there was only one tube left...there should have been 3.
I'm told that was the beginning of the end for our older cat. The younger male has seemed to shake off any ill effects, but Shadow kitty always was asthmatic and wheezed. That got worse. She got infections. Her feet broke out in open sores and we tried to treat them.
4 months later as things just won't heal for her she was worse and then 8 months later and she had open sores on her back that we were told were cancerous and tumors growing on her sides and the back of her neck. She pulled out her own claws and took out her own eye.
I've never hated the fact that I was poor more in my life as I held my loving friend and watched her suffer this last month. I treated her feet and back and looked into euthanasia and realized that my budget just doesn't stretch that far right now.
I can't even afford a doctor visit for my kid, let alone for my cat. What a way to make you feel like you are one of the absolutely disenfranchised.
I finally decided to bathe her today. She didn't much like baths, but she'd had many of them throughout her life with us. I was hoping being clean would make her feel better; instead I have the guilt of knowing I brought about her final convulsions and seizures that led to her death. At least I was there and holding her...but I wish I'd been comforting her...not making her do something she disliked as her last memory.
My daughter tells me I should take heart, that now she's with our old dog that she used to get into trouble with and she's pushing chocolate donuts off the table so that he can scarf them down when no humans are watchin'. I can only hope they stay that happy.
from a goddess who misses her kitty...even though she didn't much like anyone...
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