I Have Seen Her Ghost a Couple of Times

Rexie is Wild - playing with a toy on the bed - a year old

Written Friday, Aug.18, 2023. Backdated

Well, not that kind of ghost. But something that has never happened to me before.

I have very poor visualization ability, except in dreams, and half asleep. 

You would think that that is a difficulty for a visual artist/designer. But since the days when my designs were colored pencil on graph paper, cross-stitch or quilt or jewelry designs, or costume drawings, the finished project, (however imperfect it was), always looked MUCH better than my imagination could picture.

And now, designs on the computer already look much better than my imagination.

That is different from what I have seen from writers, who say that their finished projects don't match their imaginations.

Another advantage to not having clear visual imagination, is that potentially traumatic events which are processed as stories rather than pictures, are much less likely to produce PTSD. (Temple Grandin)

But, Rexie's ghost?

Well, lying-sitting-up on the bed, half asleep, maybe with my eyes closed, I have seen a Rexie-shape walking up the bed beside me, just like she used to do...

A Word Has Gone Out of the World - Goodby Rexie my darling - Dec. 2022

Tiny Little Kitten, when he was being fed. Soon to be Rex.

After they knocked down their kitten-gate, and escaped. When I came in, early morning, the others were still close by, exploring. But this Little Kitten had crossed 2 rooms, climbed up into the feeding chair, and burrowed into this warm blanket.

Little Lion Rex, fully recovered from not getting enough to eat as a tiny kitten. Before they got sick.

One page in a school assignment. I thought Rexie looked like he was dreaming of being out in the grass, like Bob in the illustration.

Rexie stops to smell the roses, the year she decided the balcony was hers, and wouldn't let the others out there, where I was for hours every morning, taking rose pictures. She kept bumping me, insisting I
Pay Attention To The Cat.

Her hiding place, behind the door, on top of the cabinet. Scary noises.

In the chair with Grey Mouse, originally her friend. Now my only cat.

Is that a bird out there? Feb.2011 - 6months old. Rexie's first time in the bedroom in the daytime with curtains and the windows open to the screens. Warm sunny days in Feb, chilly nights.

First appearance. Looking at me.

Looking up at Mama. She had hidden her kittens in the drawer.

Rexie is the darker one in back. He/she has caught up in size.

Kitten soccer. Rexie is the smaller darker kitten, just peering out in the back left corner.

When Rexie invented a word to tell me when she/he wanted his/her forehead rubbed.

 First written Aug 15, 2023. Backdated.

As usual I didn't notice her symptoms early. Of course, they were different than anyone else's had been. 

I did notice when she became chubby enough to wobble. Only a few days later she was enormous.

Vets have become much more expensive since the last time I had much to do with them, and my old vet has closed.

By the time I could get her in somewhere, the week before christmas, it was a drop-off appointment. No money for more tests, or palliative care. They wanted to put her down.

But she was not dehydrated. and not in pain.

We had almost a week, sitting together on the bed, at first on my lap or chest as usual, then beside me on her pillow. Once she took a flying leap off my stomach on top of the tall bed, and belly-flopped on the floor, to go to the catbox.

At the end, she had a few moments of panic, climbing the pillows, trying to breathe. Then she became unconscious, nestling down into her pillow.

That's a lot better than the usual way...

I have seen her ghost a couple of times.

Goodby Spot March 25, 2020

Spot on heater March 12, 2011 - 6 months old

The kittens were born in September 2010. Since Lassie died, the remaining three have been healthy and happy, going out on the balcony/low roofs when the weather was nice (which it was all February 2020). They often slept on the bed with me, or near/on a heater. They had a newly cleared table in a sunny window in the bedroom. But this morning, Spot is gone.

Yesterday aft and eve, not eating, crying out from time to time in that deep voice as if to be sick, but not being sick. Sleeping on foot of bed, alone. ( Usually her friend/sister Grey Mouse would have been with her, licking her head and ears. But it was chilly; Grey Mouse was sitting on the radiator heater. ) Then late eve down off bed, curled up there at foot, and after a while, sick. Then she felt better, tried to get up on bed by me (Rexie was sleeping under the cover -  they would have fought). I thought she was OK. This morning when I woke, she was dead. By 10am already stiff. I think she must have eaten something bad while their food and water dishes were empty yesterday morning.

Back at the beginning of the year Spot had a respiratory thing, and was having trouble breathing. I put her in/under a blanket with a bowl of steaming water. An old-fashioned remedy which helped a lot, and warmed her up too. Also, she wasn't eating, so giving her some of the smallest jars of meat-based baby food worked well. She was very hungry, and gobbled it instantly. She had lost a lot of weight, and didn't have any to loose, a small light little cat. She had, I think, by 2 days ago, fully recovered, always eager to eat and drink.

Spot was the friendliest as a kitten, when they had visitors a few times. She and Grey Mouse were friends now, most of the time, sleeping curled up together, or half on top of each other. Occasionally Rexie would tolerate being on the bed at the same time as the pair of them. (And not even sitting on the top of my head growling, as he did as a kitten twice when Buddy came into the bedroom.)

Since January, I have been noticing especially how pretty her eyes and Grey Mouse' eyes were; their eye colors have gone quite grey, very pretty with their cool grey coats. I meant to take pictures...


Goodby Spot. I love you.  I.miss you.

I was probably listening to Bach online - Bach's birthday program in the middle of the night when she died near the foot of my bed. The music was on only softly, so I should have heard her, and didn't hear anything. My favorite composer will never seem quite the same to me, perhaps...

Lassie Had the Most Beautiful Green Eyes — January 2017

Lassie Reflected Nov 24, 2016
Written4/20/2017. First posted Oct 12, 2017

I had just noticed that again recently, as she came in the window from the balcony.

I don't know what happened to her. She had fallen off the balcony again in the fall. One of the rose pots was 8 feet away, in the bushes. Something scared her ... Maybe the great horned owls. It was still warm enough that I could lock up the other cats, and leave the door open to the top floor porch, and in the morning she had found her way in. I was thinking that next time, she could find her way home easily. ...  She seemed fine.

There were a couple of weeks, twice, when she was being unusually friendly with me. Not pushy, like in the past. Just sitting next to me on the bed, and being happy to be petted. I had to go invite her back, when she went away the first time.

I used to say"Everybody hates Lassie" because there used to be fights, and chasing away. I never knew who started it. But they aren't all friends now, as they were as kittens.

Then one day she climbed the bedspread up onto the bed instead of jumping up.

The first time I really noticed something was wrong, she didn't come running to eat with the others.

There was one last warm day in the middle of January, when I carried her out to be in the sun on the balcony again. Previous pictures out there were from November.

For a couple of days she licked the juice off canned cat food, and drank water and broth. She stayed near the heater, and I put a warm nest for her to sleep in. The last day, she was crying out. She calmed when I petted her very carefully on the back of the head.

She had swallowed a hair; that can be fatal. And then there are the 2 potentially fatal diseases, the one the kittens had, that they wouldn't have gotten if Mom's cats had had their shots, and the one that killed their father a month or so later...

Even waiting as long as possible between rainstorms for the heavy clay ground to dry, it was still very wet and heavy. Luckily a friend finished digging the hole for me, before the next rain. Next to Buddy, and with more rosemary.

Goodby Lassie. I love you.

Mousie approx. 2008 - July 2016

Mousie in 2011 with one of the kittens (Grey Mouse?) - looking stripey

 

In December 2010, most of the kittens got calici virus. If Mom's cats had had their shots, it probably couldn't have happened.

They got it after they were weaned. Rexie was very sick, had to be hand-fed again, and 2 others had it too. Then their father Sugar Mouse died in early 2011, of a different horrible disease. I thought Mousie was maybe the carrier.

So I separated the kittens from their mother Patches, and Mousie. And Mousie didn't get to cuddle like this anymore. When she and Patches were frightened, they squeezed into 2 tiny drawers on either side of the sink to hide.

She was living here with Patches when the horrible guest of a renter kicked out the screen in the kitchen door, and then chased Patches out to die. Months later, he tried to do the same to Mousie, but she outsmarted him, and hid where he (and I) couldn't find her. After that, I moved her upstairs. (Buddy was gone by then, so there was a safe place for her.)

She was never friendly or pettable, but she co-existed with me, and liked to sleep in her padded nest-box. She told me when she was out of water or food. There were sunny windows, and a heater in the winter.

But it wasn't such a safe place after all. First, on a really hot day in July, she got very overheated. I re-arranged things so the fan could blow on her, and she seemed to be feeling better. But in the morning, she had knocked over the stuff in the nearby corner, and was across the room trying to hide behind the refrigerator. And among that stuff was a small black widow spider.

So whether it was the heat alone, or mostly the spider bite, she is gone.

The last of Mom's cats. Goodby Mousie. 

Rosemary, that's for Remembrance - Remembering Buddy

This picture of Buddy out in the snow on the balcony is from March 18, 2011. Pandora was out there too.

(Buddy died Oct 30, 2014 written Jan 6, 2015, first posted Jan 8, 2015 )

Buddy and Valentine were the 2 kittens whose feral mother was killed either by a raccoon or a boy and a dog. They were in a cage in the shed. Something pulled the bolt on the cage. Something killed the mama cat, who had just been spayed.

I had tried to bring them in for the night. The idea was that they would go back into the carrier inside the big cage, and then I could pick them up and take them in. The big cage did not have a secure floor that i could have picked up. (My good big cage had Cheesecake in it, who had been badly beaten up by something, and was supposed to stay confined for a month. The vet was surprised he survived.)

But when I went out to bring them in, they were all wild-eyed, and didn't go into the carrier. I didn't make the connection. And, fatal move, I fed them out there.

So, probably the giant killer raccoon who also probably beat up Cheesecake, and whose 3 inches across footprints I had seen on my windshield, pulled the bolt, opened the cage, and killed the mama cat.

But she fought long enough for the kittens to escape. And because they were used to coming to my car, when I went to feed the feral cats behind where I used to work, the kittens found their way to the house.

So I fed them canned cat food for a few times, sitting out on the porch. Then I got the bright idea of tying a cord to the screen door, putting the can of cat food just inside it, and letting them go in, and pulling the cord to close the door.

It worked. Then I had wild kittens loose in the house. I do not recommend this idea.

Eventually I got them up into the bathroom, where I had started taming other cats, and then out onto the balcony with the others, when it was warm. Buddy was named for his liking to be friendly with other cats, and do his greeting ritual with them. He became very good friends with Dovey, although not with her brother Lovey. (They rolled off the roof in a fight once.)

Originally he was not pettable, except over the backs of his friends at feeding time.

But in recent years, after he was upstairs with (Cheesecake and?) Pandora and Bob and me, he did become pettable, and even liked sitting on my lap when he had the chance. And his tabby fur was very soft.

He was one of the only 2 of my old cats who were still alive when I brought Mom's cats here. I put Musketeer upstairs with Buddy and Pandora, since he had lived with us for a while, until Mom took him away.

Musketeer lasted an amazing year and a half, considering how skeletally thin he was. When he finally went, after he stopped moving, he woke up from time to time, and took a little water in his mouth from a syringe. I spent several days in the nearby chair to be with him.

When Pandora went, she only lasted a few days after she stopped moving around.

I was keeping the older cats separated from my kittens, as much as possible, because of the various disease possibilities. So Buddy got to be with them out on the balcony on warm days, without food or water there, but did not get to just live with us. Or he was outside while we were inside. Or he was in the room with the wood-stove and we were in the bedroom area.

I always meant to get a picture of his large Buddy-face outside the window, and little Rex's small tabby-face inside the window, since they were similar soft-furred tabbies, only Rex and his sisters are so much smaller.

But this summer he stopped going out the window onto the roof and balcony. He was getting thinner, very thin. His fur got harsh. I was trying to feed him more, but he stopped eating the canned food, just ate the liquid off of it. I should have brought him some grass. I should have taken him down outside into the grass. There was a fenced area, until a tenant tore it open.

I wasn't paying enough attention to him. I wasn't sitting with him. It wasn't wood-stove season. I spent time with my "kittens", but not with him. He called and I didn't always come. I didn't really notice when he stopped eating any dried food at all. I didn't try to give him canned food at every meal. He was still trying to move around, to the cat-box and the water dishes, the day he died. He died on my lap.

When I buried him, as I put his little light curled-up body into the grave, I suddenly thought "rosemary". I went to pull some rosemary off the old bush which Grandpa or Grandma probably planted. (Mom's sister's name was Rosemary.) I had never done that while burying a cat before.

But when I pulled at the trailing branches, some of them broke off with roots. So I planted them around the edge of the grave, and tossed the others into it. The rosemary was beginning to flower. It was just before a rain, and it rained a little bit every week or two this fall. The rosemary should survive. Maybe I'll try to find some rue too.

So I will always know where Buddy's grave is.

Lost Cat, May 2014

She's gone. She was my mother's cat, born in her house, slept on her bed. She was beautiful. And before anyone else moved in here, she used to sit on my shoulders.* She was  the mother of my darling "kittens" (3 years old now, still act like kittens).

She was probably gotten by a wild animal the first night.** It rained. She might have tried to come back in through the hole in the screen where I had left the door open for her, and gotten chased off by the Horrible Roomer's cat or dogs. She wasn't very old, maybe 1 or 2 in 2010, so 6 now, or less.

A disadvantage of indoor cats is that they may not really learn to come when I call. She hadn't. (My outdoor cats came running when I called them.) So when they're hiding out or lost, I don't have that second chance for them to find their way back, to my calling. I called. I looked.

She liked being out on this screen porch, she and her friend Sugar Mouse, that first summer, before they had kittens. (My mother's cats had not been fixed nor had shots.) She was a good mother, protecting her kittens from their father and everything else. Once a kitten made a squeak when I was near it, and she flew at me to protect it.

When she got frightened, she and Mousie, her companion, they used to squeeze into the little drawers on either side of the kitchen sink. She was frightened by someone just before she vanished, and hiding in there. And I took a picture of her. With a flash. She maybe thought it wasn't a safe hiding place anymore.


**Dogs and cars kill more cats here, though.

*This last year and a half it has been too unpleasant here for me to sit with her at all, in this part of the house, with the Roomer here. I really missed that, her sitting on my shoulders. I'm afraid she missed it too.


I learned later that the low-life slime who lived here, guest of a renter, the one who had kicked out the screen in the kitchen door, had deliberately chased Patches out to die. 
I learned it when he tried to do it to her companion Mousie too. But Mousie was too smart for him; she hid where he couldn't find her. And I locked him out forever. (They were already supposed to have moved out.)

Remembering Pandora

This is Pandora, through the window, out on the roof, a couple of years ago. On a windy day. In early spring.

If you look closely at the background, the wavery distortion in the flowering plum behind her is from the old float glass of the window, which has a water-type pattern.

Pandora was about 20 this last year. She showed up as a kitten hanging around the garage, about 2 years after I got Cheesecake and Fussy. Someone might have left her there... Carl, my housemate then, saw her. And it didn't take more than half an hour to coax her over to be picked up.

She liked Cheesecake, and followed him around. Perhaps because of the way Carl petted her, she liked to be petted more vigorously than other cats. And she liked guys. She always wanted a lot of attention if one came here.

After I had taken her to the vet for shots, we went by work to let them see her. And someone said, "She's such an elegant cat. She should have a name like Arabella or Isadora."

At my next small sewing group meeting, she spent the entire evening digging things out of everyone's sewing baskets. And Amy said "She should be Pandora!"

She was another in my list of cat names as self-fulfilling disasters. She liked to eat in the pantry, facing out, protected by the door. She learned to open all the cupboard doors - then she would go in and hang out in there. She learned to open the pull-down-snap-up door on a linen closet shelf with towels, and she would hop up into it before it snapped shut behind her.

She liked to be brushed. (And needed to be combed and clipped in shedding season.) She was one of the cats who invented  cat felting, with Cheesecake. They came and went through a hole in the screen of the balcony door, and their fur caught on the screen. Then, coming and going, they felted it into the screen! That was after I had taken fiber arts, so I noticed.

She never quite got the point of Buddy's greeting rituals, but was happy to sleep with the other cats or on the bed. If I was on my side, she'd sleep on my hip.

She squeezed under the wood stove, on the brick hearth, so I had to block it off when there was a fire in it.

20 years. I miss her.

Remembering Tigrr (Musketeer) written June 15, 2011 8pm

Tiger (Musketeer) on my jacket - afternoon Dec 10 2009

This is Tiger in Mom's house, after I had come back from a long picture-taking session down at the beach, and a walk.

When she took him from me (1996), I had named him Musketeer, because of his gorgeous Puss-in-Boots coloring. (And he was an exhibit in my list of cat-names-as-self-fulfilling-disasters, since as he grew older he started beating up on everyone.)

I had picked him up (literally) at the feral cat feeding station, behind where I worked, after he'd been there a couple of weeks. Clearly he wasn't wild. Mom had driven down here; I offered him, but she had turned him down. And I was glad, because I was quite fond of him.

But on the day she was leaving, after I had left for work, he jumped up into her arms - and she just took him. Didn't even leave me a note. Took my cat carrier too, although I eventually, years later, got it back.

She sent a couple of pictures of him - all ruffled after the 2-day drive, and calmed down later. And a note written from his point of view.

When I got up to her place in fall 2009, her favorite cat had had to be put down, and Tiger was coming out and sitting on laps and being friendly. He spent a lot of time on her lap at the table, and then on the bed with her. She said "Tiger is trying to help". She also said, looking at her array of pills on the table"I don't know whether I'm supposed to take these pills, or give them to the cat"... Then he started losing weight, and his eyes became totally dilated, but he apparently could still see.

The vets up there and down here did not figure out what was wrong with him, but it may have been a version of the FIP that probably killed Sugar Mouse. It has been amazing that he lasted so long, as skinny as he was. He was eating a can or more of cat food a day, or when he stopped eating that sometimes, baby food.

This week was supposed to be a trip again to Camano, but it got put off. Good thing, because I needed to be here.

Once he stopped being able to walk around, and stopped eating for the last time, I locked the others out on the balcony, put a clean t-shirt on his reflective warm pad on the kitchen floor near the heater, and tried to spend as much time in the chair nearby as I could. School over for the spring, and unemployed. I slept in the chair mostly - and came to really hate that chair. (When I'm tired I get very crabby, and that thing would easily go into an uncomfortable position, but only with great difficulty into a comfortable one - and then it wouldn't stay there.)

He was mostly asleep, but the first several days, he would wake up every couple of hours, and could drink some water put into his mouth with a syringe. Then he slept for over a day, but did wake up one final time and take a little water, the morning of the day he died.

Over all it lasted about 6 days. I wasn't there when he died, but away for a couple of hours.

We should all be so lucky, going quietly and peacefully, in our own home, not thirsty, and with company nearby.

Saying Goodbye to Tiger & Pandora

Tiger (Musketeer) and Pandora in chair (with Bob pillow) - taken Dec 30, 2010

Usually I have been good about posting these. This time not.

Pandora died last summer, July 17, 2012. Although she had been going downhill, and I was trying to get her to eat canned food, at the end it only was 2 days or so. I put her in the tub, with a warm pad, to have the water drip available, since she wasn't able to hold her head up to drink out of the dish. And one morning, I put her in the room with this chair, and after her sunny spot went away, she crawled across the room. So I put her out on the balcony to get a little more sun. Buddy came over and said hello/goodby. He misses his friend. She was 20, I think.

Tiger (Tigrr, Musketeer) died at the beginning of the previous summer, June 14, 2011. It was hard to believe he could last so long, a year and a half of so unbelievably skinny - and eating a can or 2 of cat food a day. Then at the end (luckily a trip I was supposed to take was rescheduled), after he stopped being able to move around, I put him on the warm pad on the kitchen floor, near this chair in the next room. For the first 4 days or so, he woke up every couple of hours, and took a little water from a syringe in his mouth. Then he was out for 1½ or 2 days, and then on his last day, woke up again and took a little water.

I spent 6 days in this chair, to be near him, but he died while I was away. I hate this chair.

Sugar Mouse early 2009 approx. to Feb 17, 2011

A picture of Sugar Mouse from last summer, when he was happy being able to be out on the screened porch, along with his friend Patches (when she wasn't in heat).

You can see that his brown stripes had darkened up a lot from his half-grown color, showing the siamese part of his lynx-point coloring. And this picture shows nicely the dark-grey-stripy coloring on his head and tail. Narrow "mackeral tabby" stripes which he shares with the dark-gray and white tabby Mousie. And that cute little white tip to the tail.

That little curve to the end of the tail is characteristic. Once he started being pettable, in late spring, he would sit on the kitchen floor facing me in his "pet me please" posture, with his tail stretched out behind him, curled at the tip. At that point he was a chubby cheerful little cat.

In the summer out on the porch, he started sitting on laps, Larry's as well as mine, as well as walking by the chairs to be petted, over and over.

And it was only then that I noticed his receding chin. The vet calls it an underbite. I call it a rodent-like profile. And I named him Sugar Mouse months before I noticed it.


He died yesterday morning. Liver failure. I only noticed something wrong the evening before, and he was in very bad shape all night. The vet says it may have been one of the dreadful viruses, like FIP. In which case, his kittens and all the cats have it. 

He probably wasn't even 2 years old yet. 

Colorful Bob

The original of this picture of Bob was taken when he was about a year old, visibly still a young cat, looking very alert and wild in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. Bob was maybe born in 2002. He wasn't very old at all.

I scanned the picture in, and Photoshopped it, the summer of 2006, when I was taking Photoshop my 2nd summer in school. The original is a tall young orange cat in green grass. The colors were changed with exaggerated Curves, and I textured it with a filter. One of my favorite Cafepress t-shirts has this image on it, and it makes an interesting mirrored fabric at Spoonflower. Mom liked the t-shirt.

Now those images are just going to make me sad. Bob died today. I wish I had taken just 10 minutes, in the rush to get out of the house to the airport, and held him on my lap and said goodbye.

Goodbye Bob. I love you, even if I couldn't be there with you.


Many thanks, beyond thanks, to Larry who is making it possible for me to be here in many ways, including taking care of poor Bob.

Bob in Summer

This  is Bob, taken several years ago, on the balcony, where the cats lived happily and fairly safely for years. He's called Bob because he has no tail.

He was born in my bathroom, to a feral cat I'd just caught after fishing for for 2 years. They had a big dog cage, with a small carrier for a hidden nest, and a litter box. The bars were far enough apart for the kittens to come out through them and make friends. (The mama cat, although she was never touchable, learned her name and came when she was called. She was the only one who got down off the balcony and back up onto it all the time.)

I didn't know in time that kittens need to be handled before weaning age by several people for them to become tame, so they weren't very give-away-able. But they didn't survive the dangers of this hillside (dogs, cars, coyotes, raccoons, foxes, a great horned owl, maybe bobcats, bears, or mountain lions) very long once they didn't live on the balcony anymore, so for several years Bob has been the last one left of 2 litters of feral kittens. His wily mother Ugly vanished a couple of summers ago.

He has always been very affectionate with me; he liked to chew on the hair on my forehead, and sleep right by my shoulder when he got the chance. He had been getting skinnier maybe since summer, but the last week or so he went downhill very rapidly. We just took him to the vet on Tuesday, and learned he has stomach cancer.

And I can't even stay with him for the week or so he has left. I am leaving this weekend to visit my mother; in any other case I'd put off the visit for a while, but she also is very unwell.

Cheesecake in the Light - approx April 1990 to April 2009

Cheesecake in the Light

Cheesecake is gone. He died last Thursday. He was just 19 years old. That summer I was going to the pound, looking for my missing mama cat, and he was just the most irresistible kitten I had ever seen. (Hence his name.) He was about 2 weeks bigger than the kittens who had been born on my bed May 5. (Wake up. Squeaking by my feet. Kittens!) So I think he just turned 19.

Cheesecake, and those kittens whose mama went missing, and later Fussy, whom I got from the pound in October, all used to do something in the dark at night. They would all oodge up towards my face, kneading and purring like crazy, as if I were their mama. If one started, the others would join. I called it a purring fest.

In recent years, when only one cat got to sleep with me, he was the one. And sometimes he seemed to remember the purring fests from when he was young. It's the season when the cat starts sleeping on the bed again

In about the last 2 years he had become very skinny, but was still mobile and eating. In fact, until about 1 ½ weeks before he died, he was eating 2 cans of cat food a day. About 3 weeks earlier, the other cats killed a mouse - and before I got back with the camera to take a picture, Cheesecake ate half of it. A last memory of his hunting past.

One thing I finally found out, almost by accident, is that when they are getting weak, the easiest way for them to drink is from a drip onto a surface, like a sink or tub. I knew a cat years ago who only drank that way. We had a hot week, and Cheesecake was not sitting on his pad by the heater, but on the cool bricks. So I put him in the tub, where he used to like to be in the hot summer. And so, he was able to drink water from the drip, his last night.

I took this original photo in about the summer of 2003, and you can see he still looked young and beautiful. Then I added a layer of a pattern of light coming through one of the old windows here at sunrise or sunset, and tried different blending modes.

Goodbye Cheesecake. I love you.

Buddy misses her

Dovey and Buddy Greeting Ritual, photoshopped

This was Dovey's and Buddy's greeting ritual. I tried to get pictures of this for years, but since it was always in motion, I wasn't very successful. They would walk together, and rub against each other, and entwine their tails. Then one would turn around and they'd pass each other, with more head-bumping. I think I remember that that means they think of the other as family.

After Dovey disappeared, when Buddy was let out he went around the house calling, and over the roof and into a window that had been open for weeks with no one coming in it. Buddy and Dovey were both named as kittens for their friendliness to other cats, but as adults it was mostly each other they were friendly with.

And now Buddy doesn't have his friend.

He spends more time with me, at a safe distance. Maybe someday he'll let me pet him again. He used to be pettable only on the feeding table, over the back of Valentine or Dovey.

These pictures were taken July 28, 2008.

Live by the Sword . . .

Dovey hunting

Die by the sword? Or, in this case, by tooth and claw.

Dovey is gone. It's been over 2 1/2 weeks now. I used to tell her that, when she was busy hunting, and didn't want to come in at night. But I never thought it would happen so soon. She was young, and a wary former feral cat, more likely than most to survive. Photoshop fun

8-24-08 Dovey the black cat has not come home. Wed night I got off work late, and didn't call the cats for dinner and to lock them in safely for the night until almost midnight, and she wasn't there. I haven't seen her since.

I haven't heard the coyotes singing in the orchard for a couple of months now, but that's most likely what happened. At least that is quick.

Buddy misses her.

Looking just as if she were asleep...

Curled up beside the road, a fawn or yearling. If she were a live deer, this would be a good picture. Please, everybody, be careful out there, these nights with poor visibility and early dark.

Little Lovey died last night. He was only 8 years old. He had been to the vet twice in the last two weeks. He had been blocked before, but this time was worse. After he came home, he was doing ok, but the medicine was making him sick. I eventually stopped giving it to him, he got a little better and started eating a little again. Then, on the advice of the vet, I added back just one, just once, the most likely to help, and the least likely to make him sick. But it was "use with caution in the case of kidney damage" and I think that might be what happened to him. The next morning he was very weak, and he just went downhill in a few days.

He was a feral kitten, trapped when he was several months old. He had only 3 usable legs, and hopped everywhere. He liked to be petted and have his stomach rubbed and hop up on my lap.

Once two giant dogs almost got him: they had chased him down under a bush, and he was on his back, all three sets of claws out to defend himself. I ran out in my pajamas in the rain, bare-handed, and chased them off. Then I got a length of pipe and guarded him (they tried to come back) for the hour it took him to get back to the house. He was exhausted, and went to sleep in the rain for some time. And he had totally reverted to feral, was completely scared of me. (Well, I'd been as scary as I knew how to be, telling those giant dogs to "Go home!!!")

You can read more about him, and see a picture, at
http://wrwcolors.blogspot.com/2006/10/three-legged-cat-falls-off-roof.html

Goodby Lovey. I love you.

Val & Cleofatra & 2006

Here's Valentine in happier days looking at Cleofatra. (The background was an ancient concrete wall in the basement.) We lost Cleo (aka "Yo Fatso") early in the year. She was almost 16.

She and her sibs were born on my bed. Waking up in the morning to squeaking down by my feet! Beautiful kittens. Their mother was Kate, who had been abandoned half-grown at a local park. We were there the last weekend of the season. She spent the evening going around to the campfires and sitting on laps. I was going to take her home and try to get her adopted. But by the time I got to the truck, holding her, she had a name.

I kept 2 of the kittens, Ariel and Miranda. Miranda used to sit outside the window and toss her head in an imperious way, asking to come in. She looked like an Egyptian cat. So she became Cleopatra Miranda. When the kittens got old enough, I locked them inside until I could get each of them fixed. She instantly became fat, and I thought "Too late". But it was just inactivity. By the time I figured out she wasn't pregnant, she was going into heat every other week. By the time she could finally go out, she was permanently fat and timid from being kept in so long. (Cleofatra was a Garfield joke.)

When she started losing weight, I didn't think of it as something wrong — she seemed healthier, and happy. But then she got very skinny. The vet didn't figure out what was really wrong, she just went down very suddenly at the end.

Then last summer Cheesecake lost a lot of weight — I could feel all his vertebrae, although with all that long fur he didn't look too different. I started giving him canned cat food, and he picked up again. Just a week or so ago I noticed he seemed all recovered. No backbone knobs. Thick pretty fur. Happy and healthy. Sleeping on the bed and kneading the covers and purring at my face, like when he and Miranda and Ariel and Fussy were kittens, having a purring fest.

When Valentine, who was young, started losing weight, I thought for too long that it could be fixed with better food. Now, just a week after losing her, Cheesecake is suddenly very sick.*

2:20 AM Jan 1, 2007 The coyotes are howling in the orchard. Happy New Year.


*I think Cheesecake had an early dose of that poisonous cat-food ingredient from China, before the news was out. Luckily he survived, but he was never as healthy again.

Goodby, Valentine

This was Valentine. She started life as a feral kitten, among the ones I used to feed behind where I worked. She was trapped by the landowner and taken to the pound to be killed, where I retrieved her, along with her mother and brother. The kittens were maybe 3 months old, fairly small. I had them all spayed and neutered. They were in a cage out in the shed, recovering from the operation. Something opened the cage by drawing the bolts, and killed the mother cat. Probably a raccoon. She fought long enough that the kittens had time to escape.

They were used to coming to the sound of my car to be fed, so the kittens found me at the house. After they got used to eating near the house, I caught them by opening the house door with a string on it, then closing them in. Not, in retrospect, a technique I would recommend, since the result was wild kittens loose in the house.

They weren't my first feral cats, and they were pretty young, so the technique I had worked out, of getting them in the bathroom, and going in to feed them, and letting them come out at their own speed, worked well on them. They became part of my balcony cats. The gray tabby brother got named Buddy, because he wanted to be everyone's friend. The little orange female didn't have a name until a few months later. I had opened the window early one morning, and let her into the bedroom with me. She was sitting on my lap, purring and being petted, when a voice on the radio said, "Happy Valentine's Day, in case no one has said it to you yet." And I said "Valentine! That's your name, and you already told me happy Valentine's day."

She was a happy, healthy, little kitty who loved being petted and rubbing her face on my hand. I don't remember exactly how old she was; somewhere between 5 and 8 years old, I think. She liked to sit in the sun on the porch, and play in the grass. And curl up with some of the other cats, in a purring pile.

She started losing weight a month or so ago. I lost an older cat early in the year from unknown causes that started like that. And Cheesecake, late last summer, had lost quite a bit of weight, until I started giving him canned cat food. Val and her buddies were getting a little canned food treat with dinner, to encourage them to come in from the yard when I came home, before dark. I gave her some more, and hoped that would fix it. If anything that made her worse. By last week she had gotten really skinny.

Remember for next time! Intervene before things get so far!

Not that it would have saved Valentine. The vet today said she had a carcinoma almost certainly. All we did was give her fluids, to try to get her to feel a little better, and I was just going to keep her as comfortable as I could. She was already in the warm nest under the stove that I get by taking the bottom drawer out. She was out on the balcony in the warm sun for a few minutes earlier today, a little shaky, but moving fine still. I thought I'd have her a little longer to cherish and say goodby to, and let the others say goodby to, since she wasn't contagious. But she never recovered from being taken to the vet this afternoon.

Goodby, Valentine. I love you.