Last fall, we began putting our cats outside. One of the cats thanked us by promptly leaving. For good. That's always hard because there's no closure. Did the cat go somewhere and die? Get hit by a car? Take up with someone else? I'll never know what happened to my beautiful golden eyed, silver Monaco. But it seems appropriate that, just as she walked into our lives 14 years before, she would walk out as well.
We got Monet as a kitten, and not too long afterwards, were given her half brother, Tiger. Monet was the "alpha" cat, not only bossing around the other cats, but us, as well. A couple of months ago, a pack of three dogs came through my yard and killed my girl.
Last year, a white cat started skulking around and helping himself to my cat's food. He was very skittish and I was torn between chasing him off and trying to tame him. Guess which won out? I put food out for him so he'd leave my cat's food alone and began the slow process of taming him. Turns out he was a huge mushpot who, while he never let me pick him up, sure did love being petted. Earlier this year, he got sick and a couple of days later died of an unknown cause.
Tiger was just happy to be here. Content to sleep and eat, he did nothing to rock the boat, but he sure didn't appreciate anyone rocking his boat. Once he got comfortable (wherever that was) he didn't want to be messed with, thank you. Unless it was time to eat. Again. That's why, last Saturday, I knew something was wrong when he turned up his nose at his breakfast. I immediately took him to the vet. After a week of tests and finding what was NOT wrong, we realized there was nothing more that could be done and made the difficult decision to euthanize him.
So now, we have gone from 4 cats, to 1 in rather short order. God knew exactly what I would need when he had me pluck a "black sock" from the middle of a busy highway a year ago. My little tripod legged Coco is just a year old and full of love, affection and playfulness.
A balm to my grieved heart.
