My mom has had a cat named Ms. Kitty for the past 17 or 18 years. Oddly enough, I too have a cat that is pushing 18. Her name is Midnight. Unfortunately, Ms. Kitty has been in poor health for quite some time. Her thyroid was way out of whack. Her kidneys have been failing. She also had Diabetes and several other ailments.
Ms. Kitty hasn't been eating well so I drove her and my Mom to the vet yesterday afternoon. The vet gave us the news we've been dreading--Ms. Kitty's time had come. She wasn't going to make it this time. We gave them permission to put her to sleep and both of us left the place with tears in our eyes.
Ms. Kitty has been with Mom through many trials and seasons. Truth be told, Mom got her from me. I didn't really like her as a young kitten because she was mean. She scratched me and tipped over her food and in general just wasn't very pleasant to be around. So, when Mom watched the cat for me while I worked in Chicago in 1990 for a few months, she got attached to Ms. Kitty and somehow they got along. I gladly gave her to Mom and they've been inseparable ever since.
Mom figured out that Ms. Kitty liked to drink warm water rather than cold. And she liked to be hand-fed. She had to have a certain type of canned food. And you had to make sure you opened the drapes and pulled the shades to as many windows that were facing the sun as possible so she could catch some rays. Later in her life, Ms. Kitty developed Diabetes and Mom was diligent enough to give her insulin shots every day.
You should have seen the idiosyncrasies in this cat. When she was young, she'd run sideways down the hallway in Mom's house. She liked to be covered up completely over her head with a blanket. I've already told you about her desire for warm water instead of cold. And she often sat in her food. Mom had cat food dishes all over the house, especially late in Ms. Kitty's life, and if you couldn't find her sleeping in her plush cat bed in front of the TV, you could probably find her sitting in a bowl of tuna.
In spite of all of that, or maybe because of it, she was a lot of company to my mom. When Mom was in the hospital in July this year recovering from a stroke, she kept an 8 X 10 photo of Ms. Kitty in her hospital room and she couldn't wait to come home to see her. You should have seen their reunion when it finally did happen. Tears flowed.
Here's the picture of Ms. Kitty that Mom had in her hospital room:
Since Mom came home from the hospital, Ms. Kitty has been a constant companion. They worked well together and both benefited. So yesterday was a sad, sad day. One you don't recover from quickly.
I know that you can never replace a pet. Too much history. But I also knew that Mom needed another cat...she needed an animal to take care of and she needed to begin building new memories. So, we didn't even stop at her house after leaving the vet. We picked out a one-year old female cat named Clanci. She's a bit of a rounder and is a little timid, but she's a lover and I was so happy to see her jump into Mom's lap before I headed for home. It made it easier to leave.
I called Mom when I got home to check on her and Clanci had already taken up residence in Mom's bed. That made me smile.
