July is a hard month. After waiting
months for summer to take hold we are suddenly bombarded with 90 degree temps
and high humidity. Some days it is hard just to breath. But then we are
rewarded with weeks like the one forecasted next week: clear skies and highs in
the 70s!
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| Thai, my mom's Siamese, and Gabbie |
Life is like that. Just last week I
was struck by the irony of July 8th. It is a day for celebrating
Gabbie’s entrance into my life in 1977 just one day after the day that was
supposed to be the end of the world (7-7-77). She was, at most, 3 weeks old and
a spitfire of feline fur. She quickly became my best friend, closer to me than
any human could ever be.
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| Effie |
But July 8, 2008 brought an end to
my physical life with Effie after 16 years. I’d spent nearly 12 years trying to
convince her that domestication was way better than her feral life. When she
finally agreed to give it a try we had only 4 years left together for a close
friendship. I was so lucky that she had already given me her best with her
babies, Mewdy Blue and his siblings.
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| Pixel in 1998 |
Today is the anniversary of the day
in 2000 when Pixel’s pancreatic cancer invaded her brain and I had to let her
go. Pixel came into my life as an adult in the feral colony but didn’t stay
feral long. I’d trapped her for spaying but afterward, when I opened the
carrier to change her bedding and add food and water she purred and rubbed
against my hand. She’d taken almost no time at all to choose domestication.
I’ve a much longer story about her life but for now just know that she was a
special girl.
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| Only picture of all 6 of Tiggy's babies |
In 1980 the clinic I worked for
took in the stray animals from local animal control and many of them ended up
on my family’s acreage. We all thought that Tiggy was already spayed because
we’d felt what seemed to be a spay scar on her abdomen. Only a few weeks after
she “appeared” on the acreage I realized how wrong we’d been. On July 12 she
delivered 6 unusual kittens. Lando Calrissian and Yoda developed normally to
robust longhaired cats. Pirate, Figaro and Zeit Geist, however, suffered from
muscular dystrophy. (Princess disappeared at only 2 weeks of age).
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| Tiggy's babies all grown-up |
My sister adopted Pirate and Figaro
died early from Panleukopenia (he was vaccinated). Yoda had been the runt of
the litter but with my TLC he became the largest of them all. Unfortunately
Yoda disappeared only a week before I moved into to my first apartment. Lando
and Zeit both experienced mast cell tumors and yet they both lived to old age.
Zeit even had a urethrostomy at one point but lived to 16. Lando was my
longest-lived cat, to date, finally succumbing to his mast cell tumors at age
19.
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| Pirate |
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| Figaro |
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| Zeit Geist & Yoda |
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| Lando Calrissian |
Then there’s July 13th. What else can I say except that Sunday will
be the one-year anniversary of the day Mewdy Blue left me. How does one cope
with such a traumatic, dramatic loss? I remember a line from the Lord of the Ring movies spoken by Frodo,
“Some hurts go too deep.”
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| Effie and baby Mewdy Blue |
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| Baby Mewdy Blue |
