Wednesday 03 September 2003

Fuzzy

This entry is about the cats in my life.  The first bit is kinda sad, so you might want to skip that for the second bit, which deals with the latest kitty to rule my life, which may err on the side of cootchie-cooness, but hey, we can all do with a dose of that. 

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Way back in February this year I wrote about my gorgeous old girl-cat, Bella, 20 years old and at that time living with my parents in Perth, Western Australia (I was in the Northern Hemisphere at the time).  It was a hard entry to write; I was emotional as all get out, but trying to keep things factual and logical.  Not easy where beloved and long-lived members of the family are concerned.  She was dying, to get right down to it, and I wasn't reacting very well at all.  There was nothing to be done for her; the vet's prognosis included cancer, organ failure, and plain old age.  On the flip side she wasn't actually suffering - she was still wandering vaguely around the house, eating a little, enjoying the company of her humans.  The vet's basic principle was that he didn't like to put animals down, who were in that state ie not outright suffering; he'd prefer they went in their own time.

You can believe that for those three weeks before I returned to Australia I was hoping and praying for my little kitty to hang on.  Oh god, I didn't want her to suffer and made that very strongly known, but I wanted - needed - to say goodbye to her in person.  When I touched down in Perth on 3 March 2003 after that horror flight my first thought was for her (I had a truly lovely and touching welcome at the airport from family and friends - wow).  I rushed in the door and the sweetie - who hadn't moved much beyond the cool cork floor next to the kitchen for the last fortnight - staggered to her feet and wobbled over to me for a cuddle and a purr.  Grounds for muffled sobs on my part?  Yeah, I figured I was entitled ... She was like that with me for the next week, trying to follow me around (and she could barely move, heartbreaking to see, so I just carried her draped over me like a tatty feather boa) and wanting cuddles.

The next week, I could see it was time.  I don't know how you can tell with animals, or if you really can, maybe it's just human egotistical anthropomorphising, but when she looked at me her eyes were dull again, it was as though she too had said her goodbye and wanted to go.

The Headmistress took her to the vet, I couldn't deal with it and she wouldn't let me, who was deeply moved and cried too when he put her to sleep.  He wrapped her up in a soft pillow-case and Mum brought her home, to be buried with honours in the rose garden.

R.I.P., my Bella.  1984 - 2003.  Proving to her last that cats are empathic and caring creatures, and she was the gutsiest of them all.

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This is Abigail.  I adopted her from the Shenton Park Cat Haven on 31 March 2003, after a three week mourning period for Bella and a growing need to have a kitty sleeping on my feet and jingling around the house again; a major case of feline deprivation syndrome, in other words.

There were so many gorgeous kitties at the Cat Haven; I knew before I even got there it was going to be a tough call .  I did particularly want a female, a tabby and if you'd twisted my arm I would have specified a silver tabby, but as I walked by pen after pen I wasn't really "grabbed" by any individual. Oh they were all delightful, and I could have picked any, but ...   Then I stopped at one pen-ful of tabbies and there she was.  She was standing right up on her hind feet with her front feet up as high on the flywire of the security door as she could; there was a big boofy boy tabby in there with her who kept trying to knock her out the way of potential attention, but she'd jump right back under/over him and take up position.   Looking at me.  And that was it, really.

I took her out of the pen for preliminary advances, and she straight away began investigating my face with her nose and whiskers, and pawing at my shoulder, my bag and hair.  Now, it must be said that none of my previous cats were so immediately friendly and confident and cute; it grew on them.  And this one wasn't just a whore either; one of the volunteers there said she was quite timid generally.  So that was it.  She was 14 weeks old at that stage, and I had to leave her in overnight for spaying, microchipping, her first shots etc.  I also had to prepare the ground back at the parents', who had no idea I was going kitty shopping.  Fortunately they were charmed by her photo, and even more by the real thing when she came home with me on the Monday.

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Abi (I chose Abigail because it was a nice witchy name) is an unusual colour combination; a silver/black/cream/champagne tabby, with white toes, and a little splodge of white on her chest.  She is supposedly a domestic short hair, but while she has short hair on her back and legs, she has the fluffiest softest fur on her face, an immense ruff, long curly fluffy chest and tummy fur, and the biggest bushiest tail you have ever seen in your life, ringed in light beige/grey and dark grey which grows progressively darker; its quite ridiculous.  I have a theory her mother mated with a raccoon by mistake ... 

She is very vivacious and cute, plays happily with the dog and any interesting object, real or imaginary.  She is also very relaxed and incredibly affectionate; her favourite thing is to climb up onto my shoulder, to knead and suckle my shoulder and er chest area and tangle her head up in my hair.  Regressive, much?

Altogether, a most successful cat.  She's now about nine months old and quite a little cat still, apart from growing increasingly fluffier.  She and Gus (our black border collie) adore each other and play together like kids; its so cute to see them bounce around each other, play chase games, and roll tennis balls to one another (I kid you not).  Abi also cuddles up with him in his him in the daytime if its cold (interspecies incest?), follows me around the house (jingling) and will come along for walks with us around the block.

SUCH a cutie-pie.  Tuxedo, needless to say, is almost as besotted as I.

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