«  
  »

Izzy

By Eliot, on September 13th, 2013

During our life together as a couple, we have always had a cat. (And, really, we aren’t cat people.   Am I in denial?)

In fact, The Hubs adopted a huge, yellow cat for me from the SPCA when we were dating.     I dubbed him Sam. (When I was tiny, I had a yellow tom cat dubbed “Kitty Sam.”   This cat was about my fourth Sam.)

Sam moved from my apartment to our first place together to our new home.

PD request (1)

Sam, circa 1995

He loved to laze around and was pretty much a low-maintenance guy.

Then, my grandmother passed away and we took in her cat, aptly named Goldie.     (Funny story, but Grandma was visiting the cemetery where my grandfather was buried.    As she made her way home down the dirt road, a neighbor flagged her down.   “Why do you have a kitten riding on top of your car?”    That is how she came to adopt “Goldie.”  Isn’t it funny how our cats find us?)

Goldie and Sam tolerated each other pretty well.      As they both aged, Sam began to have health problems and deteriorated pretty fast. Goldie, who was older, soon followed and declined quickly.   (Even though they were both old, I always wondered if we didn’t have bad cat food—it was about that same time as the tainted pet  food scare.)

It was hard.

We swore we would not have pets again.

Then, during a time period that I was pretty sick myself, Eliot entered our lives.     This scrawny and scared kitten literally showed up on our doorstep.   We fed her and made a bed for her on the patio because we were not going to have an indoor cat again.

Right.

It wasn’t long before she was ruling the house (inside).

eliot 1 (1)

(I could tell you that Eliot is really a miracle cat.   Not only did she show up at a time we really needed some hope, but she also lived through a terrible health scare herself.   Those are both stories for another day.)

Then, last summer, I found Izzy hanging around the garden.   I left her some food there but she was soon making her presence known around the house.    She was so scrawny and mangy looking.     God bless her, but she was ugly.

We took her in.     I think we have a blinking light on top of our house that says, “Wayward animals, come here.   Suckers live here and they will feed you.”

We fed her and she perked up.  Her coat became beautiful.

No photo shopping here.

Eliot and Izzy hated each other.    We were forced to keep them separated.   Eliot stayed in the house and Izzy resided in our garage.   They took shifts going outside.

We are all about spaying and neutering and being responsible pet owners so not long after Izzy arrived, she went to the vet.     I had them test her for feline leukemia and she came back positive.   I was told by our vet that this could be a false-positive because she was so young.

Last week we realized it was not.    Izzy declined and declined fast.    Because, again, she was so young, the vet thought if we could just get her past this illness, she might be ok for a while.   We tried two rounds of antibiotics and one steroid shot to boost her appetite.

Finally, we realized she was not getting any better.     We made a tremendously tough decision.

Our vet and the techs that work there were marvelous in explaining and answering all our questions.   God bless them!

It is still hard to go over to the garage because we still want to hear her little steps running down the stairs to greet us.   We still want to see her racing at top speed across the yard to run up the willow tree.   We even miss her growling anytime she saw Eliot threw the patio doors.

Eliot is an only child again.    I wonder how long it will be this time before that blinking light guides in another stray animal for us to take in.

 

R.I.P. Izzy.

 

(Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a history of our pets, but thanks for listening.)

Nostalgia, What we're growing, eating, and doing.    
«  
  »

28 comments to Izzy

«  
  »