[AG-EQ] My cat

[Jody ianuzzi]

 Oh Jewel I am so sorry to hear about your kitty! 20 years certainly is a wonderful long life for a cat! Still, it is never easy to lose an animal we love as part of our family. My thoughts go out to you.

JODY

To Boldly Go  🖖🏻 


thunderwalker321 at gmail.com 

"What's within you is stronger than what's in your way."  NO BARRIERS  Erik Weihenmayer

> On Nov 29, 2019, at 10:15 PM, Jewel via AG-EQ <ag-eq at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> After living with me for just a single month shy of 20 years, on the evening of 28 November 2019, my 
> cat, 2K answered the call of the grim reaper and, after having asked me to give her a bit of 
> stroking:  a request that I had no difficulty in granting, at some point, she left the house via her 
> floor level cat door and took herself off to wait for death's inevitability in some hidden spot. 
> Barring death by sudden trauma,, it is very common for cats, if they are able to, to behave in this 
> way when their time is up.
> 2K was, basically,  still in good health and was behaving as normal, but about a month ago, her 
> appetite had, almost entirely,  dropped away and she had become little more than a fur-clad skeleton
> 
> It is less than two full days since 2K's  disappearance and I still feel:  is it imagination?  the 
> occasional soft brushing against my pants legs.
> I will continue by reproducing a letter that I wrote in 2,000, and there may be an addendum.  Here 
> is the story of her first visit and its aftermath.-----------------------------------
> 
>  A                    FURRY  TAIL.  2000.
> 
> On January 1 2000, the date we were warned that aeroplanes would fall from the skies, and of all 
> manner of other catastrophes, simply,  because computers would not be able to cope with the fact 
> that 1999 had become 2000, and what a  load of codswallop and balderdash that turned out to be, my 
> phone rang and there was Deslie, my sister, calling from her holiday cottage at Fortrose,to ask if I 
> could give board and lodging to a kitten?
> Shadow had died about 6 months earlier and no cat had moved in to take over the vacant territory, so 
> I said that I could and would be delighted to do so.
> Not much more than an hour later she arrived with this wee kitten that, from its size, I guessed was 
> very young, perhaps only a couple of months old.
> It had wandered into her neighbour's house. Steve did not want it and Deslie already had 2 cats and 
> a trio of Boston Terriers who would have been very unwelcoming of a newcomer, so to offer it to the 
> catless me was the obvious route to take.
> In the brief time Deslie had had her/him, she had called her/him Centurion for obvious reasons, but 
> the name did nothing for me!
> Anyone surprised at that?  NO!  I thought not!!
> The kitten was very thin and scrawny and this made her ears seem huge, so Enid Blyton's Big Ears, 
> best friend of Noddy, came into my mind so it was a short hop step and jump from Big Ears to Noddy, 
> but,  nah! still wasn't right, and then I had it!  The "2kY bug" had been the topic of many 
> conversations for some time, and as this was the first year of 2000, forget the year and the bug: 
> 2K she was! At first, I spelled it Touquet, pronounced as in bouquet, but to avoid mispronunciation, 
> I changed it to 2K, which you will admit is a pretty cool name for a cat!  Could she be the world's 
> only cat called 2K?  I wouldn't be surprised if she was!
> The first thing was to have her checked by the vet and to get the necessary vaccinations.
> Although she was thin and had, obviously, been without a proper home for quite a  while, she was in 
> good health, and using her dentition as a measure, the vet said that she was more like 4 months than 
> the 2 I had thought.
> Now let's jump to when 2K was 6 months old and ready for desexing.
> I put her in a cardboard portapet box and off we went to the vet, and here 2K's story really starts.
> I was standing at the reception desk when the bottom of the portapet box opened  and out she fell, 
> picked herself up, and at the speed of lightning, she was out the open door and gone.
> For the next fortnight, I advertised in the local paper and on the radio, giving her description, 
> and did get some replies from people saying that a kitten/small cat matching the description had 
> been seen in point A point Z and all points between!
> Some of the reported sightings were too far away to present any real hope that the  animal was 2K, 
> but those that seemed, at all, likely were, thoroughly checked but nothing was found.
> Then came a very confident call from an elderly lady saying that she had managed to catch my cat and 
> had her shut up in a box.
> Now, this was on a Monday, and Monday was the day I went to spinning class, so before going there, I 
> got the taxi driver to take me and Guido, my guide dog, to the address given.
> The driver told me to stay in the taxi and he would collect her.  he knew the cat by sight, which, 
> when I thought about it later, was a little unlikely as the only time he had seen her was as a 
> rapidly-vanishing blur as she made her escape from the    vet's.
> 
> He came back to the taxi with the cat that he was sure was mine shut up in a box.  I had some doubts 
> when the cat, from within the confines of the box reacted with furious spitting when, I assume, she 
> caught a whiff of dog as 2K knew Guido well and was quite relaxed while in his company.
> I did not want to miss my spinning class so took the cat to  the vet's clinic where I would leave 
> her until I collected her later in the afternoon.
> "Oh!" said the receptionist when the taxi driver carried in the box:  "You have Miss Blanch's cat!
> 
> Let it be remembered that, during all this frantic activity, Miss Blanch had not had as much, or as 
> little, as one identifying finger on *her cat!
> Cat collecting time arrived and as I walked past the surgery on my way to the cat cages, the vet 
> stopped me and said:  "I could not spay the cat that you brought in as she has already been spayed. 
> I saw the scar when I shaved her!"
> "In the first place, I did not bring her, on  this occasion, to be spayed, but that does resolve the 
> question of whether the cat is mine or whether it is not!"
> It was, obviously, someone's companion as it was in very good order, so I took her home with the 
> intention of advertising for her real owner the next day.
> I showed her to my neighbour who said that  she looked nothing like the description of 2K that I had 
> given.  We agreed that the 3 people who had identified her as being mine: the dear old lady, the 
> taxi driver and the receptionist at the veterinary  clinic must, all, have been  gah gah, under the 
> influence of a halucigenic drug, or, merely, away with the fairies!
> The next day, I put the ad on the pet patrol segment of Hokonui Gold our community radio station and 
> as it happened, her owners were, at that very time, in their car following the route to their home. 
> They had moved to  the house next door to the dear old lady's home just a week before.
> Mum and  daughter arrived and, when they saw the cat, immediately, fell into an argument, one saying 
> that the cat was not theirs  and the other saying  that it was!
> I guessed what the cause of the confusion was:  that shaven area on her tummy, so I explained just 
> how it came to be there.
> Well, her owners were reunited with  their cat, but I, still,  was not with mine!  Now for the big 
> question!  Just how long was it reasonable to continue asking if anyone had any solid information as 
> to where she might be?  I had decided that this would be my last ad, and then came what, appeared, 
> to be a very positive sighting.
> A gentleman rang me from William Street which runs alongside the aviary in the Gore gardens and is 
> more or less in a direct line from the vet's and is only a, relatively, short distance from there.
> This man had given a chicken carcass to a small, very shy, cat that morning.  The last he had seen 
> of it was when it went under the motor mower in the carport.
> I rang a friend and asked him if he could take me down to the block of flats, which he agreed to do.
> We got there and the original caller took us to the carport.  He thought that the cat was still 
> under the mower, but could not be certain.
> I asked my friend, Dave, to stand out of sight because I knew that if it was 2K, she would be off if 
> she saw anyone but me.  She was, exceptionally, shy and nervous of anyone else!
> Dave retired a few feet, which, I thought was not nearly enough, but what did I  know!
> I got down on my hands and knees and called in the special language that I have devised for 
> communicating with cats, and out she came!
> DON'T  START  CHEERING  YET!
>   She spotted Dave as I knew she would and vanished into the overgrown section next door where we 
> had a snowball's chance in hell of finding her!
> There was nothing left to do but get into the truck and drive home.
> The following night, I was lying in bed listening to a radio play:  "The Blacksmith" to be precise, 
> and in a slight pause in the dialogue, I thought that I heard a faint "meow" from the backdoor.  I 
> leapt out of bed and opened the door saying "Is that you? 2K!"  and in she came!
> Now, I know that when compared with some of the journeys that cats had made to get home, some of 
> them over thousands of miles of unknown and inhospitable country, 2K's return home cannot hold a 
> candle, as it, only, was over a couple of kilometres, but I thought that it was miraculous.
> In some way, that brief sight of me the previous day had triggered something in her brain and kicked 
> her homing instinct into activity:  or as some spoilsport had suggested, someone who knew or found 
> out where I lived, had caught 2K and driven her to my gate where he/she had released her!  That is 
> possible, but I prefer to believe my explanation, and now, rewriting  this "Furry tale" 20 years 
> later, would she, if asked, be able to answer my questions?  PROBABLY  NOT!
> Returrning to the original text:  She was, severely, dehydrated so spent 3 days at the vet's 
> receiving rehydration treatment and, to boot just adding insult to injury:  she had, what turned out 
> to be, merely a postponement of her fortnight-old appointment to be spayed!
> Now, I said that she was very shy and nervous of anyone but me, and so she remained until she 
> reached the age of 4 years, by which time, you would think that her character would be set in 
> concrete, but that was not how it turned out.
> For a while, she would allow my neighbour to approach her without her taking to the hills, and then 
> it was she who did the approaching, and then, the change was quite remarkable, she became a cat who 
> was quite relaxed in anyone's company, but just to conclude this story about my cat, 2K, another 
> little something that reveals her character.
> Guideon:  Guido's successor, and I had been to Christchurch for the Labour Day long weekend, and as 
> the nearest airport was Invercargill, 50 miles away, Deslie had driven over from Alexandra and had 
> taken me/us down to Invercargill to catch the plane.
> She, also, picked us up when we rturned.
> For the time we were away, I had made arrangements with my homehelp to feed 2K, so her needs had 
> been taken care of, but when we entered the house, there she was, in the hallway and what did she do 
> but drive her claws into Deslie's leg!  Was this in retribution for D  having taken me away, or was 
> it:  perish the thought:  in retribution for her having brought me back?  Just another mystery to 
> which noone but 2K knows the answer!
> 
> 
> 
> ---------Part two:  2019.Yesterday's trip.
>    2K is now 19 years old, I was going to say " having first seen the light of day!" but that, of 
> course,
> is incorrect as kittens as with puppies are born blind, so I shall say took her first breath, around
> September 1999, and having come
> into my possession on Jan1st 2000, hence her name.
> For her age, she is in very fine fettle, but I noticed, recently, that several of her claws were
> forming little hooks which were getting caught up in the blanket of my bed where she spends a good
> part of her day, when, that is, she is not sitting on top of the empty cockatiel cage, in the sun,
> and once, she got her foot hooked into the wireweave as she prepared to jump up, so, a claw-trimming
> trip to the vet was arranged.
> The vet told me that, in elderly cats, this was not an uncommon problem as their claws don't retract
> as well as they did when younger.
> Referring to the above:  A momentary digression.
> I was watching one of my animal programs on the tv, and Chris, "The Vet On The Hill" was called to a 
> local private wildlife reserve on the Isle of Wight in England to attend a 21-year-old Bengal 
> tigress who was having similar problems as was 2K, but those of the tigress were much worse.
> She had lived in this reserve for her entire life, well, from the age of a few months anyway, and I 
> imagined her as being tame, and while lounging on her comfie bed on the couch, being engrossed in 
> the activities of her wild relatives as shown on the idiotbox, but no!  she lived in a large 
> enclosure with 2 other tigresses, and was not, in the least little bit, tame!  and now back to our 
> own little, mild-mannered,  star.
> 
> 2K took it all in her stride! First of all, I put her into a carrying cage that she has never been
> in before. "NO WORRIES";
> then into a car: "NO WORRIES!;
> Into the veterinary clinic: "NO WORRIES!";
> her claws were trimmed by a child, or young person of that, approximate, age: "NO WORRIES!";
> and back home again.
> Later on, I was sitting in my usual chair, and she came along and nudged me: something that she only 
> does if she has something particular to say:  she is not one for frivolous conversations:  and I 
> formed the fanciful idea that she was thanking me and arranging for her "Happy Feet".
> Were those overgrown claws being pressed
> onto the ground/floor at every step she took and it was, at best, uncomfortable, at worst: even a 
> little painful!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> AG-EQ mailing list
> AG-EQ at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/ag-eq_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for AG-EQ:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/ag-eq_nfbnet.org/thunderwalker321%40gmail.com