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Last night. The second loved Kittie in our house since January died. I don’t know HOW much more I can take! seriously. But, this isn’t about me, this is about Dottie. She died here at home. She didn’t suffer, thought I know she didn’t feel well. She was purring when I pet her and talked to her, up to to the last. We may never really know what happened to her.

Dottie came to us in a fairly nontraditional way.

We acquired Dottie when we lived in Riverside, CA. There were loads of Ferrel cats in the area, and before I thought about it, I befriended a tiny girl cat, who I couldn’t get close enough to pet, but got closer and closer to all the time. Now, most of you know what happens in an urban setting when you start feeding one outside homeless cat. DUH. Now I do. So about 50 cats later, this original little grey cat had a littler of kittens. (DUH) Since I had befriended her I took it upon myself to find homes for them, 9 of them. And then immediately started “fixing” every cat I could catch. That too is another story. So, one of our colorful neighbors took three. Two went to friends of theirs and one they kept. I say these neighbors were colorful because I don’t know another nice way of describing them. They had four children who were under the age of 10, 2 boys two girls, the youngest was 3. Of which, the parents didn’t seem to know (read *care*) what they were doing at any given time. Though, really they were just kids with no guidance, no guidance leads to mischief. They routinely were caught starting fires in the neighborhood, something Southern Californians’ don’t take lightly. They through eggs at our house from their unscreened bedroom windows on more than one occasion. Broke into our neighbors garage…stuff like that. The father was in and out of the city jail. Don’t know why, exactly but have my suspicions. The mom, I wanted to help her, and sometimes I did, but I really didn’t want to get too involved either. She would often be found vacuuming her porch, and 10 at night. I had the kids help me pick up pecans, plant flowers, anything to keep them busy to stop throwing eggs at my house! When the father was home, my husband and I had taken to sitting out on the porch to watch, or listen to what we called the fireworks. He and his wife had epic battles that sometimes I would see the the kids recreate the next day. But those kids, especially the two girls doted on this kitten. And as far as I could tell, treated her well. They dressed her up, played tag with her. Good cat, great kid cat. Mellow, and smart enough to play a sort of tag. Eventually, the family got kicked out. It was inevitable probably. I have to admit I felt a guilty gladness they were leaving. However the reality of it was sad, and a hard one for the mom, who was at the time being a single mom, again. I knew they had gotten kicked out because the landlord of the house they lived in visited me very frequently, one; to check up on the neighbors and get a feel from me how the other neighbors (who often called the police on the house) were taking it, and two; coincidentally he to was a Southern Illinois boy transplanted in Southern Cali.

knock, knock, cat in hand, “heather, we are getting evicted. Can you watch our cat?” the mom said “we are at the hotel and I am afraid if they find out we have a cat we will get kicked out and I can’t have a cat gettin’ my kids kicked out of the only place we have now” valid. Naturally, I reply: Come get her anytime, we will take real good care of her. Since I already had three cats, this was a bad move on my part, but what could ya’ do? So, I scooped up Dottie, (which is what I had always called her since she had a little grey spot on her muzzle that looked like it was supposed to be her nose) and took her straight to the vet. Got shots, all the stuff I wasn’t sure for sure had already been done and brought her home.

They never came back. I can’t say that I blame them, or that I was suprised. So Dottie just became part of our family. Could not have asked for a better cat to have Myles the infant, then toddler, now pre-schooler around. She tolerated a lot, and gave lots (LOTS) of fair warning before she had had it!And was smart enough to just get up and move. She chased Myles around while he was dragging a big string off the back of his tricycle. Ran around the yard with him, sat with us in the shade, and was generally easy to be with. A rare quality in cats or humans. Delightful. Lots of laughs with this one, for all of us. Thanks Dottie.

She will be missed.

Until next time, love your animals, and learn to appriciate the “specialty fibers” they add to your projects!

Heather

the monster bubble

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under blah blah blah, yackity yack, yadda yadda yadda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.