A sweet little cat says good-bye

Our dear Junior cat is gone now. He left yesterday, April 30. I didn't accompany him on his final journey. I petted him and told him to be a good kitty. Dan was with him all the way.

Junior's prognosis was never encouraging from his initial diagnosis on March 2. He put up a good fight, as we did and as his friends and admirers and caregivers at the Atlantic Cat Hospital did — Dr. Julia and all the dedicated staff.

In the end though, we couldn't ask any more of him. I knew it was up to me to make the final decision and I knew he would let me know when it was time. His world had become very small and he wasn't eating enough to sustain his strength. He needed help with some of his everyday motions and he was losing interest.

Junior was 12 years old. He was born at the SPCA where Dan and William went and chose him. He chose them really. He was so vocal in his demand to be chosen that they couldn't ignore him. He was so young when he joined us, he still had the blue eyes of a little baby kitten. He was too tiny to climb the stairs. I carried him up at night and put him on the bed. During the night, he would find me and burrow into my hair at the back of my head. He would gently knead and purr and yes, suck a little bit, thinking he'd found his proper Mama. The back of my head didn't suffice, unfortunately.

He and Grizzly grew apart over the years and didn't really like each other but it was clear they liked each other at one point.

He got his name because to a casual viewer, he and Grizzly looked somewhat alike so to allay confusion, we just decided they would be Grizzly and Grizzly Jr. And so Junior he was.

We would have liked him to be an indoor cat but no such luck. He turned out to be the most outdoorsy cat of them all. Even in the worst winter blizzard, he would wait patiently until he heard Dan or William shovelling the deck and that would be his signal to demand the door be opened. They would make him a little path and he would go down one or two steps and then scoot under the deck where he apparently had his own designated restroom. In all the time we lived with a backyard, I think he only condescended to use a litter box a handful of times and clearly found the whole idea quite distasteful.

He was definitely a lover of Nature.

I suppose he found it hard when we moved to an apartment and his outdoor days were over. We couldn't let the cats out on to the balcony because we live quite high up and couldn't take the chance. He became contemplative and enjoyed spending time on the high perch where he watched the comings and goings of pigeons and wished he could get his paws on them.

William is out-of-town but he said an affectionate farewell before he left, knowing that Junior wouldn't be here when he returned. When we talked on the phone later, William said, "I think he knew that he had a good life."

And insofar as cats give much thought to the quality of the life they're living, I guess William is probably right.

Our Grizzly and other things that happened today

Our wedding anniversary — which I wrote about yesterday — was an interesting day.

I was left speechless by the bouquet; My Mother's Bloomers, with a bouquet called An English Garden, outdid themselves:

Dan also gave me a selection of coffee mugs, to see if one of them will suit me. I got in the habit of enjoying my coffee in one of the Christmas mugs and I've been using it ever since. Maybe there's an ancient belief that bad luck will befall the household if the Christmas mugs are used until well after Easter. Dan apparently wants to help me break my Christmas-mug habit so I'll try my best. The first one I tried was quite a tall designer mug from William Morris. It was nice. We'll see.

This, meanwhile, is Grizzly.

Grizzly has been feeling fine, eating, playing, having adventures etc. but has recently been having a problem with weight loss and hair loss. He's 14.

We put off taking him to his vet because it's such a nightmare to get him there. I had considered trying to get the vet to do a phone consultation. I thought about remortgaging the house to have a vet pay a house call but, in the end, Dan just phoned and made a straightforward appointment. We decided the day had come and today was the day.

I sat with my back to him and practically covered my ears while Dan and William imprisoned him in the carrier but, I'm happy to report, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been or as it was last time. I could tell as soon as he was in the carrier because his voice changes and he makes a true sound of distress. We loaded the carrier into the car and off we went and the distress calls never stopped. The vet is only a few blocks away, thank goodness.

Grizzly got a lot of attention as we walked across the parking lot, into the lobby, up to the second floor. There was tremendous reverberation in there and Grizzly must have impressed himself.

To make a long story short, he's been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and he'll start medication tomorrow morning. It's a liquid medication which led me to ask, why can't kitty liquid medication taste like tuna juice?

He behaved well at the vet and his doctor was very nice to him. She assured us that hyperthyroidism is not uncommon in older cats and she's hopeful that the treatment will be effective.

He's back to his old self by now and has probably already forgotten that he went to the vet!

After we got Grizzly home and settled in, we went out for dinner.

Ristorante a Mano has very good food and it's fun too. It's right at the waterfront and the patios were open back and front but it was breezy and not hot so we opted to sit inside. We had a table for two right beside one of the windows you can see in the picture.

I had some freshly baked flatbread with a dip made from roasted garlic, red pepper and eggplant. It was delicious. Then I had:

Pollo alla Parmigiana

Crostini crumb-crusted chicken scaloppine topped with tomato, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella

(not exactly as illustrated)

The ristorante is well-known for its homemade gelato and sorbet and I had the most amazing refreshing tart lemon sorbet. The perfect dessert.

(photo borrowed from the Internet)

And then we came home to the flowers. Here are some flower details:

Feline escapades: a brief, incomplete report

The cats are always happier than anyone when the springtime weather arrives and they can bask in the sun, go hunting, and they don't have to worry about their paws touching snow. These little snowstorms that keep happening take them by surprise but they do seem to understand that the end of winter is at hand.

Grizzly is the older cat and he minds the cold. In the winter, we can go for days when he doesn't go out but in the good weather, he becomes just like a normal cat. When he goes out, he has much broader scope to pursue his long-time hobby.

Grizzly loves "found water." Never mind that he has a bowl at his feeding station in the kitchen where the water is changed regularly. When he scoots out the back door, he makes a mad dash for a puddle, an up-turned plant saucer, a little patch of melting snow on the deck table. He settles in and drinks and drinks as if he's been trekking through the desert and he's come upon a life-saving oasis.

It's a pastime he enjoys inside the house too. He stalks the person who waters the plants always in hope of a little overwatering that might fill up the catch basin under the plant. And when the forsythia was brought into the house for Easter and set up in the dining room, Grizzly thought it must be some kind of a special festival for cats. Just look at the accessible water in that vase.

We indulge Grizzly as much as possible but there comes a line he must not cross.

Every night, I put a glass of water — about half-full — on a low table by my bedside. A few mornings ago, I was still dozing, still wearing my sleep-mask, when I heard an unusual sound that I couldn't identify. Is it rain? Is it a bird tapping on the verandah roof, right outside my window? It was regular, rhythmic and I suddenly realized, it was "lap, lap, lap, lap. . ." I turned over and looked and there he was — Grizzly — quite happily settled in enjoying some new water that he'd just discovered.

I had to shoo him away and from then on, I have to put a cover on my glass of water. Grizzly and I are close — but not that close.

Meanwhile, his little brother keeps busy too.

One of our friends is having problems with a few mice in her house. This past week, I wrote her this note:

We have our mice brought in from the outside. A couple of days ago, Junior scratched vigourously at the door and when I opened it, he streaked in as fast as he could. It’s not like him as he’s an ambler but I soon saw that he was bearing a tiny gift. He went to the middle of the kitchen and dropped it quite ceremoniously and said, 'What a good cat am I.'

Mice tend to play dead – that’s why I can often catch and liberate them – but it was pretty clear to me that this one was already beyond any help I could give it. It was very tiny. Junior played with it a bit, tossing it high into the air, pouncing when it landed. He put on quite a show. Then he ate it! I mean it – actually ate it! Urban domestic cats rarely eat their prey because they’re too well-fed but what do you know? It happened.

It's that time of year

The rose arbour. It doesn't always look like this (above). There are times it looks like this (below):

Do you see that furry ball? That's a brave cat who forged a path through the snow down the steps and is about to disappear under the deck. It's this cat:

Outsmarting the cats — or so we think

The cats have had their flea treatment. They're supposed to get it once a month but we're usually not quite so conscientious.

It's not a pleasant procedure although there are plenty of things that are a lot worse. Taking the cats to the vet, for example, is a nightmare. Every time we do it, I swear, "I'll never do that again! Someone else will have to be responsible!"

They're both big and they're both ornery — when it comes to the vet — and they have to be transported in separate carriers. Unfortunately, getting either one of them caged up can't be done in secret so someone has to catch and hold one of them while the other is being wrestled into the carrier. Once one is confined, the other — by now in a state of extreme hostility — knows his fate but he doesn't surrender easily.

Oh, it's awful.

Look at those faces. It hardly seems possible to believe what they put us through.

These are rare pictures from last year. Because they don't like each other much, it's unusual to catch them together like this.

Doing the flea treatment isn't nearly as torturous but it's no fun. First of all, those cats are smart and they have long memories. The treatment is kept in a small drawer in the dining room, a drawer that isn't opened often. When the drawer is opened, four kitty ears perk right up and suddenly, in a streak, they're gone — upstairs or to the basement or somewhere out of reach. We know that now so we outsmart them by taking the treatment out and unwrapping it the day before we plan to use it. No auditory clues.

We do Junior first. He's younger and in some ways, more easily handled, but he really minds this procedure. He takes it as a personal insult and he holds it against us for a day or two. This treatment is administered by breaking a small vial and letting the fluid make contact with skin on the back of the cat's neck. If you could see the amount of thick fur on the back of Junior's neck, you'd understand the challenge of finding skin under there.

It's my job to hold the respective cats because I have the stern resolve. No, you're not getting away and that's that. I hold the front paws and the back paws together tightly and that does seem to render them immobile. Dan parts the hair on the back of the neck and administers the fluid. William was here this time so he was available to talk soothingly and be reassuring. You can tell the dose is complete when the cat can taste the medicine and that's almost instantly.

Grizzly was pretty good this time — he accepted the medicine and acted almost normal. Junior disappeared. He reappeared briefly when he heard me dispensing kitty treats but he declined to take part in the late evening ritual. He stood in the hall scowling at me and made it very clear that he did not want to be friends.

However, things are getting back to normal. We had a snowstorm today so the cats didn't go outside. I had a cozy fire burning and they both happily curled up near me and every now and then, one or the other would start to purr. Just long enough to remind me they were there and then back to dozing off. They feel good.

The treatment they get, recommended by their vet, is called Advantage.

Living it up, cat-style

Our couch is old and worn and when we want it to look a little nicer, we spread a lovely Nova Scotia tartan blanket over it. The blanket belonged to Dan's late Mom so it's sentimental as well as just being good to look at it.

We often use the lovely blanket when we have people coming over but the cats – Grizzly and Junior – don't know that. As far as they're concerned, lovely blankets spread on the couch are for cats' pleasure and enjoyment. They often watch in anticipation as the humans are spreading the blanket and as soon as it's in place, so are they.

(Don't forget to click on the pictures to see the big ones.)

These cats don't particularly like each other but when there's common cause – a comfy not-every-day nap space – they're willing to tolerate each other.

They seem to have become aware of the photographer so they go into pose mode.

"Look at me. Do you think I have enough fur? Do you think I'm beautiful?"

And then, when we're ready to take the blanket off and fold it up until next time and we've obediently waited for the cats to decamp, we find that one of them is not finished yet. Grizzly has tucked under to have one more nap.