In September, I lost my cat at nearly 16-years-old. My time with her was filled with its ups and its downs. She was always overweight, morbidly obese even. I rather naively trusted my vet's opinion through my teen years and even into my early twenties. So she was fed their prescription diet, and when the normal one wasn't working enough they told me to switch the weight management one, which also (surprise!) didn't work at all. As she got older I finally got fed up and tried taking her to other vets for their opinions, where I was given a long string of 'some cats are just fat' and 'just feed her less' responses.
So, as she went downhill I did more research and obviously found a lot of information that none of my vets had bothered to tell me. That maybe she shouldn't have been eating their carb-filled dry foods ever. I switched her over to canned food, but by that point it was obviously already too late.
I took her death incredibly hard. She was really my first cat, in the way that she was the first cat I really bonded with. I wasn't a cat person before I had her, or even in the early years that I had her but before I knew it I didn't even really think of her as a pet. I honestly can't really explain how much she meant to me without resorting to a bunch of weird disjointed memories of our time together. She slept by my head every night, wasn't afraid to tell me at length just how displeased she was with me at any given moment, stole my pillows and blankets and sweaters to make nests in.
I just felt so terrible after she died, because I had failed her. I couldn't even properly feed my own cat and she suffered for it.
So for months I couldn't so much as look at other cats. I'm not entirely sure what changed, perhaps it was the bad holiday season I had coupled with the bad string of weather that surrounded that time that made everything about a million times worse(we lost a family member, went and prepared a funeral for them that we ultimately couldn't even attend due to white-out conditions). I just wanted another cat. I felt like I could do it better this time. So I started to search for my future cat while researching as best I could.
I figured it was going to take me for forever to find a new cat. I was incredibly picky as I went through rescues and ads. I decided that I wanted another siamese mix going in, that was what my old girl was and I just love the blue eyes and the personalities that I have seen from them. My new cat had to be female, there was no compromise possible there, I have never bonded well with a male cat. Then I got even pickier and really wanted one with torti-like-markings. Added on to the fact that I wanted one that felt right to me, so kittens were kind of off of the table (though I did ooo and ahh over many a kitten picture these last few weeks that nearly made me give up on that thought! Good thing I stuck to my original decision).
About three weeks into my search I saw this picture:
I'm not sure why I focused on her. There had been other cats that had the look that I wanted that I had ultimately dismissed. Even her brief, generic blurb was a bit disappointing. It listed her as shy and would take time to adjust to new people/situations. I took a day, figured by the morning such a beautiful cat would be adopted and long gone. But she wasn't. So we packed ourselves into the car the next morning and drove the hour to the humane society, then got lost and managed to turn it into a nearly two hour trip (in nearly -40C weather, haha).
I expected to come home cat-less so I didn't even bother bringing a cat carrier with me. I expected this to just be one trip of many to meet a new cat until I found the right one. We arrived at the humane society, got lost looking for the cats, managed to get inside and suited up and went inside of her room. She was talkative, she wanted us to pick her up and love her immediately. We spent some time with her and loved her. So, we adopted her. Yet even then I was a bit apprehensive. I wasn't entirely sure how she would react when we got home, or even the days/weeks after that.
So we did get home. There was no change. She explored every inch of her room, didn't hide at all. She talked and she sat beside me and she came when I called her. As we let her out to explore more of the house she just followed me around wherever I went. As more days go by she still acts 100% the same, we're nearly a week into this thing and I hope this is how she is forever.
(Yeesh! Sorry that got so long!)
So, as she went downhill I did more research and obviously found a lot of information that none of my vets had bothered to tell me. That maybe she shouldn't have been eating their carb-filled dry foods ever. I switched her over to canned food, but by that point it was obviously already too late.
I took her death incredibly hard. She was really my first cat, in the way that she was the first cat I really bonded with. I wasn't a cat person before I had her, or even in the early years that I had her but before I knew it I didn't even really think of her as a pet. I honestly can't really explain how much she meant to me without resorting to a bunch of weird disjointed memories of our time together. She slept by my head every night, wasn't afraid to tell me at length just how displeased she was with me at any given moment, stole my pillows and blankets and sweaters to make nests in.
I just felt so terrible after she died, because I had failed her. I couldn't even properly feed my own cat and she suffered for it.
So for months I couldn't so much as look at other cats. I'm not entirely sure what changed, perhaps it was the bad holiday season I had coupled with the bad string of weather that surrounded that time that made everything about a million times worse(we lost a family member, went and prepared a funeral for them that we ultimately couldn't even attend due to white-out conditions). I just wanted another cat. I felt like I could do it better this time. So I started to search for my future cat while researching as best I could.
I figured it was going to take me for forever to find a new cat. I was incredibly picky as I went through rescues and ads. I decided that I wanted another siamese mix going in, that was what my old girl was and I just love the blue eyes and the personalities that I have seen from them. My new cat had to be female, there was no compromise possible there, I have never bonded well with a male cat. Then I got even pickier and really wanted one with torti-like-markings. Added on to the fact that I wanted one that felt right to me, so kittens were kind of off of the table (though I did ooo and ahh over many a kitten picture these last few weeks that nearly made me give up on that thought! Good thing I stuck to my original decision).
About three weeks into my search I saw this picture:
I'm not sure why I focused on her. There had been other cats that had the look that I wanted that I had ultimately dismissed. Even her brief, generic blurb was a bit disappointing. It listed her as shy and would take time to adjust to new people/situations. I took a day, figured by the morning such a beautiful cat would be adopted and long gone. But she wasn't. So we packed ourselves into the car the next morning and drove the hour to the humane society, then got lost and managed to turn it into a nearly two hour trip (in nearly -40C weather, haha).
I expected to come home cat-less so I didn't even bother bringing a cat carrier with me. I expected this to just be one trip of many to meet a new cat until I found the right one. We arrived at the humane society, got lost looking for the cats, managed to get inside and suited up and went inside of her room. She was talkative, she wanted us to pick her up and love her immediately. We spent some time with her and loved her. So, we adopted her. Yet even then I was a bit apprehensive. I wasn't entirely sure how she would react when we got home, or even the days/weeks after that.
So we did get home. There was no change. She explored every inch of her room, didn't hide at all. She talked and she sat beside me and she came when I called her. As we let her out to explore more of the house she just followed me around wherever I went. As more days go by she still acts 100% the same, we're nearly a week into this thing and I hope this is how she is forever.
(Yeesh! Sorry that got so long!)
