Trouble's Story:
Her journey with us started on a June day in 2000. Charles Scarborough and I were walking to the store and heard what was obviously a cat in serious distress. We tracked the sound to a neighbor's car that was parked in their driveway. When the husband and wife came out we realized that the wailing was coming from inside the hood of his car. He popped the hood and we discovered a tiny ball of grease and grime howling for dear life. She had somehow gotten into the hood and got stuck in the engine. We never did figure out how she got there. The husband and I managed to extricate her. It was not their cat and the wife said they did not want it because she was highly allergic to cats. So we took the little grease ball home, cleaned it up, and found the most adorable white kitten, about 6 to 8 weeks old, not much bigger than my hand, with one blue eye and one green eye. We named her Engine Trouble Scarborough and called her Trouble. She never did get very big and up until she really started showing her age most people thought she was about 6 months old.
Our cat Angel was not too pleased with the new addition to the family. She refused to even look at me for at least a week. Any time I walked into a room where she was, she completely turned her back to me and stuck her nose up in the air. Eventually she got used to the little intruder but never really warmed up to her. Trouble would bounce and trot after Angel wanting her to play, but Angel of course was having none of it. It reminded me of the title of an old movie, "Where Angels Go Trouble Follows"...If Trouble wasn't dogging Angel's footsteps she was in my lap getting cuddled and kissed. I started taking her in to sleep with me at night. One night I woke up to find her licking my face all over. That quickly became one of her favorite activities, sometimes she would lick me so hard my face would start to feel raw. Our other favorite activity started when her head was just under my chin and I started nuzzling the top of her head. Pretty soon, if I didn't chin nuzzle her in a timely manner, she would stick her head up under my chin and nuzzle my chin with the top of her head.
Eventually she gave up on Angel and took up permanent residence on my lap and in my arms,licking and nuzzling the whole time. I called her my "feline soul mate." I have never bonded so closely or felt so much love from any other animal, and not even from most people, for that matter.
She would do the funniest little things sometimes. I kept her toys in a basket by the fireplace in the living room. One day she took all her toys out and lined them up,nosed around at them, and then walked away. A bit later I picked up the toys and put them back in the basket. Shortly after that Trouble came back in the room and took the toys out again. Once again she lined them up...int he exact same order she had arranged them before. When she did it yet a third time I realized that she was doing it deliberately, although I had no idea why.
She had her share of misadventures. The first Christmas after she came into our lives, we spent Christmas Eve night with our friends Ginny Sulllivan Romo and her son Joseph. I brought Trouble with us. At the time, Ginny lived in a house that had a creek running behind it. Well, sometime that evening Trouble went missing. I could just imagine her falling into the creek and getting swept away and/or drowning. I was heartbroken. She did surface eventually...she had worked her way down into the crack between Ginny's sofa cushions and the back of the couch and gone to sleep! Another time when I thought she had disappeared, I found her in my dryer that I had accidentally left open.
When we moved from Georgia to Daytona Beach,we put Angel and Trouble in carriers on the floor of the U-Haul truck and brought them with us. We spent the first few weeks here with friends, during which time we discovered that Trouble was pregnant. She had three beautiful babies, two solid black and one solid white that looked just like its mama. At the time I had Trouble and her babies in a soft-sided carrier and she tore a large hole in one end and was constantly moving and hiding her babies. I ended up having to put her in a hard carrier that she couldn't break out of! We found homes for the white one and one of the black ones and kept the other black one. We called him Bagheera, after the Jungle Book panther. At 4 or 5 months old, Bagheera had to be put to sleep after an accident left his spinal cord severed. We were never sure what happened, only that he must have gotten out of the house when we left for work and school. He was fine that morning but when we got home that evening he couldn't stand or walk. After Bagheera was gone, Trouble started picking up Charles's socks off the floor and carrying them around to hiding places, like they were her babies!
During that time, a beautiful female calico came into our lives. Charles named her Goddess and she quickly became part of the family. Goddess and Trouble became good friends and played together and slept together. And even though Trouble was about a year older than Goddess, Goddess babied Trouble and was constantly grooming her, just as Trouble was constantly "grooming" me. I loved watching those two interact.
Trouble was also very timid around most people, even people she knew and especially people she didn't. When just about anyone would come into the house she would run and hide; sometimes she would come out gradually and other times she would not come out until they left. One exception to this was when my good friend Shaun Dillon Doria came to visit. Shaun is not a cat person at all and Trouble was bound and determined to make her one. She jumped into Shaun's lap and made herself right at home. I do appreciate irony!
That changed somewhat when we moved to our apartment near the beach. We had a nice yard that the cats could get out and play in, and not much traffic so they were all outside more. Trouble at first would not go out past the front porch but eventually she became daring and started to wander and explore her new surroundings. She also became much less timid, though still very timid around strangers. Except for Steve Harding. We had just started seeing each other and the first time he came in and sat down on my sofa she jumped up into his lap with no coaxing from him, curled up and went to sleep. She told me, in her own way, that this man was something special and I better hold on to him!
Of course, as we all do, our cats started showing their age. About a year and a half ago Angel became ill suddenly and started losing weight. She died less than a week later, but thankfully it was a peaceful passing. We buried her in the back yard and the sister of a neighbor who had died a week before gave me one of her plants to put at Angel's burial spot. My neighbor also had two large flat cat heads that her sister also gave me. My son set them in front of the concrete block that was her "tombstone", one facing east and one facing west.
During this time I noticed that Trouble would occasionally paw frantically at her mouth and throat and growl. I just assumed she had something stuck in her teeth or throat, like a hairball. Shortly after Angel died, Trouble disappeared for two days and I could not find her anywhere. I finally located her behind a bookcase where she had been hiding the entire time. It was obvious she had not eaten and she had lost quite a bit of weight just in those two days. I also noticed that most of her bottom teeth and a few of her top teeth were missing. She was pawing her mouth and throat more frequently, as well. I took her to a vet, which shall remain nameless because I will never use that vet's services again, and they said she had oral ulcers from bad teeth wanted to remove her teeth to the tune of about $1,500. When Steve and I told them we didn't have that kind of money then, she said the best thing to do in that case would be to have her put to sleep. Steve at first was encouraging me to do it but I could not have born losing both Angel and Trouble, my two Georgia girls, within a month of each other. I did some Googling and found that honey and/or yogurt often can heal oral sores so I made a milky solution of plain Green yogurt, honey, and water. We fed her one or two syringes of the mixture every night. Although she did not return to normal she seemed to improve greatly. She got back her energy and appetite. She started eating again, usually canned cat food but occasionally the dry food we fed the other cats. Until the day it stopped working. She started spitting up the honey and the yogurt by itself seemed to have no effect any longer. We kept trying different foods and remedies and sometimes they worked, and sometimes they did not.
I finally took her to the Cat Care Clinic when I noticed a chunk missing from the left side of her tongue and that her left pupil looked like it was rolling to the back of her head. They gave me the devastating news that she had a tumor behind the left side of her face, that it was possibly cancerous, that it was pressing on the nerves on that side of her face, and that it had caused partial paralysis on that side of her face. Steve and I discussed putting off the inevitable because she still had pep in her step and was as cuddly with me as ever, even though she no longer licked on me she still did the head nuzzling with gusto. But what made us decide to go ahead and do it now rather than later was the fact that she had such difficulty eating. She put the left side of her face completely in the food, which I had to clean off when she was done. And after eating just two or three bites she got frustrated and stopped. So she was constantly hungry. And on Sunday night, her last night with us, she lost most of her pep. Her legs were a little shaky when she tried to walk and she had trouble jumping up on the sofa which she had no problem with just the day before. Sunday night I slept on the couch and cuddled her all night long. She seemed so worn out. Her breathing was so shallow that I thought she might die in her sleep. But she woke up this morning and tried to eat some tuna before it was time to leave for the Cat Care Clinic.
I have been talking to her and whispering to her and holding her and kissing her for the last week. We have been saying our goodbyes and when I saw in her eyes last night how worn out she was I knew we were doing the right thing. To have postponed it would have just been cruel and unfair to my precious furry soulmate.
We brought her home and Steve and a friend of ours buried her right next to Angel. The cat head that was facing east is now in front of Trouble's grave. When Steve has time he will paint Angel's name on hers and Trouble's name on hers, and if we ever move from here those markers will go with us.
It is a relief knowing that she is no longer in pain and suffering, and no longer hungry. But I miss her so much. She was so much more than a cat. She was my soulmate. She was my best friend. She gave me complete and total unconditional love even when it felt like no one else did. I feel so lost without my Trouble Girl, and empty. But not my heart. My heart is full of her, her love, her memories. I had her for 14 wonderful years and she made my life richer than she could ever know. And I believe I did the same thing for her.
RIP my sweet Trouble Engine Scarborough-Harding. We will be together again someday. I know it.
Her journey with us started on a June day in 2000. Charles Scarborough and I were walking to the store and heard what was obviously a cat in serious distress. We tracked the sound to a neighbor's car that was parked in their driveway. When the husband and wife came out we realized that the wailing was coming from inside the hood of his car. He popped the hood and we discovered a tiny ball of grease and grime howling for dear life. She had somehow gotten into the hood and got stuck in the engine. We never did figure out how she got there. The husband and I managed to extricate her. It was not their cat and the wife said they did not want it because she was highly allergic to cats. So we took the little grease ball home, cleaned it up, and found the most adorable white kitten, about 6 to 8 weeks old, not much bigger than my hand, with one blue eye and one green eye. We named her Engine Trouble Scarborough and called her Trouble. She never did get very big and up until she really started showing her age most people thought she was about 6 months old.
Our cat Angel was not too pleased with the new addition to the family. She refused to even look at me for at least a week. Any time I walked into a room where she was, she completely turned her back to me and stuck her nose up in the air. Eventually she got used to the little intruder but never really warmed up to her. Trouble would bounce and trot after Angel wanting her to play, but Angel of course was having none of it. It reminded me of the title of an old movie, "Where Angels Go Trouble Follows"...If Trouble wasn't dogging Angel's footsteps she was in my lap getting cuddled and kissed. I started taking her in to sleep with me at night. One night I woke up to find her licking my face all over. That quickly became one of her favorite activities, sometimes she would lick me so hard my face would start to feel raw. Our other favorite activity started when her head was just under my chin and I started nuzzling the top of her head. Pretty soon, if I didn't chin nuzzle her in a timely manner, she would stick her head up under my chin and nuzzle my chin with the top of her head.
Eventually she gave up on Angel and took up permanent residence on my lap and in my arms,licking and nuzzling the whole time. I called her my "feline soul mate." I have never bonded so closely or felt so much love from any other animal, and not even from most people, for that matter.
She would do the funniest little things sometimes. I kept her toys in a basket by the fireplace in the living room. One day she took all her toys out and lined them up,nosed around at them, and then walked away. A bit later I picked up the toys and put them back in the basket. Shortly after that Trouble came back in the room and took the toys out again. Once again she lined them up...int he exact same order she had arranged them before. When she did it yet a third time I realized that she was doing it deliberately, although I had no idea why.
She had her share of misadventures. The first Christmas after she came into our lives, we spent Christmas Eve night with our friends Ginny Sulllivan Romo and her son Joseph. I brought Trouble with us. At the time, Ginny lived in a house that had a creek running behind it. Well, sometime that evening Trouble went missing. I could just imagine her falling into the creek and getting swept away and/or drowning. I was heartbroken. She did surface eventually...she had worked her way down into the crack between Ginny's sofa cushions and the back of the couch and gone to sleep! Another time when I thought she had disappeared, I found her in my dryer that I had accidentally left open.
When we moved from Georgia to Daytona Beach,we put Angel and Trouble in carriers on the floor of the U-Haul truck and brought them with us. We spent the first few weeks here with friends, during which time we discovered that Trouble was pregnant. She had three beautiful babies, two solid black and one solid white that looked just like its mama. At the time I had Trouble and her babies in a soft-sided carrier and she tore a large hole in one end and was constantly moving and hiding her babies. I ended up having to put her in a hard carrier that she couldn't break out of! We found homes for the white one and one of the black ones and kept the other black one. We called him Bagheera, after the Jungle Book panther. At 4 or 5 months old, Bagheera had to be put to sleep after an accident left his spinal cord severed. We were never sure what happened, only that he must have gotten out of the house when we left for work and school. He was fine that morning but when we got home that evening he couldn't stand or walk. After Bagheera was gone, Trouble started picking up Charles's socks off the floor and carrying them around to hiding places, like they were her babies!
During that time, a beautiful female calico came into our lives. Charles named her Goddess and she quickly became part of the family. Goddess and Trouble became good friends and played together and slept together. And even though Trouble was about a year older than Goddess, Goddess babied Trouble and was constantly grooming her, just as Trouble was constantly "grooming" me. I loved watching those two interact.
Trouble was also very timid around most people, even people she knew and especially people she didn't. When just about anyone would come into the house she would run and hide; sometimes she would come out gradually and other times she would not come out until they left. One exception to this was when my good friend Shaun Dillon Doria came to visit. Shaun is not a cat person at all and Trouble was bound and determined to make her one. She jumped into Shaun's lap and made herself right at home. I do appreciate irony!
That changed somewhat when we moved to our apartment near the beach. We had a nice yard that the cats could get out and play in, and not much traffic so they were all outside more. Trouble at first would not go out past the front porch but eventually she became daring and started to wander and explore her new surroundings. She also became much less timid, though still very timid around strangers. Except for Steve Harding. We had just started seeing each other and the first time he came in and sat down on my sofa she jumped up into his lap with no coaxing from him, curled up and went to sleep. She told me, in her own way, that this man was something special and I better hold on to him!
Of course, as we all do, our cats started showing their age. About a year and a half ago Angel became ill suddenly and started losing weight. She died less than a week later, but thankfully it was a peaceful passing. We buried her in the back yard and the sister of a neighbor who had died a week before gave me one of her plants to put at Angel's burial spot. My neighbor also had two large flat cat heads that her sister also gave me. My son set them in front of the concrete block that was her "tombstone", one facing east and one facing west.
During this time I noticed that Trouble would occasionally paw frantically at her mouth and throat and growl. I just assumed she had something stuck in her teeth or throat, like a hairball. Shortly after Angel died, Trouble disappeared for two days and I could not find her anywhere. I finally located her behind a bookcase where she had been hiding the entire time. It was obvious she had not eaten and she had lost quite a bit of weight just in those two days. I also noticed that most of her bottom teeth and a few of her top teeth were missing. She was pawing her mouth and throat more frequently, as well. I took her to a vet, which shall remain nameless because I will never use that vet's services again, and they said she had oral ulcers from bad teeth wanted to remove her teeth to the tune of about $1,500. When Steve and I told them we didn't have that kind of money then, she said the best thing to do in that case would be to have her put to sleep. Steve at first was encouraging me to do it but I could not have born losing both Angel and Trouble, my two Georgia girls, within a month of each other. I did some Googling and found that honey and/or yogurt often can heal oral sores so I made a milky solution of plain Green yogurt, honey, and water. We fed her one or two syringes of the mixture every night. Although she did not return to normal she seemed to improve greatly. She got back her energy and appetite. She started eating again, usually canned cat food but occasionally the dry food we fed the other cats. Until the day it stopped working. She started spitting up the honey and the yogurt by itself seemed to have no effect any longer. We kept trying different foods and remedies and sometimes they worked, and sometimes they did not.
I finally took her to the Cat Care Clinic when I noticed a chunk missing from the left side of her tongue and that her left pupil looked like it was rolling to the back of her head. They gave me the devastating news that she had a tumor behind the left side of her face, that it was possibly cancerous, that it was pressing on the nerves on that side of her face, and that it had caused partial paralysis on that side of her face. Steve and I discussed putting off the inevitable because she still had pep in her step and was as cuddly with me as ever, even though she no longer licked on me she still did the head nuzzling with gusto. But what made us decide to go ahead and do it now rather than later was the fact that she had such difficulty eating. She put the left side of her face completely in the food, which I had to clean off when she was done. And after eating just two or three bites she got frustrated and stopped. So she was constantly hungry. And on Sunday night, her last night with us, she lost most of her pep. Her legs were a little shaky when she tried to walk and she had trouble jumping up on the sofa which she had no problem with just the day before. Sunday night I slept on the couch and cuddled her all night long. She seemed so worn out. Her breathing was so shallow that I thought she might die in her sleep. But she woke up this morning and tried to eat some tuna before it was time to leave for the Cat Care Clinic.
I have been talking to her and whispering to her and holding her and kissing her for the last week. We have been saying our goodbyes and when I saw in her eyes last night how worn out she was I knew we were doing the right thing. To have postponed it would have just been cruel and unfair to my precious furry soulmate.
We brought her home and Steve and a friend of ours buried her right next to Angel. The cat head that was facing east is now in front of Trouble's grave. When Steve has time he will paint Angel's name on hers and Trouble's name on hers, and if we ever move from here those markers will go with us.
It is a relief knowing that she is no longer in pain and suffering, and no longer hungry. But I miss her so much. She was so much more than a cat. She was my soulmate. She was my best friend. She gave me complete and total unconditional love even when it felt like no one else did. I feel so lost without my Trouble Girl, and empty. But not my heart. My heart is full of her, her love, her memories. I had her for 14 wonderful years and she made my life richer than she could ever know. And I believe I did the same thing for her.
RIP my sweet Trouble Engine Scarborough-Harding. We will be together again someday. I know it.
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