It breaks my heart to have to start a thread here for The Mu. She was my oldest cat, my first rescue, my constant companion for the past 13 years.
The Mu's tale starts when I lived in Hokuriku, the North West part of Japan. I first saw her hanging around outside the apartment building I lived in. She was just a little thing, but when she saw me she looked right at me an meowed. It was obvious she needed help. I started feeding her and a few days later her mother and another female cat appeared too. At that time I called her Little Cat, the female cat she was still nursing from was Mummy Cat and the other female Nechan, older sister. I named a big, one eyed ginger boy who must have been her father Ginger Tom
I didn't know anything about feral cats or TNR then. If it was now I would have started trapping and getting them all fixed right away. But it was December, Little Cat only seemed to be a few months old and my main concern was not getting caught feeding them. The apartment building we lived in had a strict No Pets policy and wouldn't have taken kindly to me encouraging the local cats in any way.
The three older cats never allowed me to get that close to them, but by March Little Cat would let me sit right next to her while she ate. It was around then that I noticed she was getting rounder. I hadn't thought that a kitten could be pregnant, but she was. In my ignorance all I could think to do was keep feeding her and ask around for homes for her kittens. At the beginning of July I saw her feeding a litter of six in an over grown lot behind the apartment building. I don't want to go into too much detail about what happened next. It was a week of calling any society I thought might help, asking everyone I knew if they would take a kitten, trying to coax the family into carriers or somehow pick up a kitten as slowly, one by one, the kittens all died.
I was absolutely heart broken. I found the last kitten dead in the car park under our apartment on the morning of July 7. The Little Cat disappeared that day too.
A few evenings later I noticed her lying under a parked car. I called to her and tried to coax her out, but she didn't get up. I'd never touched her before, but I decided to get a carrier, crawl under the car and drag her out. She was too weak to put up much of a fight. Her whole belly was one big open wound.
We managed to find an ER vet and took her there straight away. The vet thought she must have had mastitis, but the infection was so bad she'd lost a lot of tissue from her abdomen. They warned us then she would probably die, but they did surgery on her to cut away the infected tissue and stabilize her as best they could. The next few weeks were tough. She had to stay at the clinic and under went several more surgeries. Miraculously the IV feedings and antibiotics worked and after about a week she was able to stand and eat on her own.
After two weeks we were able to bring her home and start socializing her. It took a while, but because she was still a kitten I played with her a lot to get her used to people coming closer to her.
I was just so amazed that she had pulled through. I promised her I'd take care of her for ever more. I wish there had been more I could have done for the rest of her family, but they were all too feral for anything other than being trapped and spayed.
After that The Little Cat's name changed to Mu, which was the sound she used to get our attention. The Mu travelled with us when we moved across Japan. First we stayed with a relative in Yamanashi City, then rented a house in Kawaguchiko and finally bought our own place up here in the mountains 8 years ago.
In spite of her rough start she was always healthy and I think The Mu had a good life. After seeing what she had gone through I got a lot more interested in caring for feral cats. I stared doing TNR and rescue. The Mu was always so tolerant of what was going on around her. Over the years she's seen several litters of foster kittens stay here until they found their forever homes and had dozens of feral cats hide out in our bathroom while they recovered from being spayed or neutered. She's had plenty of close friends too. Our family grew to 5 cats, then 12, then over 30 as I worked on getting all the neighbourhood cats fixed and the kittens into homes. For the past few years she's had her regular group of 20 forever friends to share her home and enclosure with.
I noticed that she's been slowing down a bit this summer. She still took her daily walks around the enclosure, but she mainly seemed happy to sleep upstairs with a few of her closest friends. Last Friday I spent the afternoon gardening and she came to sit outside and watch me work. Saturday morning she had a bowl of deli tuna for breakfast. In the evening my husband got home while I was still working. She sat next to him and purred while he played guitar. I can still remember him singing to her, All you need is love, Mu mu mu mu mu. At night she came upstairs and slept on the pillow next to me, the way she always did. When I woke up in the morning she was still curled up in the same place, but she'd stopped breathing. I guess she just slipped away in her sleep.
It was exactly 13 years to the day since that night I 'd first crawled under the car to grab her. The night they told us she probably wouldn't survive. So every day in between has been a gift.
Mu, my beautiful Mu! How can you be gone? You seemed so healthy and happy, I had no idea it was time for you to leave. If it hadn't been for you we wouldn't have given up our jobs in the city or moved across Japan. I wouldn't have realised how hard life was for feral cats. I probably would have never started doing what I do. You were the catalyst for all of that and I'm so grateful for you for looking after me all these years. It was a good life and it was the kind of death I'd wish for everyone I ever loved, but your passing has left a hole inside of me.
We always counted The Mu's birthday as August 23rd, which was the last day the ER vet needed to see her, but actually she probably turned 14 this June or July. So thank you Mu, for spending so much of your life with me. You'll always be in my heart.
The Mu's tale starts when I lived in Hokuriku, the North West part of Japan. I first saw her hanging around outside the apartment building I lived in. She was just a little thing, but when she saw me she looked right at me an meowed. It was obvious she needed help. I started feeding her and a few days later her mother and another female cat appeared too. At that time I called her Little Cat, the female cat she was still nursing from was Mummy Cat and the other female Nechan, older sister. I named a big, one eyed ginger boy who must have been her father Ginger Tom
I didn't know anything about feral cats or TNR then. If it was now I would have started trapping and getting them all fixed right away. But it was December, Little Cat only seemed to be a few months old and my main concern was not getting caught feeding them. The apartment building we lived in had a strict No Pets policy and wouldn't have taken kindly to me encouraging the local cats in any way.
The three older cats never allowed me to get that close to them, but by March Little Cat would let me sit right next to her while she ate. It was around then that I noticed she was getting rounder. I hadn't thought that a kitten could be pregnant, but she was. In my ignorance all I could think to do was keep feeding her and ask around for homes for her kittens. At the beginning of July I saw her feeding a litter of six in an over grown lot behind the apartment building. I don't want to go into too much detail about what happened next. It was a week of calling any society I thought might help, asking everyone I knew if they would take a kitten, trying to coax the family into carriers or somehow pick up a kitten as slowly, one by one, the kittens all died.
I was absolutely heart broken. I found the last kitten dead in the car park under our apartment on the morning of July 7. The Little Cat disappeared that day too.
A few evenings later I noticed her lying under a parked car. I called to her and tried to coax her out, but she didn't get up. I'd never touched her before, but I decided to get a carrier, crawl under the car and drag her out. She was too weak to put up much of a fight. Her whole belly was one big open wound.
We managed to find an ER vet and took her there straight away. The vet thought she must have had mastitis, but the infection was so bad she'd lost a lot of tissue from her abdomen. They warned us then she would probably die, but they did surgery on her to cut away the infected tissue and stabilize her as best they could. The next few weeks were tough. She had to stay at the clinic and under went several more surgeries. Miraculously the IV feedings and antibiotics worked and after about a week she was able to stand and eat on her own.
After two weeks we were able to bring her home and start socializing her. It took a while, but because she was still a kitten I played with her a lot to get her used to people coming closer to her.
I was just so amazed that she had pulled through. I promised her I'd take care of her for ever more. I wish there had been more I could have done for the rest of her family, but they were all too feral for anything other than being trapped and spayed.
After that The Little Cat's name changed to Mu, which was the sound she used to get our attention. The Mu travelled with us when we moved across Japan. First we stayed with a relative in Yamanashi City, then rented a house in Kawaguchiko and finally bought our own place up here in the mountains 8 years ago.
In spite of her rough start she was always healthy and I think The Mu had a good life. After seeing what she had gone through I got a lot more interested in caring for feral cats. I stared doing TNR and rescue. The Mu was always so tolerant of what was going on around her. Over the years she's seen several litters of foster kittens stay here until they found their forever homes and had dozens of feral cats hide out in our bathroom while they recovered from being spayed or neutered. She's had plenty of close friends too. Our family grew to 5 cats, then 12, then over 30 as I worked on getting all the neighbourhood cats fixed and the kittens into homes. For the past few years she's had her regular group of 20 forever friends to share her home and enclosure with.
I noticed that she's been slowing down a bit this summer. She still took her daily walks around the enclosure, but she mainly seemed happy to sleep upstairs with a few of her closest friends. Last Friday I spent the afternoon gardening and she came to sit outside and watch me work. Saturday morning she had a bowl of deli tuna for breakfast. In the evening my husband got home while I was still working. She sat next to him and purred while he played guitar. I can still remember him singing to her, All you need is love, Mu mu mu mu mu. At night she came upstairs and slept on the pillow next to me, the way she always did. When I woke up in the morning she was still curled up in the same place, but she'd stopped breathing. I guess she just slipped away in her sleep.
It was exactly 13 years to the day since that night I 'd first crawled under the car to grab her. The night they told us she probably wouldn't survive. So every day in between has been a gift.
Mu, my beautiful Mu! How can you be gone? You seemed so healthy and happy, I had no idea it was time for you to leave. If it hadn't been for you we wouldn't have given up our jobs in the city or moved across Japan. I wouldn't have realised how hard life was for feral cats. I probably would have never started doing what I do. You were the catalyst for all of that and I'm so grateful for you for looking after me all these years. It was a good life and it was the kind of death I'd wish for everyone I ever loved, but your passing has left a hole inside of me.
We always counted The Mu's birthday as August 23rd, which was the last day the ER vet needed to see her, but actually she probably turned 14 this June or July. So thank you Mu, for spending so much of your life with me. You'll always be in my heart.
What a beautiful kitty, and truly an amazing legacy.
