R.I.P., dear Lil Hooter, (approx.) 1998-August 13, 2014. She was the smartest, most resourceful and resilient cat Ive ever known, and certainly the most articulate. Her real mom, Robin, left her in our care while she went to Africa to volunteer at ape sanctuaries, and Hooter has lived with us now for years. She was a rescue in New York City being passed off as a Maine Coon, supposedly from a home where the elderly residents had passed away, but she was clearly mostly Persian in face, form, and attitude. She had a bad left eye that eventually went blind, and she was missing a fang, but she retained her queenly air. She decided to escape out the back door as I was coming in with an armload of wood on New Years Eve 2010 and was gone for nearly a month during the brutal January of 2011. I did not give up, and finally, on the first sunny day at the end of January, a neighbor spotted her in a back yard and called me from the number on one of my flyers. Shed lost half her body weight but was otherwise in perfect health and gained the weight back quickly. This May, she went completely blind but quickly learned to navigate the house and still jumped up & down counters & tables (with some stairs & boxes for assistance) to demand treats and get fed out of dog-range. A few weeks ago, she stopped eating; turned out she had an eye infection that responded immediately to treatment, and once again she was back to her old self, with her voracious appetite (by this time I was hand-feeding her a lot to help her find the food), demanding to be stroked. This morning, the first sunny day in a long time, she jumped up on the counter and had a nice breakfast. I gave her a plate of Gerbers chicken baby food, which she loved. She climbed into the lounging scratch pad by the window she loved, basking in the sunshine as I took the dogs for their walk. When I got home, she was stretched out peacefully next to her spot just as the sunshine had moved away from the window. She was still warm. I think she went to the meadow of the Rainbow Bridge in the most peaceful, perfect way possible. Ill miss you so much, little cat.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 23:11:34 +0000
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