R.I.P. Ashley 1987-2010

Sometime in September of 1987, I had an early morning appointment at the Salem, Virginia, VA hospital. I was parked out in the boonies lot, way out by the field that separated the VA campus from the main road. I was locking the car when I heard a tiny little meow, very insistent. Coming across the wet grass was this tiny, flea-bitten kitten, barely taller than the grass itself. She had so much flea dirt on her that I didn't know just then that she had a white bib, as you can certainly tell in this picture, taken in November of 1991.

I scooped her up, afraid she'd get run over in the parking lot, and took her in with me to my appointment. The nurses were kind enough to keep her while I saw the doctor and went to the pharmacy, and when I came back, she was feasting on someone's lunch.

I took her directly to our vet, because we had two other cats at the time, and it turned out that the vet was having some publicity stills taken for her new location. Somewhere, I still have the flyer with vet holding baby Ashley, who looked very bewildered at the time. I hope I can find it.

Ashley moved with us from Virginia to Iowa, where she loved the big house we had, and once caught a bat that had the misfortune of getting inside the house. We heard her racing up and down the hall upstairs, and suddenly she came running down the stairs, with something in her mouth. I thought it was a mouse. No, she had managed to swat this bat out of the air, and proudly brought it down to show us.

She moved again with us to Arkansas, to the temporary rent house. There, she and the Iowa barn cats we had picked up along the way loved to sit on top of the packing boxes and watch the birds. Our move to this house was a good one for her, and she spent many an hour sunning in the windows.

Once Dan retired, Ashley became his shadow. Anywhere he went, she was right behind him. In the past few months, we had seen her begin to slow down. She was rather deaf and pretty much blind, but she still could find the food bowl, no problem. All the way until last night. During the night, I heard her calling in a strange way, and when I went to check on her, she was sort of wandering around.

Dan and I went to a Memorial Day service downtown, and when we came home, Ashley was acting very strangely. She began to drool, and suddenly appeared to have no idea what was going on around her. We knew in our hearts this was it. I called our wonderful vet, and he met us at his office within minutes. Ashley had begun to have some convulsions, and by the time we were in the office, the vet said she was having neurological problems. We hugged her and said our goodbyes, and after she was still, we wrapped her in a blankie for Dr. Reed to take final care of her.

When a little cat like this has been a part of your life for so long, it's really hard to let go. Ashley, we loved you dearly. We will always remember you sitting still as a statue on the steps, not moving until we called your name, and you'd say "Hmmm?"

Ceiling Cat has certainly been waiting for you at the Purrly Gates. You earned it, sweetheart.

The Big Red Cat ???-February 22, 2010

We adopted Ringo as a grown cat. His previous owner had been elderly, and after he had a major stroke, could no longer live at home, and the man's son-in-law was the guy we bought our bulk cat litter from. Since he knew we were cat lovers, he called and asked if we had room for one more. They didn't have any idea how old he was, nor did they know his name.

When they brought this big ginger tom to us, he hid under a bed for about two weeks until he became confident enough to sit in my mother's lap. We decided to call him Ringo, for the vivid rings on his thick tail. He soon blended in with the rest of the family.

Toby and Ringo became best buddies. (That's them on the header of this blog, Ringo on the right.) They liked to sleep on my bed with me, and Ringo took up the habit of sleeping under the covers by my legs. Great on a cold winter night, not so good in the summer!

I run a tabletop fan in the summertime, and for some reason, Ringo liked to get behind it and rub on the cage in the back. I always wondered if he liked the sound of himself purring into the fan. I'd shoo him off there, and he'd go right back.

The Big Red Cat, as he became known, loved my friend Kathryn. When she'd come to visit, he'd immediately flop onto his back for a tummy rub. She was always one of his favorite people, and he was always glad to oblige her for a tummy skritch.

Over the past year, Ringo began to go into decline, losing a lot of weight, and having very frequent problems with his sinuses. It became apparent that he must be older than we thought, probably in his upper teens. He recently started hiding for extended periods in boxes and under the bathroom sink, and he lost interest in grooming himself. A few nights ago, he sat on the kitchen counter and called almost continually for 20 minutes or so, making me feel like he was in some pain. He was a talker, but not a yowler.

This weekend, he began to throw up a lot, and sometimes it was bloody. He was peeing places he shouldn't. He was eating, but without his usual gusto, and drinking tons of water. All signs that things were going downhill quickly. I called the vet around 2pm, and made an appointment for 3:30.

We consulted with the vet, and he told us that the best we could do would be to make him comfortable, as Ringo was showing signs of his kidneys shutting down. It could be two days, two weeks, two months, but the end was near. I could not honestly let him get any further down. About a quarter of four, we said goodbye and wrapped him in a soft red blanket.

We loved you dearly, you Big Red Cat.

RIP Riley 1994-2010

One of the sweetest, goofiest cats that ever was crossed that proverbial Rainbow Bridge today. Dan and I held him in our arms as our vet administered the injection. Riley never squirmed or even grumbled in the least. Man, are we ever going to miss this little fuzzy guy.

Riley and his brother Jake were born in an Iowa barn on July 4, 1994. I had placed a notice on the bulletin board at work: Free Home to a Good Cat. Before noon, I had a dozen or so offers, but most of them were for older cats, and we wanted a kitten. The winner was the guy who came to my house the next Saturday morning, a cat carrier in hand and his young daughter in tow. They set the carrier down on our front lawn, and out raced this tan and white kitten, straight into the bushes. The little girl chased after him. "Come back here, Riley!" she scolded, and grabbed him. Riley immediately started sucking on her fingers. "He likes to do this," she said.

"He looks like a Riley," I said, and the name stuck. They had brought three kittens, from two litters both born on the 4th. We didn't want to separate Riley and his littermate, but we couldn't take on THREE kittens, so we kept the brothers. It took us several days to come up with a name for Jake.

Riley and Jake moved with us to Arkansas in the spring of 1995. It was some time after we moved into the house we have now that we heard a strange noise coming from my sewing room. I jumped out of bed to find Riley in the hallway, blood pouring out of his mouth. I thought he had swallowed a needle or something, but it turned out he had gotten tangled up in the thread on my sewing machine, somehow got it in his mouth and wrapped around his tongue. It frightened him; he jumped off, and it nearly cut his tongue in two. We called our vet (these things never happen during the day, or during the week), and Dr. Reed rushed in and performed emergency surgery to save Riley and his almost severed tongue. From that point on, when Riley yawned, his tongue curled up a little sideways. Just one of his endearing traits.

Riley got along with everyone. He was a laid-back dude. Long and lanky, very muscular in his heyday, Riley had the downiest fur I've ever felt on a short-haired cat. He still liked to suck on your hand, up until about a year ago, when he began to have problems with his thyroid and would have ulcers in his throat. We gave him pills and steroid shots, but his decline soon began to show. He began to have trouble eating, and his jaws would grind, almost like he had TMJ or something when he ate. He began to have trouble keeping food down, and he lost down to just over five pounds.

He maintained his good humor right up to the end. Last night, he couldn't keep anything down, and Dan held him in his lap most of the night. We didn't sleep at all last night, knowing that it would be our last with the old boy. We cuddled him the best we knew how, and at about a quarter of eight this morning, we wrapped him in a soft blankie for the last time.

You had a good run, Riley. I hope Ceiling Cat has already met you at the Purrly Gates with a dish of stinkyfish gooshy food and a bag of catnip. We loved you, son.

Bogey

A lot of catching up to do

I'll have to get my pages done for the first six weeks of the year, and catch this blog up to date.

Meanwhile, I have a new camera (Yay!), and here are some pics from the past week:

My friend Kitty, who just got some cool new glasses.



Kitty's cat, Dinah, such a sweetie.


Riley and Toby, snuggled up next to me on the bed.


Toby Wan Kenobi


"Urban Still Life"

Trading cards

Tonight I decided to play around some more with some collaged art cards I've been working on. This group has some pages from old dictionaries and other books used as the background, then some random scenes literally torn from old, non-collector grade comics (stuff from the 25 cent bins at comic fairs). Don't worry, no rare books were sacrificed for these mini-collages that are the size of baseball cards, 2.5" x 3.5".

I worked on them tonight, adding some rubber-stamped textures, some words to go with the theme on the dictionary page background, and some brailled words on clear Dymo label tape to add 3-D texture to them. I'm still not done. They are really fun to make.

Bestest buddies

Tonight's photo, featuring Harley grooming his buddy Bogey.

I'm in a much better mood now than I was Friday. These two characters help.

Comfy

These are the pictures from Jan 10. There's nothing like snuggling under a down comforter, right, Riley?



A second shot, this time playing with the angled strokes filter in Photoshop for a painterly effect.

Broken

It's been a bad weekend, so I'm catching up on my blog. This is Friday, the 9th's pic. How I felt after I found out my college classes for braille textbook transcribing had been canceled. I went all the way past bent out of shape to broken. Too shaken up to even be in focus. This photo of a plain old no. 2 pencil has been manipulated in Photoshop Elements with the watercolor filter and a couple of layer changes.