Miss Kitty

1999-2014

This past couple of weeks have been pretty hard for Michelle and I.  Just before we went down to the valley for the Goodguys’ Car Show, we found out that our little Maine Coon Tabby had a tumor under her tongue that was pretty much inoperable and could not be removed. We were hoping that the tumor was benign and that it would not grow to rapidly, that however was not the case, it grew fairly rapidly and by last Wednesday it had grown large enough to where she could not drink and eating had become very difficult.  On Thursday we took her to the vet where she went to sleep for the last time.

Miss Kitty was really a very special cat. She was on our back porch when we returned from being evacuated for the Rodeo-Chediski fire in June of 2002.  Apparently she had been abandoned by her owners and she had found her way to our home.

Over the next couple of months she lived under the porch and we feed her and made sure she had water. During the day she would spend time laying in the sun on our deck boxes.

When we went to the Winslow Car Show in October of 2002, Paul & Judy and Jerry & Carol came back to the house to return my trailer that Jerry had borrowed when he won a gas pump at the Run to the Pines show a week earlier. Michelle was showing Jerry & Carol around the back yard and told them about Missy Kitty who lived under the porch. Carol looked under the porch and said that we had two cats under there! Sure enough, Miss Kitty was there along with a small grey tabby kitten, which was a surprise to us. During the next week, she would bring the kitten out onto the patio and up on to the porch, and if the hawks were around she would get the kitten into the drain pipe.  We decided that we needed to catch both her and her kitten and have them both spayed, so that we wouldn’t have any more kittens. We started by sitting on the patio and using a cat toy on a string to entice the kitten out to play. In a short time we had him in the house while we worked to catch Miss Kitty, which actually wasn’t too hard. She jumped up into Michelle’s lap and let us take her into the house as well.

The next day we were off to the vet with both of them. An hour or so after we dropped them off, the vet called and told us that they couldn’t spay Miss Kitty because she was already spayed. Which of course meant that the kitten could not have been hers.  She evidently found him after someone had abandoned him and brought him to our house for us to feed. We named him Rascal and he is still with us and doing fine. It is doubtful that if Miss Kitty hadn’t found him that he would have survived in the forest.

It become obvious that Miss Kitty had been abused at some point in her life. Any fast movement or loud noise would have her heading under the closest chair or behind the couch.  As time went by she became our Sargent at Arms. Whereas at night all the other cats would sleep in our bedroom, Miss Kitty would sleep in my chair in the family room where she could watch both doors into the house and of course any goings on, on the porch – i.e. visits from the raccoon family.  She also would notify me at 10:00 PM every night that it was time for me to get up and prepare everybody’s little bedtime snack of cat food.

Every morning she would greet me when I sat down in my chair to have my morning coffee before we head out to the gym. After I sat down in my chair and I picked up my laptop, she would always jump up onto my lap between me and the computer and would sit there while I petted her and drank my coffee.

She was a great friend and she will always be in my heart with the rest of our cats and dogs that we have had over the years. Quite a special little girl who I miss dearly…