Have I told you about my cat Sweetie? I have repeated this sentence to just about anyone who has been within earshot, and for the most part, anyone who hears me say this will roll their eyes (when they think I can't see them do it) or magically find something they need to go do at the exact moment that sentence leaves my lips. It's ok tho, there is always some poor soul who hasn't been caught in the Sweetie net, and I guess for now, that will be you.
Her story isn't a happy one in the beginning, so if you are tender hearted, like me, stop reading now or get a couple of tissues; but don't worry, it all gets better by the end.
Her story doesn't start with her, it starts with my previous cat Satin. Satin came to us after the cat before her passed on. Our house was pet-less and very empty, and I could no longer stand not having a fuzzy face to look at, so I stopped at a house that had kittens advertised and looked them all over.
I watched as they all played and tumbled, and I tried to picture how each one would be if I took it home, and then it happened. Satin (who was nameless at the time) wandered over to the side of the pen and looked up at me and told me she was ready to go home. One thing you should learn now~~ my cats talk to me......yours don't talk to you? Strange. Are you really listening then?
Anyway, I was sure she was the one who was going to be my next pet friend, and seeing as we had always had cats that lived a long life, I had the same expectations for her, so, away we went, happy in the knowledge that we each had a void in our lives filled.
we named her Satin because she was so soft. She was white with different colored spots and ripples all over her, and she had beautiful wide eyes that took in everything. And she smiled. She had the most beautiful, happy look on her face, and always looked like she was smiling.
Satin was very energetic. She loved life with all she had. She never walked anywhere, always ran, everything was fair game for her sharp little claws, including my legs when she wanted to get up to the counter I was standing beside, and everything, Everything was a game to her. I watched one day when she was trying to puzzle how to get to the counter by climbing the rungs of the stool we have beside it. She would try and fail, try and fail, and then sit and look it over, then try again until finally she found the way up, and once she was there she smiled her beautiful smile as if to tell me that she knew she could do it, she just needed practice.
She was a source of anxiety, a source of frustration, and a boundless source of joy, and she lived like there would be no tomorrow.
Sadly, that came to her and us all too soon. One day, just after her first birthday, she had an upset tummy and proceeded to prove this to us on the hall carpet. This wasn't so unusual, all our cats had been indoor cats and therefore we had to deal with that type of thing, but this one day with Satin, it went further. She started panting and she wouldn't leave me. The look of happy that usually resided on her face was replaced with a new one; a look of fear, and one that was begging me to make things better.
I immediately bundled her up and took her to our vet. The vet could find nothing immediately wrong, but asked that she stay there for the night just in case. That was the longest night of my life. The next morning I called her and received the news that Satin was gravely ill. I could hear her screams in the background and immediately felt the earth tilt. I made the trip to the vet's in way less time than was legally prudent, and arrived hoping against hope that there would be something the vet would be able to do to help her, but no, Satin's heart was apparently giving out on her and there was nothing that could be done. It was a birth defect, the vet said, and it had just been a matter of time before it took her from us.
In the last few minute I had with her I tried so very hard to make her understand just how much I loved her, and how much she had meant to us. I took every ounce of love I had and tried to pour it into her frail body, so that she would leave us knowing she was loved, and finally, I gave her back to the vet so that she could be given the peace she needed.
My heart broke into very small pieces. Each one was sharp, and dug into my soul and left rips that I never thought would mend. With tears in her eyes the vet told me that Satin could never have survived; there was probably a defect from birth that caused this. She reminded me that what time was given to her had been good, she had been a happy cat, so full of joy, and yes, life. I think she packed everything she could into every minute, because I really believe she understood that her time was limited.
I also believe that satin's last act of love for us was to have this happen just at the time when another cat desperately needed a home and someone to love her.
The vet asked if I would be interested in looking, just looking mind you, at a stray that had been brought to her about two weeks previously. Even though my heart was broken, I agreed, more to keep the vet happy than anything else, and she took me to see a pathetic, skinny little tuxedo cat who was nothing but huge eyes when I first looked at her.
She immediately went to the vet and put her paws up to her chest, as if she needed the contact, and then she came over to me and did the same thing. She put her paws up on me the way a child does to a parent when they need to be picked up, and looked not into my eyes, but into my soul.
She had been a stray for about 8 months, living in a crawl space under a church, and the minister and parishioners had been feeding her, but the minister had to move away, and someone decided that she would be better off if she was given a chance for adoption, so she was taken to my vet.
The vet agreed to keep her for a week, and after that there would be 'the question' of what happens next, but once the week was over the vet couldn' bring herself to put her down. She was too loving and beautiful so she kept telling her one more day; one more day.
That 'one more day' came on the day I had to lose Satin. Even though my heart was in pieces, I looked at this new cat and I knew she would be coming home with me. She definitely needed me and I needed her too.
The vet was so pleased that she offered to have her 'fixed' for free, and also gave her her shots, just so that I would give her a home. There was no need, I knew she would be mine.
I came to get her when she was able to travel, and the vet's assistant said her good-byes, glad to see she had a home, but sad that she would be leaving. She asked me what I was going to name her, and truthfully, I hadn't given it much thought. Since she was black and white, tuxedo being the proper term, I guessed that her name would probably reflect that, and I told her so, and the assistant said that no matter what, we were getting a wonderful cat, and they would miss her a lot because she was such a 'sweetie'.
That became her name from then on, and she has lived up to it every single day we have been blessed to have her. I miss my Satin, as I miss all my cats that have passed through my life, but in retrospect, I have to think that this is the way it was meant to be, this was what was planned for us, Sweetie and I, and if things hadn't happened the way they did, I would have missed out on one of the most beautiful treasures that I have ever had the pleasure of being with.
well that is her story of how we she came to us, I have to go now and get myself a tissue, and go find my kitty and kiss her a few times.
