Backyard critters

[imref]

Thanks for the support. We had made an appointment for Wednesday afternoon, but she declined further last night and we both agreed we should see if it could be today. They said they can take us at 10:00. This is going to be a brutal day in our house.

Sorry 1995hoo and family.

[Natsinpwc]

Hang in there Hoo.

[1995hoo]

Well, now I see where the euphemism "put to sleep" comes from. Afterwards, she looked like she was peacefully sound asleep on the vet's table.

Making the decision was brutal and was harder than actually having it done.

[wj73]

💔

[English Natsie]

You have shown how much you cared, for Precious, by doing the right thing by her at the end. Amazing how close we get to those little bundles of fur...

[1995hoo]

Thanks to all of you. Yesterday was a brutal day. We went to the Caps game last night and I haven't felt so disengaged from a sporting event I attended since a day in 2008 when we drove down to Charlottesville for a football game and, right as we turned in to park the car, we got a call from Florida saying Ms1995hoo's father had died. But we went to that game because she said it was pointless to turn around and drive right back home because it wouldn't do anything. Went to the Caps game last night because, frankly, playoff tickets are too expensive to leave unused. Our ticket partners were unable to go and it was too much hassle to try to sell tickets on such short notice.

The morning after is making me realize all the little things you come to take for granted when your pet is around. For several years now my morning routine has involved Precious waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and meowing to be fed, my walking around the lower two floors of the house to check her litterbox and to check for any throw-ups, feeding her, and then after breakfast sitting on the lower step to brush her for a while. It made me feel way ahead of schedule when I finished eating this morning and then I realized it was because I didn't do any of those things.

[imref]

Are you thinking about getting another cat (or two)?

[wj73]

Putting the food and water bowls away is the worst for me. It just makes it all seem so final.


Somehow getting the ashes back is comforting. It’s like they’re back home again. I know that seems silly, but somehow it helps ease the empty place in my heart when they’ve come home again.


How can the absence of such a little animal make a whole house feel empty?

[1995hoo]

Are you thinking about getting another cat (or two)?

Probably, but we're going to wait a little while for both emotional and practical reasons. As to the latter, we have some weekend trips planned this summer, so we want to wait until after those, and we also have a potential problem in that our neighbors who came over to feed Precious and check her litterbox when we did go out of town are going to be moving away. So we have to figure out what we will do in that situation. The neighbor on the other side used to help us with that (and we reciprocated for her), but we had a falling-out with her over an unrelated issue last year so she is no longer an option.

My wife was talking about another senior cat. She doesn't want kittens because our house is not really ideal for them (she has lots of plants; various breakable objects that kittens would probably knock over) and one of the things we really liked about Precious was that she was fairly calm and didn't try to jump up on things like the china cabinet or the bobblehead shelves (there are 50+ bobbleheads in the family room). I'm sort of torn because I don't want to put ourselves through this emotional wringer again in just a few years. Maybe a "less senior" senior cat might be sensible—the Alexandria animal shelter defines "senior cat" as eight years or older. Precious was 14 when we took her in, so we always knew we were going to have only a few years.

I've suggested the possibility of a bonded pair because sometimes I worried that Precious was bored during the day when I was in my home office working. She wasn't particularly into cat toys other than the motorized thing with the feather. A bonded pair would entertain each other. But finding a bonded pair of senior cats is very difficult.

[Natsinpwc]

This is why I don’t want another dog even though the wife brings it up.  We are out daughters dog most days and she is getting old also.  Gate to think of going through this with her. 

[English Natsie]

By nature, cats prefer to be solitary, so I would always go for being a one-cat household. Even in multi-cat households, the cats will establish a territorial regime whereby each cat has 'its' rooms - although squabbles will be inevitable in forcibly shared spaces, such as the hallway.

[imref]

By nature, cats prefer to be solitary, so I would always go for being a one-cat household. Even in multi-cat households, the cats will establish a territorial regime whereby each cat has 'its' rooms - although squabbles will be inevitable in forcibly shared spaces, such as the hallway.

cats actually generally do much better in pairs. Less stress, especially when left alone. Our two were inseparable until one died last year. Ever since, the other is always next to or in someone’s lap.

[English Natsie]

A useful guide...

https://icatcare.org/articles/multi-cat-households

[1995hoo]

By nature, cats prefer to be solitary, so I would always go for being a one-cat household. Even in multi-cat households, the cats will establish a territorial regime whereby each cat has 'its' rooms - although squabbles will be inevitable in forcibly shared spaces, such as the hallway.

Heh, and then you have our relatives in Broward County. They have a dog and six cats. I guess it’s a good thing that their daughter (who is 18) is still pretty naive and doesn’t understand the double entendre when I say they live in a cathouse.

They didn’t set out to have six cats. Two of them are very recent rescues, one a kitten that got trapped under the hood of a car across the street.

[Ali the Baseball Cat]

Oh man.  Sorry to hear this...I know the feeling all too well. 

[imref]

Heh, and then you have our relatives in Broward County. They have a dog and six cats. I guess it’s a good thing that their daughter (who is 18) is still pretty naive and doesn’t understand the double entendre when I say they live in a cathouse.

They didn’t set out to have six cats. Two of them are very recent rescues, one a kitten that got trapped under the hood of a car across the street.

We had a pair of unrelated rescues (M&F) growing up that we adopted around the same time. They got along fairly well and when one passed, the other went shortly after. After college I had a single cat for 18 years that adopted a friend of mine. He followed her into her apartment from the parking lot and decided he didn't want to be a stray anymore. She couldn't keep him so we took him. He made it to 18 and was a wonderful cat, very intelligent and affectionate.

After he died we waited about a month to adopt two unrelated kittens, both male. They took about a day to get used to each other and then, as I mentioned, were inseparable. They always slept next to one another, played with each other constantly, and just got along very well. We had to put one of them down at age 11 last January due to neurological issues. The other one is still going strong, but like I said, became way more clingy after he lost his brother.  We've toyed with the idea of getting another senior cat for his companionship, but we're not sure we want to deal with the additional expense and work of getting a second. I think he'll be the last one we own as we're both getting to the age where we want to be able to travel without worrying about an animal.

[1995hoo]

.... as we're both getting to the age where we want to be able to travel without worrying about an animal.

That is the thing that somewhat concerns me because the people next-door who came over to feed Precious and scoop her box when we were out of town are going to be moving away. I know there are people you can pay to come by and do that, but I'm just extremely wary and skeptical of allowing a stranger to have access to our house when we are not here.

Telecommuting (which I do pretty much full-time—I have not yet had to go into the office in 2025) makes having a pet around that much easier. It also makes the empty house that much more noticeable now.