My girl Spooky passed away on October 27, 2015. She was only seven but had a serious heart condition, diagnosed just this past April. Her heart was surrounded by and her lungs were full of fluid. Her breathing capacity was seriously reduced and her heart very strained by the condition. I believe she passed reasonably comfortably of a heart attack. I found her dead on the floor of my apartment when I came home from work. She didn’t look terribly distressed. I am still sad.
She was a very cheerful, loving cat who I got in July of 2012 through a friend who works at a veterinarian hospital. Spooky, nee Pookie, had been in a house fire, dropped off at the hospital, and abandoned. Her ears and her paws were slightly burned in the fire. I think that the family lost their whole house and their dog on the fire. I guess I can understand, to a certain extent, abandoning the cat.
Pookie, who I had to rename Spooky, and I bonded immediately. I was told by the vets that she was seven years old and spayed. I came to realize that she had not been spayed because she was crazy in heat every four weeks. When I took her in for her year after checkup, another vet told me she definitely had not been spayed and, by the looks of her teeth, only four years old. I had her spayed and we moved on.
The things I will remember most of her are the way she behaved when she was in heat. Her bodily contortions were hilarious. Early on, she could jump higher than any cat I have known. I caught her on top of the bathroom door once. In general she loved to have her head and ears rubbed…the ears I think because of the burn scar tissue. Even up to the very end, she would meet me at the door when I came home, her tail upright and quivering in anticipation of that first caress. In her last few months, she would get right up on the bed when my alarm when off, lie down stretched out along my arm by my head and wait for me to scratch her head.
Spooky never wanted any special toys. She would play in a box and/or with any kind of string forever. The laser pointer was a special favorite. One thing I never understood and have had explained to me was how unstable she could be her hind legs. Just a light push on her hips or a sleep on my leg or the arm of the sofa and her back end would fall over. Yet she could still run and jump all over the place. I miss you Spooky. You’ll always be in my heart and in my prayers.
