Alas, our ancient cat Martha had to be euthanized yesterday, because she had declined precipitously in the last couple of weeks. She had stopped taking care of herself a while ago, so that her hair gathered in little dreads (not helped by the fact that she spent approximately 23 9/10 hours out of every day curled up on a little heating pad tucked inside a little cardboard box), and she bit me if I tried to comb it (although not hard enough to hurt), but in the past week she didn't even yell for soft food when I came down in the morning, which was a real red flag. She was also struggling to get out of the little box and stumbled and fell a couple of times, so it was time. But for a while there we were convinced she would outlive us all - it was only a few months ago that she was still able to scamper and jump up on to things. As these comparatively recent pictures show, she was cute as a button well into her dotage:
(As you can see, she was always photogenic.) She certainly outlived her twin sister Pumpkin (Prudence), who bullied her (a job that Sylvester, the cat we acquired to replace her took over, although never as nastily as Pumpkin did). Perhaps the secret to Martha's longevity was her extreme smallness - she was perfectly formed but she always seemed to be a juvenile. I don't think she ever reached 3lbs in weight (which made her occasional battles with the almost-20lbs Sylvester a real David and Goliath affair, although I must say Sylvester always seemed to come off worse). I can't say she had an amazing personality - her best quality as far as I was concerned was as a lap-warmer, but I will always feel gratitude to the way she helped the young Thomas deal with bedtime anxieties. When she was but a kitten, she was given the job of staying with him (clutched in his arms) until he fell asleep. At first she resisted this, so that bedtime for Thomas was also a scour-the-house-for-that-bloody-cat affair (usually to be found up in the ceiling joists of the basement), but after a while she got used to it, and used to seek him out at bedtime long after he ceased to need the comfort. And indeed, she was Thomas's Cat, something that is evident in the third post ever on this very blog. Jami was the one who took on the task of taking her to her final repose and reports that they were very kind and had a sombre little ceremony for her. It's already strange not having her around - I keep looking into the little corner where she spent all her time the past couple of years and not finding her. It's a good thing we're not adopting her now - she would last us until we made it to 80.
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