Crazy Cat Update

Last year when I lost my cousin, I inherited a cat. She was very very very scared of anyone. For awhile I thought we were going to have to give up and take her to the shelter. I didn't want to do that, but thought maybe she would be better off with someone else.

I'm glad we didn't, although she hid from us for TWO MONTHS. Finally she started coming out. Little by little we made friends. She's still not a very friendly cat, she has very limited petting tolerance but will sit for hours on my lap as I discovered one day when I wasn't feeling well and spent my day on the couch. 

One of Judy's friends got Judy a fluffy fleece blanket, and the cat fell in love. So that was one way we tried to coax her out/ Nothing seemed to work. I haven't been too great with cats, I'm more of a dog lover. They are way more predictable, you know where you stand, and you can go on walks.

I never thought a CAT could be leash trained, but she kept trying to escape to outside, and she was declawed in the life before Judy had her, and she's somewhere around 10 to 15 years old and we have lots of fighting cats around here so I wasn't comfortable just letting her out. So we got a harness and leash!! To my absolute surprise she didn't fight it, and we now go on walks. Not like dog walks where the human decides where you're going, but the cat version, where the cat decides. 

If you're old enough, you'll remember a song that goes with this.  

 "Walking my Cat Named Dog" by Norma Tanega. 1966

True story song. Norma moved to a New York apartment where dogs weren't allowed, so she got a cat and named it Dog. 

"Dog is a good old cat

People what you think of that

That's where I'm at..."

Losing my cousin...

 We've had an off and on kind of relationship, we both had very busy lives for a long time, me raising kids then working full time and her having a full social life while working full time. We lived together off and on growing up, and we kind of shared parents, since I got along better with her mom, and she got along better with mine! 

After she retired, we talked more often, and then I retired too, but COVID hit. We got together occasionally, but mostly phone conversations. She came to see me Thanksgiving 2023 but refused 2024. I didn't think much about it, but it might have been a clue if I had been looking for one.

A friend of hers called me and said she didn't think my cousin was telling me the truth about how she was doing. She was right. She could hardly stand. So we worked on convincing her to go to the doctor. But she kept refusing. I understand, I'm not great about going either. She finally decided to go.

She got diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in February. That's how my husband and I celebrated Valentine's Day this year, in a hospital waiting room for 12 hours! She was there for a few days, but it was clear she wasn't going to be able to go home. A few days later, she was transferred to a care home, where she stayed until she died in early April. 

Sad because she's gone, glad she's not in pain. Sad because I can't call her, or be with her, or sit by her bed, or sing to her, or any of the things I've been doing with her the past 2 months. 

But she left me her computer, so I'm back on the blog. 

That's life, sad, sad, glad, sad, glad. They exist together. 

Then there's the cat (the black one. She lost her sister last year). She is still terrified and hiding. Yesterday and today she didn't run as fast, or hide as deeply. We may come to some kind of a truce at worst and become friends at best. Time will tell. The bad part is how scared she is without her sister or her mama. The good part is her name is Boots, same as the last Tuxedo we had. I won't call her the wrong name...