Mad Times

“To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart.” – Wendell Berry

February 12th, 2016 at 8:15 pm

Theo 1997-2016

We said goodbye to our boy Theo today. At almost 19 he did pretty well. As I said to the vet today, everything from his waist up was still working fine, but his back legs and digestive tract betrayed him in the end.

When we lost his sister in 2008 we learned that being an only cat suited him just fine. He’s always been a little neurotic, jealous of any attention lavished on other creatures that weren’t him. He was happy to have us to himself. He was a clingy cuddly furball. Always up for lap time to the point where we got him a heated bed so he would settle and not cry constantly when we weren’t doing his bidding.

We’ll miss him forever.

He was mostly either asleep or moving too fast for a camera, but here are some pictures.

Showing his personality even as a baby. All the way on the left, latched on.

His sister wasn’t so bad when they were little.

Hanging out

Sitting in boxes not big enough for him

Too fast for the camera

Just a few days ago in his heated window seat

December 27th, 2014 at 6:08 pm

lolcats

A lot of the links in my old posts about the kids showing up in lolcat image macros have aged badly.

I’ve tried to replace the broken ones with copies of the originals. I can’t find the original post of the lol for the picture of Alice reading Return of the King so Becky doesn’t have to. This picture:

But that is, as far as I can tell, the most lolled picture of our cats ever. There are currently nearly 100 different captions for that picture. Be warned, some of them are in pretty bad taste.

That one even inspired some real world imitation. We found this block print in our local gallery:

2014-12-27 17.56.21

We talked to the artist about it and amusingly she’d just found the picture on the internet and wasn’t aware the hidden human was someone she knew.

January 4th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

Cats

Presents!

I posted a batch of photos today that includes a bunch of different kitties, so hie thee to my Kitties set on Flickr for all the feline goodness.

December 20th, 2008 at 12:08 am

Most wonderful time of the year

Cat in a box full of paper

This was just a random box we got in the mail. But there’s a box with Theo’s name on it waiting for Christmas morning. I expect the box will be his favorite part of whatever’s inside.

December 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

Toilet training your cat

Charles Mingus (yes, that Charles Mingus) tells you how. Hmm… (via Making Light)

November 20th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

Alice’s third fourth lol

alice-success-lol

Original appearance here.

Previous appearences on icanhascheezburger.com: subway service, facebook.

September 14th, 2008 at 11:12 pm

Alice (4/1/1997 – 9/12/2008)

I’ve dreaded having to write this post for a long time, but we said goodbye to our dear Alice on Friday afternoon.

It’s been about a year and a half since her initial hospitalization and diagnosis with feline chronic renal failure (kidney failure). She responded wonderfully to treatment and we’re thankful for the second chance we got with her. She’d been doing great until earlier this summer when she declined a bit, and then in the last couple of weeks, things just got worse. Nothing painful or horrible, she just got weaker and we had to nag her to eat anything because she just didn’t feel good. Then late this week she started having trouble breathing, and with her other issues, none of the potential answers were good and the tests to find out weren’t going to be a lot of fun for her either. It’s the closest thing we could have hoped for to being able to see the future and know that it was time.

On the plus side, she was still affectionate and tolerant even after the last few weeks when we were always putting unwanted food and water under her nose or tossing pills down her throat or sticking her with needles. She seemed to really enjoy our drumming session on Monday, coming out to visit with everyone and be in the middle of things. On Thursday our friend did Reiki on her which meant she had her hands on Alice for 45 minutes then Alice went off for a minute or two and came back for another 15 minutes. For anyone who knows Alice, you know that her allowing that much contact is just unheard of. After that, she was the most relaxed she’d been in weeks. She spent Thursday night sleeping on our bed with us which was unusual for her. Friday morning she spent sprawled in the sunshine.

She had a good life and ended it well. She’s leaving a big hole in all our lives.

Here are some pictures. I’ll keep her in the cat blogging rotation (in our digital library alone I found 925 pictures with Alice in them)

First day home

kitten asleep in carrier

This was the day we brought her home. She fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up until her brother had already been exploring their new home for a while.

All grown up

two cats curled on a blanket

Taken just a few weeks ago. There was a long time where they didn’t get this cuddly, but Alice mellowed out a little over the past few months.

Favorite things

cat sprawled in egg carton in the sun

Egg cartons and sunshine.

More faves

cat in small box next to sock toy

Boxes, of course. That red sock contains the remains of a “wooly bully”, a vaguely mouse-shaped ball of felted wool that she tore to tiny bits. It remained her very favorite toy even after the sock treatment. We would hear her making a muffled meowing sound in another part of the house and when we’d check, the sock would be in a new location. We seldom caught her carrying it around, and as soon as she’d see us she’d drop it and act nonchalant. Never managed to get a picture of her with it.

August 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 am

Grass water

Cat drinking from a plate holding a pot of wheat grass

She won’t drink water out of her dish, but has to drink out of our water glasses. Or the water that has flowed through the roots of the wheat grass. Good thing she’s cute.

June 18th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

More LOLs

funny-pictures-monorail-cat-subway-service.jpg

The kids got lolled again. Actually I think this is Theo’s first time on icanhascheezeburger.

May 31st, 2008 at 1:00 am

Don’t blink

cat. or is it?

Becky took these two shots back to back. I did the animation. A good illustration of the challenge of feline photography.

output here