A lot of non-pet owners don’t understand that pets can become part of the family

Many years ago I met a girl who had just adopted two 7 week old kittens, a brother and sister, as we dated and I started spending a lot of time at her place, the male took to me and would always sit on my lap, while the female would sit on my girlfriends lap. Later on we became engaged and when she moved in with me, along came the cats.

We lost the male at 16 years of age after an almost 3 year battle with cancer, during that time he underwent numerous chemo treatments and he took the treatments in stride, like a human he would have his bad days just after a treatment and then feel good until his next treatment. He came down with pneumonia and his vets tried strong antibiotics to fight the pneumonia, but because his immune system was suppressed because of his chemo treatments he was not able to fight off the infection One day he started gasping for breath and by the time I was able to get him to our local vets office he had gone into respiratory arrest and died in the car on the way to the vets.

His name was Elliott, and my screen name is in his honor, he was the best cat I ever had.

His sister Eloise lived to 18 years, she was not felling well and not eating so we took her to our local vet, the vet did an x-ray and discovered a mass on one of her lungs, the biopsy showed it to be lung cancer. After consulting with Elliott’s oncologist, she felt that the cancer had already spread and surgery would not prolong her life, so had to make the toughest decision we ever had to make and put her to sleep. We buried her next to Elliott in our back yard and they have their own little grave markers on them.

One of the interesting things about these 2 cats is they were born in a horse barn where my wife rode horses, their mother was a barn cat and gave birth to a litter of 3 in a box in the barn. Cats, like dogs are born both blind and deaf, their only sense they have when born is smell. If anyone has ever been around horse barns, they have a very distinctive odor, so from their first breaths they inhaled the smell of horses. When my wife came home from horseback riding once in a while she would put down on the floor her saddle blanket and watch the cats reaction, they would start kneading, rubbing and rolling on it and start to salivate, we figured the horse odor was triggering something deep in their minds going back to when they were nursing from their mother, who probably smelled from horses as well and they would not stop doing this until we removed the blanket

Because of this both of them were people cats, especially Elliott, he loved people, the more around him, the more he was happier, he would just go from one lap to another to say hello and push his head up against you looking to be petted and then find the most comfortable lap to curl up on and take a nap. While he was comfortable, the person whose lap he was napping on wasn’t, most of the times it was me. He was a big guy, not fat just large, he weighed 13 and a half pounds. When he would stand on his hind legs he could easily reach up over the top of the kitchen counters or could jump up and swat the refrigerator magnets we had at the top of the freezer door and it didn’t take long with all that weight stretched out from my lap to my knees for either my back or neck to start bothering me, so against his will he would get relocated to a spot next to me.

3 months after we lost Eloise, we adopted 2 unrelated 12 week old female kittens from a local shelter, while we still consider them part of the family, they don’t have the same personalities like Elliott and Eloise, their more like typical cats, lovable but aloof and independent. Elliott and Eloise were handled from day one by animal lovers and mama had so much trust in people that when they were let of their large dog carrier to roam around, mama and the kittens were kept in the dog carrier because a horse barn is not a place for young kittens to be roaming around, mama would go outside and relax, leaving her weeks old kittens in the hands of the barn people.

As pet owners we all will go through the tough time of losing a pet. Unlike with humans where the only decision to end someone’s life is to pull the plug, taking a pet to the vets for the final injection had to be one of the toughest things someone has to do, I know it was for me and my wife. But having a pet can also bring a lot of happiness in one’s life and we do this with the knowledge that we will outlive our pets, but during that time they will have enjoyed a good long life, I know Elliott and Eloise did.

Thanks for letting me share some fond memories.

Mr. Elliott