Last night our 20-year-old Siamese cat died. We got her 19 years ago from the shelter, when she was just a young stray kitty. Over the years, Deha grew into a proud cat with a strong personality. When we brought Benson home, a 160-pound Great Dane, it only took her a couple of days to get that dog to accept that she was the boss. Deha followed Laura around when Laura was in labor with our daughter, as if she was trying to be supportive. Later, Deha convinced Julia to share her bottle with her. When we brought home Sodabe as a kitten from the shelter, she took care of him like a mother and taught him to hunt and climb trees. Over the years they both brought home countless mice, shrews and chipmunks – and even the occasional rabbit. Though Sodabe never seemed to acquire her taste for frogs. For many years, she went out every morning, mosied down to the pond and got herself a nice juicy frog. Then she brought it back to the house, found a nice sunny spot and sat down to eat it.

The last few years she spent more and more time snoozing in various sunny spots in the yard and on the deck. She had some health problems that were mostly kept in check with regular antibiotics. Just a few days ago she caught a mouse and ate it on the deck. But a couple of days ago she started to refuse her food and before we knew it she had lost a lot of weight. Saturday I saw her sleeping next to a log  ins a sunny spot next to the pond and she looked very old and tired. Later that day we took her inside and she could barely walk. She ate some but declined rapidly. We put her on a soft blanket and kept her company all evening. Saturday night around 11PM she died.

We buried her Sunday morning in a nice sunny spot in our yard. We’ll miss that silly little cat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 10th, 2013 at 11:06 pm and is filed under cats, Our gang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.