Pets...

[Padfoot]

That's exactly what Leah did... she loved boxes of all sizes





I miss her...

[Padfoot]

[shireling]

What a beautiful cat! And such eyes - what a wonderful expressive face! You've always written so vividly about her, that I feel like I knew her...

[Padfoot]

[shireling]

She's not a pet, but she's become one by default...or sausage, depending on your point of view.





I just love her! How can you not - just look at that face! That sausage-stuffing face! In addition:

That is the face of no regrets.

what
people don’t realise is that, when it comes to kookaburras, you don’t
have a choice about whether your feed them or not. they’re gonna eat
your food.

You think we’re kidding. We’re not.

[Padfoot]

I didn't know that Kookaburras eat sausages at all

Another photo of our Leah... I know I posted it before, but she loved her morning cuppa (I'm currently laughing and crying at the same time)


and this was our Jessie, Leah's predecessor (equally loveable):


How I miss them both...

[shireling]

They are both so beautiful, Paddy *shares tissues*. There is just so much personality in their faces! Jessie reminds me so much of our Cleo, a kitten whom I found abandoned in our last rental home. I invited her in for tuna, and she never left.



She was a Norwegian Forest Cat - do you know if that was Jessie's breed? Because she's got all the bells and whistles of one - imho.

I'm so sorry about Leah. I know when Tashie died (I'd had her since she was 6 weeks old, much too young to leave Mummy, but that made for such a tremendous bond between us), I was a wreck - even though we still had Kess. That was in September, and by February, I was ready to love again.

I'd been offered a whole slew of cats and kittens - the first just hours after losing my Tasha, if you can believe that! But seeing Amy, and hearing that she'd been passed from one teenage girl to another (three in all!), I just had to take her. We didn't know it then, that we would lose Kess months later, but it was a bit less of a blow that time.

Maybe you'll be ready by then, too. Hang in there, sweetie.

[Padfoot]

She's beautiful!

Jessie and Leah both were European shorthair cats, the "ordinary domestic cat" breed.

I have been offered a baby kitten that's ready to leave its mommy by December, but mom says she doesn't feel fit enough anymore to deal with such a little curtain-climber. She's afraid she won't be fast enough to catch a kitten if it runs away and on the street. I tend to agree with her that's why I'm thinking about taking in an older cat,(though I'd love to have such a little curtain-climber around again), since she's the one who's at home all day. Depending on what the shelter offers us, I say.

[shireling]

*sigh* Yeah, she was very pretty. And sweet. I'll never understand why they just moved out and left her to roam the halls, but their loss was our gain .

I forget that we have two entrances - the one into the building and then our condo. If Amy ran out the door, we still had one more barrier; I don't have the same worries as you. But, when Tash was a baby, I would take a squirt gun and wait out on the stairs for her to poke her nose outside the door. She was born outside, and an open door was something she would just walk through. But Kess was older and when I tried the same on her, she'd just lick the water off her fur and go on out . But doing all that took patience, consistency and time, and I was home with a young child, so I could.

I wanted an older cat after Tasha - I just couldn't start all over again. Amy was six-years-old when we got her, and not very well socialized (you know how the novelty wears off with kids, and then the animal is just left to her own devices.) Now you'd never know she was the same cat, but I think having a quiet home with one other (who was ten years her senior), no dogs, no children and just two old fuddies like the Honey and me to spoil her, made all the difference. Btw, Siberians are said to keep their kittenish side for a very long time (very true, she's still playful at ten), and they're hypoallergenic (also true. I've had allergic people come over and they are surprised to find that they have no symptoms. So I'm plugging the breed, just a little.)

Anyway, you've got plenty of time, and just do what you're doing, it's so healthy. I still cry for Tashie every now and then *tears up* - she was my baby for fourteen years. I have a friend who was devastated when his twenty-three-year old calico died (never had an ill day; she just didn't wake up one morning.) When you've been a cat-staffer for that long, what do you do? And most people are still not all that compassionate when it comes to such a loss. They simply don't see the strength of that relationship, the sheer number of years, all those memories - pets are part of the family. I've been to the vet's office for a routine visit and seen roomfuls of people - as many or more than you'd see in hospital, at a parent's illness - waiting to say goodbye to some ancient buddy of theirs...

*MASSIVE HUG*

[Padfoot]

It's beyond me how anyone can leave a pet behind, or abandon them somewhere on a highway. My grandfather always told me to watch how people treat their pets. He said "that's the way they treat their fellow humans, too."

[shireling]

It's beyond me how anyone can leave a pet behind, or abandon them somewhere on a highway. My grandfather always told me to watch how people treat their pets. He said "that's the way they treat their fellow humans, too."

So true!

[shireling]

...for all our beloved, departed kitties...

[Padfoot]

[shireling]

Animal Photos of the Year: Part 1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picture ... me=3217773

[shireling]