allatariel: A year ago today I lost my sweet Easter. She was nineteen years old. Easter w
allatariel: A year ago today I lost my sweet Easter. She was nineteen years old. Easter was born on March 5, 1998, fifteen days before my twentieth birthday. A month or so later, a friend at the time received her as a gift from her boyfriend. But she already had three cats and Easter didn’t match, and also, she didn’t want to have to explain where she came from to her husband, so she became mine. She was named for the line in the Tori Amos song, “Crucify,” I know a cat named Easter / He says, “Will you ever learn? / You’re just an empty cage girl / If you kill the bird” because we thought she was a boy at first. When I took her to the vet to get fixed the following year she was already in heat and we had to wait. She got out of my second floor apartment through a gap next to a poorly sealed window AC and was gone for two days—scared the life out of me! I remember waking up in the middle of the night to yowling and following the sound out back to find her in the garage. I was so relieved. She ended up pregnant and gave birth to one kitten, a boy named Pasquale, an Italian name meaning “relating to Easter.” Her personality was soft. She would sit patiently and wait for attention most of the time, and food, too. She would head butt and nuzzle. She would pat with her paw on knees and elbows. She would rarely step on things, she would pick her way around, but would sit on flat things, like James’s records. And she loved boxes, like a good kitty. She would purr when James played the guitar. And she’d wait for us to get out of bed in the morning and then slip between the sheet and the comforter to sleep. But she wouldn’t wait too patiently, she’d purr and nose at our faces till we stirred. But she was also swift and decisive when something bothered her. She would bat or close her teeth around my hand if she was done with being petted or I’d accidentally touched a sore spot, but she never hurt me, she only wanted to get my attention. She would sit with me late into the night while I gamed or wrote or read. She would purr and meow at me when I cried or was sick or in pain and let me hold her, otherwise she would not well tolerate being held. She would come out of her bins and hiding places late in the evening at a party and charm our guests. She usually had a very small, almost refined voice, but would sometimes yowl if she particularly wanted something. Everyone was also so amazed and incredulous when told how old she was, she always had such a beautiful coat and she was always relatively small. She was a good mouser and caught mice right up through her last winter. Easter frequently suffered from urinary tract infections and kidney stones in her youth. It was her kidneys that finally failed. We did all we could, yet she deteriorated rapidly over the course of a month. She died on Sunday, July 2, 2017. Thanks to Dr. Rachel and Lap of Love, Easter was at home in her favorite spot in the bay window. We will forever feel a hole in our hearts. We miss you so much, Angel. Our Button Head, Kitty Bitty, Squeakie, Beastie, Easter Bunny, Fur Face. -- source link