Photo Challenge: Day 3

Furlough - our cat

If I'm going to photograph our life, I can't really neglect putting in our cat. We're actually "dog" people, but no one left a dog out to die all those years ago, so we have a cat. Let me explain briefly. We bought our first real house, it was a duplex in NH. It was still very cold that fall. One day, I heard a strange scratching sound on the cellar door. I opened it, and in walked this cat. She must've found her way in through a broken basement window to keep warm. I put her outside after she walked around a bit, and she would repeat this for the next few days. The nights she didn't sneak into the cellar, she would spend them on our back porch meowing until you wished she'd lose her voice. She couldn't really be chased off, she'd just come back. We didn't feed her, but she begged anyway. I found out from the upstairs tenant that she was one of a neighbor's litter from St. Patrick's Day. She was only about 8 months old now, looked half-starved, and the family had moved and just left her behind. I hadn't seen any other cats that were from that litter, just her. When we let her in, she let the kids pet her, play with her, and since they were only 1, 3 and 5 - they were pretty rough sometimes, by accident. She never hissed, scratched them, or tried to bite them. She never hid under the furniture. She always sat with one of us, and was never any trouble, so Tim finally said, "Since she's good with the kids, why don't we just go ahead and keep her." I asked Adam what we should name her. Being only 5, I'm not sure where he came up with it, but he immediately said, "Furlough". I asked why and he told me it was because she was furry and low to the ground. 'Nuff Said.

Now it's time to move a few months later, and we didn't know that she was pregnant until just a few weeks before, she had been so starving we just figured she was "filling out". I think she had her kittens about a week before the move, maybe it was just a few days. We had Tim's grandmother watch her & her 3 kittens during the move, then brought her home. The kittens were given away but we kept her, had her fixed, but there was one drawback. The vet told us she was only about a year old, very young to have fixed, but we told him she'd already had kittens. To do this, he said because of her age, he'd have to cut the muscle that holds up her stomach for some reason, so she'd always look like her stomach was either dragging, or she'd look bigger than she really is under all the fur. I wasn't taking her bathing suit shopping, why would I care if she looked fat?

Over the years, almost everyone who's ever come to our house has either said, "Wow, you have a fat cat!" or "you're cat's pregnant?!". Ok, so the vet was right. You could feel that her hanging stomach was just empty skin, but unless you picked her up, yeah, she looked fatter than she was.

Today we still have her. It's odd now that she's older than Jordan. We never really gave it much thought until a few years ago. We've had her for 13 years this year. She still doesn't bite, or scratch people, or hiss, or hide. She's the quiet member of the family. I've never understood how people think of cats as members of the family, but she's always been more like a small dog. She sits on command, does tricks for her treats, chases off other animals from the property, licks Jordan's face when she gets up in the morning, and loves people.

We had a big realization how important she is to all of us when we almost lost her twice living in the mountains. The first time was after we first moved there. She got bit by a wind scorpion/sun spider (it's a spider that resembles a scorpion) in her water dish. It left a big, swollen lump on her neck, she couldn't eat for a week, and kept hiding under the woodpile. We though it was going to explode on her neck and she was hiding because she felt she was going to die and wanted to be alone. Well, we fed her Monavie juice from an eyedropper since she couldn't swallow much, and forced her to drink water, and maybe that helped. The mass did explode, she had almost no voice on the inside and was bleeding on the outside off and on for days. But she pulled through. That's when I realized how much we still wanted her around. She'd become Jordan's best friend.

The other time was just before this move away from the mountains. She couldn't keep anything down for days. We can only assume she ate something bad - maybe a mouse that had eaten d-con? or a bird that died of something other than old age? Not sure. We didn't think she'd pull through that - but again, we gave her Monavie for a few days on her food. She didn't keep much down, but she pulled through once we moved here and is doing just fine now.

She's old now, doesn't play much, has trouble jumping up or down from beds & the sofa, but she's still very loving to people. She licks you as you pat her - like a puppy.

I couldn't blog or photograph our life without including Furlough.