The Cats

We have been blessed to have two wonderful cats for fourteen years.

We adopted Oliver first. Oliver is an orange tabby. Some would say "ginger tabby" but he might bristle at that appellation. It sounds like a girl's name. He was abandoned along with his sister on someone's doorstep before they were even weaned. He was taken to the Humane Society where they nursed them to health. After calling ahead to the society, I had originally intended to adopt them both but his sister was taken by someone else in the time it took me to drive there. They won't "hold" animals for you. We're not sure exactly when he was born but going by the vet's estimate, it was sometime around the first week of February in 1997. We chose to make Groundhog Day his birthday.

Oliver was a handful as a kitten. He wanted to wrestle and bite all the time and needed to be fed by hand for the first few weeks. I was covered with tiny scratches. He really bonded with me during that time, though, and is my constant companion to this day. If I sit down, he is in my lap. He will wait by the window for me to come home at night. He's sitting here by my shoes as I type this.

We stayed on the lookout for a feline companion for Oliver. With the help of a neighbor who worked for our vet we found the cutest kitten we'd ever seen when she was only a few weeks old. She was shaped more like a piggy bank than a kitten - very roly-poly. She was gentle and timid but took instantly to my wife, falling asleep on her shoulder. We made an agreement with her owner to pay for all her vet bills and shots until she was weaned and then we'd take her in.

The owners had named all of her litter after NASCAR drivers and were calling her Ernie Irvin at the time because she opened only one eye the day she was born (I'm told Irvin once wore an eye patch while recovering from a serious crash). She was also raised with pit bulls who frequently "played with her" by taking her head in their mouths. While Oliver would frequently attack her when she first moved in, he couldn't accomplish that feat, so she adapted rather well.

We originally named her Twister but my wife decided at the last minute to change it to Misty when we filed for her license. It really fits her because she is very sweet and gentle.

Misty was an average size for a time but after being spayed her weight ballooned rapidly. At her heaviest, she weighed 18 pounds and we were very worried about her health. Thankfully we found a weight reduction food that she liked and leveled off at a still-heavy but less-alarming 11 pounds. She kept a tremendous appetite and would openly and loudly lie to one of us if she thought they didn't see her being fed by the other only moments before.

Over the past fourteen years they have become the children we never had. We love them, talk to them, talk through them, have conversations about them several times a day.

We also worry about them. In the past several months they've become less active. Their whole lives, they've greeted us at the door when we came home. But now Misty's arthritis bothers her too much and she just ambles into the dining room after we've already come in. Oliver has become more cold-natured and he tends to stay curled up in a warm spot, trying to catch a few more winks until we find him and let him know we're home. He also doesn't watch for me in the window every night like he used to. But he does like to sleep like a baby, with his chin over my shoulder, while I'm sitting at the computer.

Still, they are relatively healthy for their age and we're very thankful for them. We will certainly miss them when they're gone. But we want to enjoy the time we have.

(Edit: We said our final goodbyes to Misty on July 2, 2011. She was in kidney failure. Only three months and one day later, Oliver was put down. He had stopped eating after Misty died and had lost so much weight and fluid that he was beginning to have multiple health issues. We also discovered that he had been blind for some time and that Misty had been helping him in many ways that only became apparent after she was gone. I still have not recovered from losing them both and so close together. It was a nightmare.)