My Skunky-Girl

Day 151: She came to me at roughly six weeks old, blue-eyed, tail hairless as a rat's, and scrappy as a few ounces of kitten could possibly be, having defended herself against two cat-killing dachshunds. She had nearly lost a paw in the set-to, but under my care, it healed nicely. She was a funny little thing. I called her a "water-cat." When I showered, she would often get in the tub, take up a position on the drain, perfectly content as the tide rose around her. I took advantage of the fact and introduced her to a regularly-conducted bath protocol, so her fur was always as soft as a bunny's. She also liked to pat the water in her drinking bowl or stand with one hand in it, requiring me to make accommodations for the spills by setting it in a larger bowl. She enjoyed drinking from the bathtub faucet, and before I learned to leave a water dish for her on the tub drain, she'd "sing in the shower" with a voice guaranteed to peel paint to let me know she needed the water to be turned on. When she was a tiny babycat (that's one word, "babycat"), she would crawl under the covers with me, nestle in the crook of my arm, massaging my chest with her front paws until she got sleepy. Then she'd worm her way down to my feet, remaining there for most of the night. In her younger days, we'd play the Stare Game, in which she would lurk behind a piece of furniture, one eye showing, and I would take a position on the floor where I could stare at her through the legs of a chair or around a corner. We'd sit that way for a minute which seemed to expand time, and then slowly and deliberately, I would blink. As if on cue, she'd rush me, galloping across the floor at full speed. Her favourite toys were three stuffies: a little squirrel (we went through several over the early years), a skunk roughly the same size, and a larger wolf. Wolfie was for kneading, and she would spend long minutes working her paws into his soft padding.

Always an indoor kitty, her health was excellent until she turned 7 and contracted an ear infection. She was given medication which destroyed her eardrums and went deaf in a matter of days. I nursed her through what can only be described as a deep depression, but unbeknownst to me or her doctor, other damage had been done to her system and her health continued to decline. Yesterday (March 12), I made the hard decision and laid my beloved kitty-girl to rest here in the only home she ever knew, beneath my big Doug fir.