Bastet: 2003-2014

I had our black cat, Bastet, put to sleep a few days ago.  She was diagnosed about a year and a half ago with lymphoma.  This caused fluid to accumulate around her lungs, squeezing and restricting them.  Treatment with diuretics and anti-inflammatories slowed that accumulation, but it was still necessary to take her in every few months and get some of that excess fluid drained from around her lungs.  Prognosis at first diagnosis was that she might live another year to two years.

She'd been showing signs of labored breathing and restricted lung capacity again, so I took her in for another draining last week.  This time, though, she didn't show the signs of improvement as with earlier drainings.  In earlier treatments, once the excess fluid was withdrawn, her lungs were able to stretch back to fairly normal capacity.

That didn't happen this time.  X-rays showed her lungs weren't re-expanding, but staying cramped and restricted.  She'd reached the limits of her ability to recover from the effects of the disease.

It wasn't unexpected, but it was still sad to let her go.  She was a pretty sweet cat.  Never much for laps, but sometimes at night, when Hilde or I were laying on our backs, she'd climb on our chests (usually Hilde's) and nestle there for a while.

Bastet as kitten, 2003

Bastet grown, around 2010

We still have four cats in the household, tho' only Tyr and Sethra are "ours".  (Cassie is Tabbi's cat, while Aliera laid claim to James and Paul after she and Sethra were added to the household following our friend Anne's death in 2009.)  If we end up adopting another cat, it might well be another black cat, just because there's still a stupid stigma about black cats with a lot of people, making it harder to find people willing to adopt them..

Night Visitor -- On Feral cats

There are about a half-dozen feral cats on the property where I work.  Because one of the VP's there is a cat-lover, a feeding station has been set up where they can get water and food.  The company also tries to do a neuter-and-release program with as many of the ferals as they can catch.  The population shifts over time, as the older cats disappear or die, new cats come in, and the occasional litter of kittens still shows up in a drainpipe or other sheltered spot in spite of the neutering program.

Most of the ferals are highly skittish about human contact, but a couple are more trusting.  This one, a gorgeous orange tabby will sometimes come up to within a few inches if you stand still.  (The photo is B&W because the night-time lighting on the site causes color photos to shift into a ghastly palette)

Besides disease, cars and other dangers feral cats face, our property is within walking distance of a large urban mountain-preserve/park that provides home to a fair number of wild coyotes.  Occasionally a coyote or several wander out of the preserve and find their way under the property's fence.  Mostly they're looking for the rabbits that make a home on the undeveloped acreage or by the driving range, but I've seen them stalking an occasional cat a few times.  Without success that I've witnessed, but that may be because while a cat may resemble a funny-looking rabbit, it's a funny-looking rabbit with a bad attitude and its own fangs and claws.  (It may also be that, in the case of some of the ferals who disappeared, the body wasn't left behind to be found.)

It's hard to socialize adult feral cats (why the neutered ones are put back where they came from), but if you can get one of the kittens young enough they can adapt easily to being a household cat.  (One of our Very Best Cats from about thirty years ago, a big old guy we named Sir Kay, came from a feral mother's litter.)

Update, 9/15/13:  Here's a post-sunrise color shot of the orange tabby:

Ambitious Cat Is Ambitious

Tyr: "What?  The dog wasn't using it."

posted from Bloggeroid

Never Too Many Cat Photos. Never, I Say.

Latest photo of Tyr, who's transformed from the mostly-white kitten we got at the end of 2011 into the darkest Siamese we've ever had.  Suggestions that he has gone over to the Dark Side will be far too appropriate.