Six Cat Photos

We received the results of Faith's bloodwork yesterday, and she is, overall, doing really well, especially for a cat with cancer. A few numbers are a little off, either from the cancer or taking steroids for two years.

The lab did say she has a 95 percent chance of developing kidney failure in twenty-fourth months. We are not worried. She will be seventeen in April and was diagnosed with small cell lymphoma two years ago, which we opted to treat with palliative care only. Faith will most likely not be here in twenty-four months where kidney failure is a concern.

However, Faith gets concerned whenever I leave my room and will check up on me. I caught his photo at her eye level before she darted away (as if I didn't see her).

Here are a few photos I snapped of our cats: Faith (calico), Senna (tabby), and Midnight (black cat and Faith's mom).

All three cats are rescue cats.

Last Night I Dreamed of Hope

And I wanted to capture those dream fragments before they vanished to specks.

Once upon a time I had no animals in my house because of my asthma. But I married a man with a dog and a cat, and my asthma appeared to tolerate them as long as I vacuumed every day and changed my shirt and washed my hands after handling them.

We kept Scooter for the rest of his life. The cat, Roxy, didn't tolerate my children and lived out the rest of her days in a heated barn in Minooka.

Then Daniel fed a stray tabby kitten one day, and that's how we acquired Frances.

Then Christopher persuaded us to take one kitten from the litter of abandoned strays he rescued, and that's how we acquired Midnight.

Our veterinarian would not spay Midnight until she was tapeworm-free. And she was full of tapeworms, along with ear mites. I told the kids not to get attached, that we were providing hospice care. This was 2007, and we still have Midnight.

Anyway, during this transition time in our life, Midnight ran outside and vanished as we were leaving for the route. This was shortly before one in the morning and it was probably about eighteen degrees below zero.

We ran around the yard yelling, "Midnight! Midnight!" But Midnight did not reappear. Heartsick, we left for the route.

We circled back to the yard about four in the morning after we delivered Marycrest and before we started delivering to Channahon and Minooka. This time, Midnight emerged from underneath the deck...along with three other cats. We picked her up to bring her into the house, and she was not cold at all.

I'm sure you know where this story is going.

Ron would not hear of giving away the kittens and named them Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Charity used up all nine lives in his first five years. He is another story altogether.

Faith is still with us and living up to her name.

Hope escaped my son's house while we were losing ours. She ran into the neighborhoods and adopted another family. How we became reunited with Hope is also its own story.

At the time, we could not bring Hope home because we had lost our home, and we had too many cats for our lease. So Hope stayed with her new family temporarily, which turned into permanently.

It was really the best life for Hope, who needed the freedom to live as an indoor/outdoor cat (we had special fencing for our cats when we had our home in Channahon).

Hope and her family don't live in Illinois anymore, so it's not possible to see her. I still miss her terribly, but I'm happy she's had a great life and brought so much joy to another family.

She's older now and has a hip issue. She was also attacked a year or so ago and doesn't go outside anymore. But perhaps Hope is now happy being a couch cat and dreaming of her former glory days.

I never dreamed of Hope until last night. I'm not sure why I did last night. Jim sent me some updates and photos, but that was a couple of weeks ago. So Hope wasn't on my mind in that way.

But it was a wonderful dream.

I dreamed Jim had come into town with Hope to surprise us. Of course, our home was not the same home, but your mind believes that it is.

I spent lots of time cuddling with Hope, who totally remembered me, and showing Jim old photos and videos of Hope that we don't have because cell phone technology from 2008 to 2014 is not the same as it is today.

Hope also spent plenty of time with Midnight, her mother, and Faith, her sister. 

The only thing different about Hope was her attitude. She had completely dropped her "tortie" attitude. In real life, even though she is older, she still has it. As Jim's wife recently said to me, "Hope is still Hope." If you ever met Hope, you would understand.

Finally Jim had to leave. I walked with him to his vehicle, and we waited for Hope to come outside. Soon she came running out the door with Faith, two sisters, running together to the car.

And then I woke up, missing Hope.

But I'm still super, super, super happy and thankful Hope picked such a wonderful life - and family - for herself. We now know two wonderful people because of Hope. 

Here is the really fun part of the story.

Hope wandered into a home where the man living there was grieving the recent death of his own cat. Not knowing Hope's name, he called her Lola, which is kind of close to Hope's real name.

Three months later, Hope developed fleas and took her to his veterinarian. That's when the vet discovered her microchip and called us.

Jim was devastated. But he was (sort of ) ready to relinquish her when we came to pick her up. Except we couldn't take her with us. And he was more than thrilled to keep her until we could.

We actually were not in the position to do so until late 2019. '

And then we had a pandemic.

And then we didn't feel right about taking her back.

And then the family moved.

I think of the joy Hope brought to Jim's life.

If Faith is living up to her name, I think Hope is, too.

Have a great Tuesday!

Good Thoughts for Faith

When we opted not to treat Faith's small cell lymphoma with palliative care only, we did not expect her to live another nineteen months.

But Faith has lived up to her name, living a good kitty life for sixteen months more than anyone, including her veterinarians, expected. We were told two to three months, so we are more than grateful at the time we've had with her.

She's declined over the last month, although her bloodwork a few weeks ago was perfect. And she's had a rough few days. I took these photos last night, while I can still take photos of her.

She's still doing some kitty things.

In fact, she's cleaning herself as I write this.

She still wants to cuddle, but for more often and for shorter periods.

She still head butts on command, but those are weak.

She used to pose as soon as she saw the camera. Now she looks away and needs coaxing.

Now, she can still skedaddle when the vacuum cleaner turns on.

Still, just when we got her weight stable again, she's lost half a pound in a few days.

She's not eating, drinking, or sleeping much. She's hiding under the bed a lot.

We have a call into her oncologist. And I'll also be calling the veterinarian who did Frances' at-home euthanasia for an assessment.

We're not planning any extraordinary measures. But we want her comfortable for as many days as she has left and a gentle passage over the rainbow bridge.

Please send good thoughts for Faith.

Spunk and Biscuit

A feature The Herald-News had for many years was called Pets of the Week.

This was a weekly roundup of dogs and cats from area shelters and rescues who needed homes.

When the person who put this together was laid off, the feature went away. It was reinstated in 2014 after Shaw Media bought The Herald-News and I was hired as the features writer and editor for this publication.

Two cats from Humane Haven Animal Shelter in Bolingbrook that kept returning year after year were Spunk and Biscuit.

Rebekah said if something ever happened to our cats (we have a pet limit at the townhome), she would adopt them.

Well, this past week, Spunk (top photo) was finally was adopted.

But that still leaves Biscuit, who looks somewhat like our Tabby Fraces.

If you, or someone you know, needs a cat to complete the family home, please consider opening your doors and heart to this cat.

Here is Biscuit's information:

Biscuit is a sweet 8-year-old who likes to play with string toys. She does well with other cats. Since she’s shy around people, she needs a family who’s willing to be very patient and give her the time and space she needs to get used to her new home. She also needs a special diet for kidney support. She’s quiet and likes to be petted if you take it slow and easy. To meet Biscuit, contact Humane Haven Animal Shelter at hhas.org or 630-378-4208.

To Brighten Your Day: Cat Saves Man's Life After Fall

Forget the COVID Gloom: Here Are Pictures of my Cats

At one point and not on purpose, we had six cats living with us at our house in Channahon.

I've always loved cats. But because of my asthma, doctors told my parents "no pets," not even stuffed animals.

I was quite little, probably not even five, when my stuffed white cat and three little stuffed kittens disappeared off my bed. My mother, adhering to the order, had thrown them away without telling me.

But then I developed chronic hives as an adult. With the amount of medicine I now take to suppress histamine, I can live with cats. I do have to change my shirt and wash my hands if I pet one. But that's just good hygiene anyway.

As a kid, I also loved stories with super natural premises, like this one this one by Helen Rushmore. But I was disappointed that the supernatural part in that book wasn't real.

So I incorporated that idea into my BryonySeries - and at the request of my publicist, I wrote this short story.

So with that introduction, meet my six.

Frances is our original cat. She was an (approximately) nine-month-old stray that had roamed Channahon for a few weeks (so the villagers told me) when she appeared at our back door one afternoon in late October.

I was in the attic on the phone interviewing someone for a Herald-News story when Rebekah burst in, telling me Daniel was feeding tuna to a cat.

It got cold that night, so we let her in, red jingle bell collar and all. Our terrier mix Scooter wasn't happy, but Frances, having lived by the canal, was nonplussed. She looked at him like, "Oh, does he stay?"

We asked around, and no one claimed her, so we spayed and kept someone's kitten. I don't know if she got separated from someone or if she was abandoned, but whoever you are, please know we love her, and she's had a great life.

This is our second stray - Midnight - who is reading a book by J.L. Callison to my crocheted mouse, Bertrand.

My oldest son had stumbled upon an abandoned litter; Midnight was one of them. He found a home for all of the kittens but her, saying she was too skittish to place. We kept saying, "no." He kept saying, "yes" and talked us into it.

That was 2006 or 2007.

She is still skittish - whether from bad early experiences or her personality, we don't know. But she was sick and full (and I mean FULL) of tapeworms and ear mites when we got her, so we didn't expect her to live.

But live she did, becoming our most affectionate and cuddly cat. You can pet her for a very long time and wind up in more fur than is on her.

The only bad part about all the tapeworms is that the veterinarian would not spay her until she was free of all segments, which took a long time.

So on the coldest night of the year (18 degrees below zero), our unpsayed Midnight ran out of the house at 1:30 in the morning as we were leaving for the Herald-News distribution center to deliver newspapers.

We could not find her but once we came back to Channahon to deliver, we kept zigzagging off our route to run around our yard in the dark, yelling "Midnight! Midnight!"

Yeah.

At 4:30 a.m., Midnight slunk out from beneath our front deck with three other cats, and she wasn't cold at all.

Soon, we noticed Midnight was putting on weight. You guessed it!

But my husband Ron wouldn't hear of us giving up the kittens. In fact, he named them Faith, Hope, and Charity. Here they are.

Faith is a calico who thinks my desk chair is hers, but she does let me perch on it to work. She was the most adventurous of the litter (the one who climbed over the old VCR tapes to discover the world before she'd even opened her eyes), and she is the most skittish of them all - as in skittish PLUS.

She has kitty Asperger's (if there's such a thing) because she freaks out at any disruption in her routine. 

She likes the same food at the same times three times a day in the same bowl laid out in the same place on the same spot on the carpet.

She wants to be petted the same way at the same time of the day everyday. This is no lie

She never used to be petted, but we trained her to accept them. She's still squirmy, but she likes pets.

It goes like this: pet some, writhe away and then come back for more. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Side note: This is Midnight's brother - Faith's uncle. He was one of the cats in that abandoned litter. He is living on a farm in Elwood. I have never met him, and this was taken was an old cell phone back in the day.

It's interesting to see the family resemblance.

This is Hope, our torti. Like all torties, she is independent and with a torti attitude.

She was the most athletic pf all the cats and could scale trees and roofs with amazing speed and agility, even sliding down tree trunks as if they were firemen poles.

She is now living with a lovely family in Morris. She became separate from us during the whole "losing our home fiasco," and we thought she was gone forever after three months past.

Apparently, she had found herself a new home, just strolled right through the door as if she owned the place. The homeowner had just lost a cat and was delighted - until he discovered she was chipped and belonged to us.

Because we had lost the house in Channahon (long story) and were living in a rental situation, we couldn't keep another cat.

So Jim kept her temporarily. But that was in 2014 and there is no way we would remove her now (unless he told us to come and get her).

We keep in touch, and we may visit her anytime. But we have not seen her since COVID, and we miss her.

We wished we had better photos of Faith and Hope's brother Charity. He had a Mufasa look, and was sweet, affectionate curious, and mischievous.

He was the first to discover the invisible fence didn't stretch as high as the north garage and easily leaped over to the neighbor's garage and into freedom.

He had a wire fetish and chewed through anything that looked like a cord in our house. If you set your headphones on the table to tie your shoes, they'd be in two pieces when you stood up.

If you walked away from the laptop to drain the macaroni, you'd come back to the charger cord bit in half.

One day on deadline, my internet went down. Before I could message my oldest son, my son came charging up the ladder steps, yelling a variety of strong and colorful words I won't repeat here.

He marched straight to my window, looked up, and shouted more unmentionables.

Apparently Charity had chewed through the ethernet cable - and lived to tell about it. Smart cat: he hid from my son.

And yet this same cat, as a kitten, climbed up a tall tree in our yard and couldn't figure how to get down. After mewing very frightened mews for over an hour, we did what all the children's storybooks said to do: we called the Channahon Fire Department.

A truck and crew came out, parked the truck, and looked up the tree at our kitten. One fireman said he had no idea how to get him down and that the ladder wouldn't reach that far.

"He'll figure it out," he told me.

And then they left.

But Charity didn't figure it out. About thirty minutes later, my youngest son climbed up to get him.

Charity died in 2013 from an intestinal blockage, most likely from something this curious cat should not have eaten.

We like to say he used up his nine lives.

This is Alex, the sweetest of the bunch and really not ours.

He was a four-paw declaw and the sweetest, gentlest, most affectionate cat you'd ever want to meet.

He belonged to my oldest and came to live with us when my son and his family did, too.

Unfortunately, my other cats didn't accept him, so he marked his territory - EVERYWHERE!

We could not bring that into a rental situation, so when we lost the house, the Will County Humane Society rehomed him for us (oh, how he cried!) Ironically, he went to one of our veterinarian's clients.

We lost track of him after that. I hope that Alex, like Frances, is having a happy, wonderful life.

You Know What We Need Right Now? Cat Photos

Remember when photos of cats dominated social media?

What better time to bring them back and make us smile?

Here are some of mine. Feel free to share yours with readers, too.

Rebekah left her drawer open, an open invitation for Faith to chill.

Midnight chills with my number four child Timothy.

Frances chills inside Rock Soul Love in Morris, where she lived for a few years.

Hope, who is living with a wonderful family in Morris and sends me photos of her, snapped this one of Hope chilling inside a box.

Concern For Frances

Yesterday before I left for work, Frances and Faith got into a hissy fight that left one with a wound no one saw.

Rebekah noticed the blood on several places the floor and inspected both cats. She saw a little blood on one of Frances' paws, but it wasn't clear the blood was from the paw.

I went to work. Rebekah, who was off work yesterday, fed both cats at noon and saw no issues.

Last night, Frances abandoned most of her dinner. I noticed, and Rebekah coaxed her out so she could finish most it.

This morning, Frances is nowhere to be seen, and her breakfast is sitting by my computer so Faith doesn't gobble it up.

For a cat that lives for food, I'm concerned that she is two hours late for breakfast.

Please send up good thoughts for Frances. She is in the foreground, and Faith is in the background.

PS: In true snarky cat form, as soon as I hit "publish," she came running into my room, looking for breakfast, which she happily gobbled.

Cats!

BryonySeries Throwback Thursday-Ish: A Tale of Four Cats

Because who doesn't love pictures of cats?

So the "throwback" in today's post isn't a previous post, but the opportunity to see all four cats on the same day...so why not take photos?

One of the greatest heartbreaks for any pet owner when losing a home through foreclosure (as if that isn't bad enough) is relinquishing ownership of pets when the "new" home doesn't allow for them.

We were fortunate that, during the eleven-thirtieth mark, an opportunity arose to keep most of the cats. We hadn't started out as pet owners, and how we did is a story unto itself. But we always strove to be responsible pet owners. With many rescues and shelters overflowing with more cats than they could place, the situation was bleak.

In the meantime, one cat died and one (my son's) was successfully rehomed, due to his marking issue (My cats didn't accept outsiders, sheesh. As if they didn't all start out that).

Two cats "found" their own foster homes in Morris, and how that happened is also a story unto itself. But with a family birthday celebration on July 15 (Fifty-six for me and a year for my granddaughter), I realized I could visit my other two cats.

As a little birthday present to myself, I took pictures with all four cats. Not because I'm a crazy cat lady. But to remind me how good God is, how he always provides, how he allowed me to continuing being a responsible pet owner to the same set of pets, and to stand in awe of his crazy ability to constantly widen our borders.

And now, the cats!

Frances, our original rescue kitty, who now lives at Gypsy Soul in Morris.

Hope, who now lives with a really nice family in Morris.

Faith, Hope's sister.

Midnight, mother of Faith, Hope and Charity (deceased).