My old red point Siamese, Thelma:
She and her brother Otis got dumped on our front porch when they were about 6 weeks old when I was 3. Otis ran off later, but she stuck it out with me. She died of a type of bone cancer that apparently only usually occurs in rottweilers this past October. She was 19. She was so bossy, and always just walking all over people. Like seriously, you'd just be sitting there and then all of a sudden she's basically just pushing you onto the ground to sit on you. Also she used to lick my hair; I guess she thought it tasted good.
This guy's name was Wanderer, after Taran from the Lloyd Alexander series. He had huuuuge feet, and whenever we would see him prowling through the backyard he always looked vaguely like a cheetah. He had cataracts in the one eye (although sometimes the light would shine through it funny and we could see his eye was completely intact behind it, and I think he sometimes could see through the cataract) and was mostly deaf. He reminded me of Willy Nelson, all old and grizzled and kind of a hippie and been there forever and never dying. He showed up one day to eat our other cats' food and bully them around because he was a Tough Guy, but then he stuck around and eventually let us get him fixed. After that there was not a sweeter, less demanding cat I have ever met. He wanted whatever affection I would dole out, and would follow me around whenever I was outside just to be near me. A lot of his nights were spent peering in the windows at us, wanting to be inside not because it was cooler or warmer or the weather wasn't so bad in there but to be with us; and it was sad because we often ignored him in the hopes that he would go amuse himself (my mom is allergic to cats and wasn't getting shots at the time).
In August 07 he was sleeping under my car and I had to leave because I was late for work and I didn't check, and I ran over him. He was put down three days later because of a ruptured bladder that was leaking somewhere into his abdominal cavity. We found out after he had gotten some Xrays that his head was not actually supposed to be that round, but built up scar tissue from so many fights over the years, plus a poorly healed fracture in his jaw that had some calcium around it, made it kind of misshapen. We also found out that once, back before we knew him, he had been shot not once or twice but three times, and only one of them could possibly be confirmed to be merely a BB, because the others were just shrapnel. Ever since he died I have always felt like we were never fair to him, because he never demanded anything of anyone and was the most grateful creature I have ever seen for so little in return, and we by comparison did not shower him with unrestrained affection but barely spared him such attention as we could be bothered. I can say, though, that because of him I was far more aware of what I should have offered him, so that I could in turn give Thelma the interaction she craved during her last weeks out of respect for both her and his memory.
