Goodbye Sibbie

Awhile back, a ratty, dirty homeless waif appeared on my coffee deck one morning.  She was snuggled down into the cushion I keep on the chair on the deck.  I spoke softly to her, not wanting to send her running  away in fear.  Not only did she not run away, but she was content to spend the rest of that winter on a soft bed of old rugs and blankets in the greenhouse.  She stayed through the spring and summer, too.  And last fall, we decided she would spend her second winter with us in the (relatively) dryer and warmer garage.

We discovered that not only had she been spayed, but her front paws had been declawed...so, at some point in her life she must have been somebody's house cat. I didn't like to think about what circumstances brought her to seek shelter and food in my back yard, one day, out of the blue.  I hate people, sometimes...

I dug back into my Facebook archives to retrieve this picture...must have been taken within a few days of when she first showed up in the yard.  I see now that, bad as she looked, she looked a lot better then than she has lately.  In fact, her time with us has mostly been a long, slow decline in her health.  I suspect she was quite old by the time she got to us.  And in her time with us, we've mostly just been able to provide a warm, safe bed and two meals a day.  She never integrated into the household...never much bonded with the humans, and hated the other cats.  The only time she seemed at peace was when she was in her "safe place" in the garage.  So there she mostly lived for the past year.

But the years caught up with her, in the form of an obvious descent into kidney failure--the thing that spells the end for so many geriatric cats.  And today, it was time to take her to the vet and release her spirit from her frail, failing body.

  

Godspeed, little one.  Fly free and strong among the stars!