You are absolutely correct. Please forward my deepest apologies to Lucia. Having five cats who now own me, i should have known better the second i typed that.
Lucia is sitting comfortably on my Sunday paper. Later she will, almost certainly, sit on my knitting pattern. Because she is in hospice, I decided she can eat whatever she wants. She is eating me out of house and home. But not putting on weight.
She looks better this morning. Eating and doesn't have the apathetic expression. Yesterday I thought it might be her last night on earth. Not yet but clearly going downhill. I am watching her breathing carefully. Stressed breathing means her heart is giving out.
Thinking about attending adoption event this weekend. Not to replace Lucia, that is impossible, but there are cats needing homes and my home needs a cat. If I meet one with whom I connect.
I'm sure there will be a fortunate feline there who will catch your fancy. I look forward to seeing pictures after it adopts you.
Went to adoption last Saturday. The Petco near me stopped doing adoptions during pandemic, so this place was where I got Lucia. I preferred a female but that was not absolute. I did not want a cat who looked like Lucia. Maybe a calico. I like calicos. I got there as soon as it started, possibly a mistake. Cats are notoriously bad travelers and might have been more responsive given time to relax. There was a calico. I could see immediately there was something wrong with her eyes. They said she was blind in one eye with limited vision in the other. Not an infection, a birth defect. Her eyes did not develop in utero. Her sister, who is totally blind, was adopted. This cat could get around using her limited vision and senses of hearing, smell and navigation and was litter box trained. I could get used to odd appearance of her eyes, and clearly this cat could never go outside. But as a biologist I know genetic defects often cluster. There is what you see, and what you don't. My late cat Zoey had skeletal abnormalities; unusually long legs and double fold in her tail. These were just the visible signs of a condition similar to Marfan's in humans, which often includes heart defects. Zoey was not three when she went from apparently perfectly healthy to congestive heart failure overnight and was dead in two days. Maybe I was selfish, but after this last year with Lucia I wanted a healthy cat. Most of the cats ignored me. A very beautiful long haired black kitten looked at me. But a brown tabby was very responsive, stuck her paw out and when I petted her licked my hand. She did not resemble any past kitties, which is a good thing. She had a rough start, found barely five months old, severely malnourished, with a litter of six. Just in puberty, when she should have been growing, all her energy went to the kittens. She is now spayed. I did another circuit. No one else responded but when I returned the tabby started to purr. She was the one. The humans warned she dislikes travel even more than most cats and gets carsick. No sooner was she loaded in my car, the sweet cat began a torrent of feline profanity, which increased in volume and vehemence every city block. When I tried to pet her, she scratched me. My nose told me she had indeed barfed in the carrier. Never did a 20 minute drive feel so long. As soon as she was home I put her in the litter box so she would know where it was. She jumped out and looked for a place to hide, normal for cat in new environment. She burrowed under covers of the bed. I wouldn't have minded but she had gotten barf on her coat and hadn't washed, and the thought of my sheets smelling like cat barf was not appealing. I let her stay for a few hours, then lifted her out. She immediately hid behind living room cabinet. The cat hid for two days. She didn't eat. I was worried. Cat blogs said they can hide for days, sometimes weeks, and adults more likely to hide than kittens. Oddly, this never happened to me; I've had cats who were wary but not this degree of hiding. The opinion was she will emerge when she is ready. After two days she finally emerged, at first cautious, then ran around examining everything, marking with scent glands (I am sure Lucia's scent is still everywhere) and ate two bowls of cat food. She wanted to be petted. Her coat was clean. Unfortunately she shit on the bath mat. I HOPED due to over excitement. I had a serious talk with her about this. She continued to hide behind the bookcase during the day and emerge evening. Did I have a vampire cat who only came out at night? Finally after five days of this she now stays out and about all day and sleeps on the bed. We are getting used to each other. The lady at the event called her "sweet girl", an expression that reminds me of toxic mother in Black Swan who called her adult daughter "sweet girl". Unfortunate. There have been no more little accidents. Of course a cat needs a suitable name. I tried various literary names, prominent women, nothing seemed to fit. She arrived on Rosh Hashanah so I greeted her with "L'shana tovah", roughly happy new year. I had a name! Lashanna. The word means happy and is derived from Hebrew word for beautiful.
