Her official name was 47. I diaried her rescue story
a few years ago. Long story short: We discovered her and her kitten in our backyard in September of 2012 and started feeding them. We caught the kitten and brought her to a shelter, but the Mama cat was a much more difficult catch. She lived on our porch through the winter. Some, ahem, gentlecat callers visited. By June, we were the proud owners of Mama and her three little kittens.
We found the three kittens good homes. We kept Mama, whom we had dubbed 47, since she was our little moocher, in dishonor of one Willard "Mitt" Romney.
She passed away yesterday afternoon due to kidney failure.
Why couldn't I have a pretty-girl name like Holly or maybe Jasmine?
So, yes, we called her Fatty. Why? Because she was a portly gal, especially in comparison to our other cat, who's a long, skinny fellow. To be perfectly honest, we usually called her Fo Fatty. Why? Because that's what pet owners do. You already knew that.
What can I say about my girl? She was sincere. She was content in her catdom. She was timid yet brave. Sure, she might run from a loud noise -- or a not-so-loud one, actually -- but she crossed a busy street a couple times a day after she had birthed her kittens to feed on our porch before returning to tend to her brood. And she somehow managed to tow all three kittens across that same busy street to deliver them to us.
I jokingly said numerous times that no living creature -- not my wife, not my mother -- loved me as much as that cat did. Wherever I was, there she was. I almost tripped over her a thousand times because I had no idea she was sprawled out right behind me.
Her age was a mystery to us, but apparently she was much older than we had assumed. She was quite playful -- she would attack the laser pointer for several minutes and happily jump on foil balls -- and she seemed to require less sleep than other cats.
I noticed that for the past couple weeks, she had been eating less. But she appeared to be fine otherwise. On Saturday, though, she stopped eating entirely. I couldn't even entice her to eat tuna. What little water she drank -- I brought a Dixie cup to her mouth -- she almost immediately spat up. We took her to the vet Monday, and they gave her fluids intravenously on Tuesday, but she was too far gone.
But I don't want to dwell on the lousy last four days of her life. Rather, I will focus on all the good times we shared: how she sat on our dining-room rug doing nothing that first evening, while her three kittens ran all through and over our house; it was if she was telling us, "I did my part. They're your problem now."; the first time she jumped on my lap, which took months to happen. I was working in my office when it occurred, and she minded not at all that she was impeding my access to the keyboard; how she and our other cat, Red, would snuggle together on cold days; how she would reach up and look at me through my office door to let me know she wanted in; and how she would chirp like a squeak toy when she wanted our attention.
When we finally got her in the house back in June of 2013, I said to myself that I didn't care if we had her for only a short time because at least her final years would be good ones.
I lied.