Sadie the pseudo-Siamese with white feet, long fur, and blue-point markings passed away today. She arrived in April 2003 along with her mother, sister, and brother one evening. My kid sister and her fiancé were walking Boone our big Burmese mountain dog in the wood park. Both came home and chatted excitedly away about finding treed kittens and a mother cat protecting them.
I joined them and returned to the woods with a box. I reached up and took the 3 small kittens and put them in the box and picked up mother cat. She came along willingly as if it was the thing to do. She was thin, but not terribly undernourished and quite friendly. Apparently she must’ve lived in the neighborhood and escaped her residence. The kittens were undersized for their age, which the vet estimated to be about 6-weeks. We did check around for mother cat’s owners, but no one was interested.
Mum, as we called her, was a sleek grey Maltese with a white bib. The only male we called smokey was all grey and had long fur, and had the sweetest most gentle personality of all of them. Mollie was a little tiny tuxedo cat, and Sadie was a fluffy beige kitten with the hints of Siamese markings, and white feet.
Mum was a good mother and took care of her kids and always hung with them even when they were older. Every morning I would get a visit from the troupe as Mum and her kids came upstairs to greet me then follow me downstairs when I left for work.
Sadie had a sweet personality and would lovingly head-butt everyone except for my brother who she didn’t like after he trimmed some knots off of her. As Sadie got older, she mellowed out more and became closer with my dad and with Lili and Lulu as seen in the picture. She would sleep all day in his chair next to him, and let him brush out her knots because her fur was like cotton batten and knotted up like crazy. Unlike her sister, Sadie loved Gromette our dog and would get off the chair to greet him when he came into the room. When Lili was dying, Sadie went over to her and put her head on her to say goodbye to her old friend.
Sadie was close with her sister Mollie and the two enjoyed the little tinsel balls we found at a pet store. We ended up buying bunches of them because they lost them all over the downstairs. We would bring in some from the store and they would be scattered all over the place including the basement. Periodically their favorite red one would appear out of nowhere. These small foam balls have tinsel sticking out of them and as kittens they would chase them all over the place.
As adults cats the two still did the same. Sadie and her sister Mollie would play a game of chase and fetch and return the ball back to us to toss again and again. We never had to initiate the game. We could be sitting reading or watching television and we’d hear meowing. Sadie would be on one side and Mollie on the other and usually Sadie would have a tinsel ball in her mouth while both would look up at us as if to ask if we could play. This game could go on for hours, and one night I had a meowing cat up on my bed with a tinsel ball in her mouth. Sadie wanted to play the game at 2:00 in the morning!
All was not well with any of them. In 2014 Mum started walking in circles, falling, and digging at her right ear. We brought her to the vet and found out she had an aural blastoma. The vet removed it, however, another grew back and she died a short time later. A year later Smokey passed away. He too developed a tumor of some kind and would lay down and rest after walking a short distance. After sometime, he started walking on his toes and arching his back then suddenly he passed away.
Mollie too passed away in 2016 suddenly. She screamed out in pain one day and died without warning.
In 2016 Sadie started chewing at her tail as if she had a hot spot of some kind. The vet stitched it up and we gave her a tranquilizer. The conclusion we all came to was she was stressed due to the undue chaos in my house. My late sister lived with us along with her young son and Ex. They screamed at each other and the noise we figured was sending her off the edge as it did us as well.
When my sister and family moved away, Sadie continued to chew even though the house was quiet. This time it was the middle of her back. The vet stitched that up and we treated it, and she spent the next few years wearing the cone of shame. Occasionally the cone would fall off or she was able to pull it off, and she would chew a hole in her side. The vet ran further tests and found nothing obvious, but she kept going for her back.
A few months ago, Sadie became more crippled. Like her sweet and gentle brother Smokey, she too started arching her back up and she started walking on her toes more and more. She also did the same as he when she walked a short distance.
On Saturday she refused any food and only drank a tiny bit of water. She cried out in pain around 2:30 in the morning. On Sunday she slept and refused water and food even when given to her by eye dropper. Today she was listless and passed away. Sadie was 17 years old.
