Monday Memories

Today is one of those sad days at The House of The Kitty Krew. Today we remember A Cat Who Went Before.

(biggify to see the photos better)

Tigger was one of those sweet little kitties who just melted my heart when I first saw her as a little 6-week old kitten at my now-ex's mom's house when we were visiting her up in Ohio. We ended up bringing her and her brother, Felix, home on a car ride from Ohio to Texas, letting them sleep on a pillow in my lap with our dog in the back seat. Didn't matter that we already had 4 cats at home. With her striped markings, I already knew that 'Tigger' was the perfect name - not Tiger, but Tigger. 'Tig', 'Tiggy Tig', and 'Tigster' were some of my favorite nicknames for her; I find myself calling Ziggy those same things but with a 'Z', and they make me think of her as well when I use them.

Poor Tigger, for some reason she became the target of the other cats for chasing and picking on. It seemed to make a little sense in the early days, just because she was the new kitten on the block (along with Felix) and she wouldn't fight back much - she would tend to just run and hide. But even when she became the old cat on the block after the older cats passed on and Bugsy, Sassy and Callie and then later Roxy and after that Pixie came into the fold, she still was their target for chasing. So the poor dear spent a lot of her time hiding behind and under furniture. In her last few months, I let her spend the night with me in the bedroom a lot of the time so she'd have a few hours of peace. (With so many cats, I usually don't leave the bedroom door open or keep any of the cats in there with me - with all the crawling around and meowing and chasing going on, I'd never get any sleep if I let them roam around at will all night! )

Since she spent a lot of time in hiding, or at least in out of the way places when she was in 'public', she never became much of a lap cat or overly fond of being picked up. But she'd let me pet her, and she'd play with toys occasionally or with the scratching posts some, as a couple of the photos above show. Unlike Felix, who warmed up to the dogs at the old house just fine since he grew up with them, she never was fond of them and would run and hide from them as well if they sniffed at her too much. Don't get me wrong, she'd hiss at them or the other cats once in awhile, she just wasn't much of a fighter. Her brother Felix is about the only cat she got along with, and sometimes it seemed like he'd stand up for her if another cat was bothering her too much.

She started getting sick a couple of months before she passed on, with what turned out to be kidney problems. Still, her actual passing was unexpected as she didn't seem to be *that* sick in the few days leading up to her death. She was supposed to go to the vet the next morning for another test or fluids or something, I don't recall exactly now; but when I got home from work that day, she clearly wasn't doing too well, and later that evening she passed on in her sleep, laying next to me while I was on the computer.

Some say maybe she missed her brother Felix too much, who had passed on even more unexpectedly 3 months previously; that's always possible. In any event, I hope they're up there at the Rainbow Bridge, running around and having fun together, and that she's discovered that other cats aren't being mean when they come to sniff and chase; they just want to play and have fun.

Farewell, my sweet Tigger. I miss you and will always love you.