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Black & White & Round
Mar. 31st, 2015 09:18 amFor the past twelve years, we've had as our house guest a former resident of the Sing Sing state prison in Ossining, NY. She was captured in a sweep of the prison grounds conducted by a group of volunteers which included my daughter Rebecca, who was then a technician at the Central Animal Hospital in New York City. The goal of this project was to capture, neuter, and innoculate against distemper and rabies the feral cat population of the prison complex.
Oreo, so-named because she was black and white and (later) round, was among those brought in. But from the beginning she stood out as very different from the hissing, angry, combative animals that would defensively cower in the back of their cages any time one of the vets or techs approached them.
Instead, she would come to the front of the cage and happily converse with whoever was there to provide her treatment. So, based on her sociable behaviour and sweet personality, Rebecca brought her home and asked us to adopt her. And over the years she's been a special friend to our grandson Jason, who was about the same age in actual years, and, most recently, the pitbull pup, Lola May.
In fact, some of our funniest "Kodak Moments" have involved those three. Often, when my wife and I walked in the door after the drive home from her overnight shift, Oreo and Jason would be sitting side-by-side on the low coffee table in front of the video game console. At other times, you'd hear the cat meowing as she was vigorously groomed by her canine friend Lola.
Anyway, those were among the good times for the feral foundling and former prison inmate. In recent months, she'd been showing increasing signs of her advancing age as well as symptoms of an undiagnosed diabetes. That was discovered in the blood panel done a little less than a week ago when we took her in with an apparently infected tooth.
The plan was to treat her conservatively, to treat the tooth with a course of oral antibiotics and begin controlling the blood sugar with a diabetic diet. And, for the first few days, she seemed to be responding. The swelling in her jaw went down and, the night before last, she came out into the kitchen, from her bed in the back hallway, for the first time in a couple of weeks. So my daughter, who'd been monitoring Oreo's progress from a safe distance (she's 8 months pregnant), had been somewhat encouraged.
But later that night Oreo seemed to take a turn for the worse, was less and less responsive throughout the next day, and finally passed away last night between 9 and 10 PM. And this morning she was put to rest in the backyard cemetary that was started almost 30 years ago with the burial of a little foundling tiger cat named Tommy.
I like to think that, if there's an afterlife for kitties, Oreo and Tommy will have a great time playing out there among the shadows, in the coming spring and summer evenings...
LPK
LiveJournal
3.31.2015 (a)
Oreo, so-named because she was black and white and (later) round, was among those brought in. But from the beginning she stood out as very different from the hissing, angry, combative animals that would defensively cower in the back of their cages any time one of the vets or techs approached them.
Instead, she would come to the front of the cage and happily converse with whoever was there to provide her treatment. So, based on her sociable behaviour and sweet personality, Rebecca brought her home and asked us to adopt her. And over the years she's been a special friend to our grandson Jason, who was about the same age in actual years, and, most recently, the pitbull pup, Lola May.
In fact, some of our funniest "Kodak Moments" have involved those three. Often, when my wife and I walked in the door after the drive home from her overnight shift, Oreo and Jason would be sitting side-by-side on the low coffee table in front of the video game console. At other times, you'd hear the cat meowing as she was vigorously groomed by her canine friend Lola.
Anyway, those were among the good times for the feral foundling and former prison inmate. In recent months, she'd been showing increasing signs of her advancing age as well as symptoms of an undiagnosed diabetes. That was discovered in the blood panel done a little less than a week ago when we took her in with an apparently infected tooth.
The plan was to treat her conservatively, to treat the tooth with a course of oral antibiotics and begin controlling the blood sugar with a diabetic diet. And, for the first few days, she seemed to be responding. The swelling in her jaw went down and, the night before last, she came out into the kitchen, from her bed in the back hallway, for the first time in a couple of weeks. So my daughter, who'd been monitoring Oreo's progress from a safe distance (she's 8 months pregnant), had been somewhat encouraged.
But later that night Oreo seemed to take a turn for the worse, was less and less responsive throughout the next day, and finally passed away last night between 9 and 10 PM. And this morning she was put to rest in the backyard cemetary that was started almost 30 years ago with the burial of a little foundling tiger cat named Tommy.
I like to think that, if there's an afterlife for kitties, Oreo and Tommy will have a great time playing out there among the shadows, in the coming spring and summer evenings...
LPK
LiveJournal
3.31.2015 (a)
