[sundial_life] Denkmal für die erste Katze

Or, Memorial for the First Cat.

Some will recall that, in this post, I detailed the physiological travail of our beloved Keeeton, our Hauptkatze, Number One Son.

While we did get him some treatment, and The Wife[tm] was giving him sub-cutaneous fluids in an attempt to get him his strength back...well, on a younger cat it would have maybe made a difference. Keeeton was diginifed, but old Moe Mentum has swung the other way.

At 02:00 approximately, the three original family members, The Wife[tm], Me, and The Cat[tm] were in emergency at SE Portland Animal Hospital (138th and SE Stark, in case anyone's wondering) and we were facing a big decision.

Keeton had, not long before that, done something unprecedented. He had a minor seizure. That caused the both of us to drop what we were doing and get him in. After a mercifully short time of examination the doc came in to give us what we knew we were going to hear: The Best Damn Cat In The World was never going to get any better, was never going to improve even a little from a frail thing that would only move if you picked him up and that had stopped communicating with the world at large.

He, at that time, had a temperature of 91F. Normal kitty body temp is 102F. It was almost as though he were shutting himself down.

I can almost believe that. In a way, he did me a favor. Losing him is tough, but a little less tough because that elan vital that was Keeeton had seemed to have slowly departed over the course of the last few weeks. It was easier, but just by a little bit.

We've had to escort cats to the end of thier paths before, so the procedure was actually familiar.

This will be the only cat, so far, that we will retain the ashes for.

His number will be retired. There will be no more Number 1 cat; Keeeton is an act that cannot be followed. The Top Cat's official designator from here on out will be die zweiten Katze, or the Second Cat; actually, there will always be a First Cat, and that cat, in memory as well as in life, will be Keeeton.

He found us in October, 1987. We had to let him go in October, 2004. He was 17 years old.