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How cute is that? Apparently semi-namesake wanted to keep the sponge - because she has good taste - but surrendered it when she heard it was meant for me. What a kid!
Just one of those days where I'm grateful for the people in my life!
Not going to lie, the first year involved a lot of ice cream and crying.
Once I had settled in enough to know that I was in for the long-haul and was going to continue to have a steady income, I decided that I needed to come home to a furry reminder of why I was putting myself through this. I desperately needed something to love. So with my parents on board, we all decided it was time to look for a cat again.
Kira
It's funny, but I can still remember scrolling past her photo on PetFinder and immediately dismissing her because she and her sister were meant to be adopted out together. With plans to move into my own space someday, I really didn't want to have two cats (and two litterboxes!) in 500 square feet. After some debate ("But a kitten is more fun!" my dad insisted), we decided that we were likely looking for an adult cat with a friendly personality, and that it may take some time to find the right one for our family. We headed down to the local SPCA shelter and I cautioned my parents that we were likely not going to walk away with a cat today, we were really just there to look.
Thirty minutes later "Akira" (who had engaged in enough fights with her sister to warrant adopting them out separately) had charmed us enough that I was handing over the adoption fee while she was being packed away into a cardboard carrier. Let it be known that I had been willing to walk away and think on it some more, but my parents decided "this one will do". Thank goodness for them!
I almost immediately shortened her name to Kira because three syllables was too much work for me. Kira proved to be a bit of a chicken, initially seeking out hiding spots in her new home, but quickly adjusted to her new environment. I had always wanted a cuddly cat who would tolerate being picked up and she is more than happy to comply! My bed became the area she so graciously allows me to share with her, and I delight in the moments where she curls up next to me, stretching her front paws forward to warm my ears. When I come home, she is usually quick to come greet me, yelling at me with in her whiny voice until I give her the attention she so clearly deserves. There was no question that when I moved out that she was coming with me.
While she's been a dream for my friends (letting them pick her up and encouraging them to pet her at every opportunity) and a very attentive companion (sometimes overly so!), she is not without her annoying quirks. Kira does not fear or respect me in the slightest and knows exactly how to push my buttons! When she wants attention or food and is not getting it, she'll play the blinds like a xylophone, jump up on counters or tables, and reach up to scratch my fly screens! She even learned that if she got behind my flat screen tv and stood up with one paw against it just so, I would have an apoplectic meltdown! Kira also has a habit of just deciding I don't need to sleep, and if I try to lock her out of my room she will spend the next four hours body-slamming the door while meowing pathetically.
(She also has what I suspect is a sleeping disorder. Sometimes when she's in a deep sleep, she'll start spasming and subsequently urinates a small amount. It's not her fault and I'm not convinced it's a big enough issue to warrant medicating. And at least she usually sleeps on the blankets I set up at the foot of my bed, which are easy enough to launder.)
Other than that though? She's a pretty darn good cat. She makes me laugh with her antics and her consistently "resting bitch face". She wants attention and love so badly that I often have her racing between the living room and the bedroom so she can get under my hands for a good chin scratch. She comes when she's called and likes to be in the same room that I'm in (which is easy enough in 700 square feet). My dad very gruffly says that Kira is not a "real cat" and I laughingly call her my "dog-in-a-cat's-body" because she has none of the dignity or decorum of a cat and all the goofy adoration of a dog. I have always felt that my cats have loved me, but Kira just really, really loves me, and it's a nice feeling.
Unlike a dog though, I can guarantee that she will never save my life. Fire alarm? Straight behind the washing machine. Earthquake at night? No attempt to wake me at all. We joke that I'm going to meet my grisly end by trying to get her from behind the washer/dryer during a natural disaster and thus will promptly be crushed to death.
As I always tell her, she's lucky she's cute.
My dad's favourite cat is Pogo, and my mom's favourite cat is - without a question - Waffles. Me? I always say I don't have a favourite; each cat occupies their own place in my memories and I loved each of them the same and differently. I'm still not sure I could proclaim a favourite cat, but Kira has undoubtedly been very important to me. She has been my constant, reliable, infuriating, hilarious, and doting companion through my first years as a veterinarian, and I probably could not have asked for a better one.
Waffles
I first became acquainted with Waffles through work. When it came about that she needed a home I jumped at the chance because she was such a sweet, good-natured cat and our house had felt too empty without a cat for almost a year. With my dad out of town at the time, I first worked the guilt-trip angle pretty hard on my mom: if she said yes there was no way my dad was going to say no. Waffles deserved a nice home to live out her senior years (she was 11 years-old at the time) and why shouldn't it be our home? My mom agreed to meet her, and I knew we were pretty much golden from there!
So the day came, I packed Waffles up in a carrier and.... she yowled the entire car-ride to our home. Uh-oh, maybe this was too rash a decision! On the (very short) drive home, I started to worry about how she would acclimate to our home, maybe we should do a slow introduction to let her get used to her new surroundings?
Turns out I was worried for nothing. Waffles walked around the house like she owned it already and was especially fascinated by the television for the first few nights. Although I had initially thought she had a somewhat refined personality, it turned out that she was an absolute marshmallow of a cat. She didn't particularly like being picked up, but she loved to cuddle and was very social and attentive to everyone she met. Through her, I started to rehabilitate a number of my friends who had somewhat scarring encounters with Pogo, so she also became a bit of an ambassador for feline-kind!
Of course, I brought her home at a time when there was a lot of uncertainty about my future. Was I going to stick it out and keep trying for my veterinarian-dreams, or was I going to give it up and try to find another good career with decent benefits. My mom had started to talk to me about working in border security, and while it was hardly a passion-career, working for the government certainly came with a lot of perks. I told my mom that whatever happened, I was committed to Waffles being my responsibility, she didn't have to worry that I would just dump my new cat on her.
So.... that's exactly what I did when I got accepted into a veterinary program in Australia. Oops.
It didn't make sense to bring her along - we'd have to pay a lot of money to fly her over and put her through a quarantine process, and then I'd have to find pet-friendly accommodation as an overseas student. It also meant that if I decided to come home for the holidays, I would have to find someone to look after her in my absence. I don't think my mom was overly impressed, but she begrudgingly agreed to keep her. I spent the next few months preparing to leave and trying to get as much Waffles-time as I could - finally I had a cat who loved to cuddle and I was going to take advantage of it as much as possible!
While I was in Australia, I had a terrible internet plan, so if I had data to spare at the end of the month I would Skype with my mom and she'd let me see Waffles as well, noting that when she heard my voice she'd look all around to try and find me. She settled right back into cuddling with me and sleeping on or near my bed when I was home for vacation, and she'd managed to absolutely bewitch my mom with her charms in my absence, becoming a much beloved companion to her while I was away for school and my dad was off visiting family. She had developed a habit of "counter-surfing" and so was locked out of the kitchen when they were cooking, and my dad gruffly noted that she wasn't a "real cat" because she always wanted to sleep on his chest and stick close, but she had settled into their lives nicely and was certainly well-loved. My mom said that every time she came home, Waffles would follow her and meow at her until she sat down and let Waffles climb up into her lap for a good cuddle. I was always sad when preparing to leave again for Australia, and as soon as she saw me starting to pack my suitcase, she'd get sullen and push away from me trying to squeeze some more cuddles out of her before I left.
In my third year of vet school, my mom noted that Waffles had started vomiting with some regularity. Being a whole ocean away, I told my parents to take her to the veterinarian to be assessed, there was nothing I could do from where I was. She was later diagnosed with a mass in her intestines, likely due to lymphoma. My parents committed to surgery to have it removed and she bounced back nicely, having a really great quality of life for three-to-four months. When she started to deteriorate again, they offered to fly me home to say goodbye. I was distraught, but decided it wasn't worth having her continue to suffer just so I could come home, especially if there was a chance that she might pass away while I was in transit. I loved Waffles, but she had my parents and whether I was there or not didn't really matter. I couldn't bear the thought of her being in pain any longer than she had to, so my parents took her to the veterinary clinic and said goodbye. I think losing Waffles really did break my mom's heart - she always says now that Waffles was her cat, and I don't think she'll ever love a cat in quite the same way.
I didn't get very much time with Waffles, but I loved her and was so grateful to her for being an amazing companion to my mother and for being so open and free with her affections to everyone she met. I was also very grateful that my parents had really given her an amazing and loving home in her final years - it was everything she deserved.
(I mean, I know what it was. It was the flyer someone posted at his workplace about free kittens. That was the inspiration.)
Pogo
My dad was at least smart enough to loop-in my mom on the decision this time! So we drove out as a family to go pick up Pogo together. Originally my dad had signed up for two kittens, but they could only manage to catch the one. When the family offered up another kitten a week later, Pogo was having NONE of it and so we meekly returned the kitten.
She started out as a pretty playful and cuddly kitten (don't they all?) and we quickly established the rule that if Pogo chose to sleep in your lap, you were not allowed to move until she was ready to leave. Sadly, that rule didn't stay in-play for long as Pogo became more cranky and less cuddly as she got older. She loved us - her family - and tolerated being picked up for about ten seconds, but anyone else was liable to get a scratch or two for their troubles if they fell prey to her "bear-trap" ways. If you held an inanimate object out to her - like a golf club - she would happily rub her head against that! But human hands were Enemy Number One.
By my dad's own admission, Pogo was his favourite cat. She would most often hang out on the arm or the back of the couch and accompany him while he watched TV, or napped behind me while I studied. She was affectionate, but only just, which made her a real cat in my dad's eyes. When one of us would be away for an extended period, she would roam the house carrying a feather duster in her mouth in some kind of weird tribute to our loss. The weekends we'd go away to the ranch, we'd always find the fuzzy squirrel figures dragged up onto the windowsill of my bedroom, keeping watch because we suspected she was too lazy to. We once did the unforgivable by moving houses and then immediately leaving her for two weeks while we gallavanted through parts of Asia. When my mom and I returned first, she let us know how she felt by giving each of us two swipes each. She then meowed at me non-stop through that first night back and I spent the rest of the week tripping over her because she was always underfoot or crouched in the doorway of a room I was occupying, keeping tabs of my every move. By the time my dad got back, her fury had cooled so she simply ignored him for a week before returning to her regular routine
Pogo was also - by everyone's estimation - the dumbest of all our cats. She got stuck under the bed after her spay due to her e-collar being so wide. After we got together and moved the mattress and rescued her, she waited until we replaced the mattress and dove straight under again, much to our aggravation. She used to flip out at the smallest things and could not catch or kill a bug to save her life. I have watched her turn around and walk straight into a wall before, and we have wasted many an afternoon just laughing at her and her newest dumb antic.
The other thing about her being less well-equipped in the intelligence department is that she rarely did anything naughty, like try to steal food or escape, because it just never seemed to occur to her. She was also a massive coward, never making any attempt to defend her territory from wandering cats (my dad had to rescue her from under the porch) or temporary visitors (an attempt was made to adopt another cat. Pogo hunger-striked until we gave him back).
We had Pogo for 13 years, and she started to mellow out in her older age, though all my friends who bore "battle scars" didn't see it that way. When she deteriorated unexpectedly and rapidly, I remember saying to my mom "She's my cat. I'll pay for her medical expenses." I was ready to slap down $5000 for hospitalization, dialysis, the works, before the veterinarian gently explained that they could try everything and still not save her. So we made the decision not to have her suffer and said our goodbyes at the emergency clinic.
(I was so distressed I threw up an hour later while visiting the clinic I had previously been employed at when the veterinarian I had previously worked with wanted to debrief with me over what had happened.)
We were bereft for a long time. The house felt so empty without her. Waking up every morning not to see her crouched in my doorway was painful. And my mom kept saying "No more cats! It's too hard!"
Well, we all know that's not how things go in our household....
My dad is really the one to be blamed for this - he has always been a cat enthusiast himself and had a habit of bringing them home after consulting exactly no one. And really, what young child was going to be anything but delighted at the prospect of a kitten? It was always going to be two-against-one; my poor mom never had a chance, allergies be damned! And besides, it's not like she hated cats. My parents had one - creatively named Meow-Meow - back when they lived in Hong Kong.
Now if there is one topic all three of us can wax poetic about with misty eyes, it's our cats. We have always been absolute suckers for them and the longest we have been without a cat was probably just under a year. Although I turned out to be the veterinarian of the family, I'd still say my dad takes the title of biggest cat-lover in the family, though I'm sure he'd deny it.
Bobo
(Full disclosure: Bobo hated me. By all accounts she loved everyone else, but I was a terrible kindergartner who subscribed to the Elmyra Duff way of showing love to animals. I have distinct memories of making a leash out of my faux pearl necklaces for poor little Bobo and my parents basically grounding me forever for kind of almost strangling the cat. Also because she rightfully hated me, she scratched the ever-loving shit out of me and so my parents had her declawed. We all regretted it for the rest of her life and vowed to never do it again.)
When we moved across the country a year or so later, she road-tripped with us across Canada while sitting on the dashboard and soaking up that sweet, sweet sunshine. We arrived in Vancouver and lived with my grandparents for awhile, and when we moved out we were informed that was fine, but the cat was going to stay with them.
Yep, my grandparents stole our cat from us.
They absolutely adored Bobo and she had them wrapped around her paw. She would sit on the ledge of the bathtub and meow delicately until one of them rushed over to turn the tap on for her, and she would only drink the water if it was the right temperature and velocity. They would stay until she was finished and then would actually mop up the water that dripped on her face. She'd curl up with them, they'd talk to her and she would listen. She was also an adventurer and if unsupervised on the balcony, she would occasionally jump down and have fun on the town for 2-5 days, before she'd show up at the front door asking to be let in again.
When she was diagnosed with kidney disease the family actually went to a Chinese medicine shop and got herbs to brew medicine for her. Because it was super bitter and gross and Bobo was feisty if she wanted to be, it was a five person operation to catch her, wrap her in a towel, stuff her in a rice bag and then syringe this terrible medicine into her.
Bobo eventually passed away at the age of seven. We were all devastated, my grandparents especially so. I don't think they ever loved another cat the same way again.
Socks and Checkers
Kittens. Two of them.
I raced up the stairs to the bathroom where my dad had stashed them while my mom contemplated the message my dad had left scrawled on a napkin. "Brought home two kittens. They have fleas. Give them a bath."
I can only imagine the look on my mom's face because I was already too busy squealing and cuddling flea-infested kittens by that point. I vaguely remember some mildly heated discussions, but there was never any question that they were staying. By the end of the night, my mom defiantly announced that if we were going to be keeping these kittens, she was going to be the one to cuddle them while we dried them off carefully with our blow dryers.
We were all in kitten-heaven for a few months, watching them chase each other around the house, discovering their distinct personalities. Socks (so creatively named by yours truly) was the gentler one of the two, generally well-behaved and tolerated cuddles. Checkers (named by my cousin, who formed an instant connection with him) was the clever, rambunctious, naughty one. He climbed curtains, climbed pant legs, and generally caused havoc wherever her went. I would go to sleep every night with Checkers sleeping at my feet and Socks curled up on my pillow.
Well, turns out I was horribly allergic to both cats, to the point where my parents reluctantly decided that it was probably in my best interest to re-home them. My cousin and uncle decided to take Checkers and I sobbed the entire car ride over to their townhouse. A reprise of the sobbing occurred when I came home from school one afternoon to find Socks gone - my dad had taken him to the local BCSPCA. We were fairly certain he would get adopted quickly - he was still a kitten and had such a lovely, placid personality - but my dad visited every day until that happened just to be sure.
