Even before we said goodbye to our sweet Garfield last Fall, we knew we'd miss him terribly. He was a charismatic companion and probably the smartest cat I've ever met. He used to fetch. He absolutely talked to you with his eyes. He would sit at your feet and meow, looking directly into your eyes, while patting your leg with his paw. Usually such pitifulness was saved for some manner of food product. Ski'a taught him how to drink from the faucet and he would meow when he was done for someone to turn it off. He was crazy for ham. Ham and bacon. One of his previous owners must have spent a fortune keeping that cat in pork products.
We learned about his ham obsession one Thanksgiving when a friend brought a ham to share. We were all full to the brim sitting in the den watching the kids play some sort of video game when I heard rustling in the kitchen. I said, "That cat's after the ham!" I ran in there to see him dragging a piece of ham about as long as he was off the plate and under a chair. He actually swatted at me when I took it away! I did take pity on him and doled it out over the course of about a week. If I had let him eat the whole thing that day he would have had ham coming out his ears. So every year at Thanksgiving or Christmas dear friends who knew about our silly cat's penchant for ham would save a little for him.
He ate raisins.
When one of his owners had him declawed, part of one of his toes was removed too, so he had a little deformed toe. But you'd never know it. He was the most graceful jumper. It was like watching a tiger jump.
He survived a bout of cancer. He had diabetes. He had ear polyps. He lost a patch of hair that never grew back. He had vicious halitosis.
He used to purr into my ear, but he didn't make the normal rumbly sound cats make. He sort of purred through his nose, so you could only really hear it when he was right in your face. He used to sleep on my arm so he could use it like a pillow and purr into my hair. My hair smelled like cat breath a lot.
When he got older he took to sleeping on my warm laptop keyboard. He knew how to turn programs on I'd never even heard of.
Ski'a and Garfield got along reasonably well for the most part. They had their battles just like everyone does. OK, maybe a few more... But as contentious as their relationship was, she was concerned when he fell ill and seemed very confused when he didn't come home. She was depressed for a several days. I wish I knew how to explain it to her, but she probably knew that something was wrong before we did.
We knew then that she needed a companion.
So we waited until the new baby smell had worn off and we had come back from our vacation. A friend of a friend of a friend (got that?) had a stray cat come into his house through a cat door and give birth. So he gave the kittens away and our friend's friend got one. Well, she had something come up and was no longer able to take care of him and our friend agreed to foster him for a little while. She had to go away for the weekend and asked me to feed the kitties and the rest is history.
According to the vet he is part tonkinese, maybe balinese, and tabby and who knows what else. He's about 10 weeks, will probably top out at 15 pounds (up to 18, possibly!) and is fit as a fiddle. Ski'a is taking it reasonably well. Plenty of hissing and growling, but they have actually managed to be within a foot of each other without a major confrontation tonight. (OK, so then, she threw him off the balcony, but it has remarkably quieter since then. I think she felt sorry about it. He was completely unscathed.) He has already mastered the art of keyboard sitting and ate day old cheese and cheerios off the floor within 30 minutes of being in our house for the first time.
He seems to have a thing for tofu, though it remains to be seen how he feels about ham.
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