I delayed writing this because I needed time to process and not start bawling like a baby when I wrote this.
We adopted Addison when she was five. According to the shelter we got her from in Iowa, her family surrendered her after they lost their home (the dad was the sole bread winner and lost his job). I was thinking of a cat around 2 or 3 but she just won us all over.
She settled in quite nicely. After two days, she was looking out the windows to our back yard, watching for bunnies and chattering like crazy. Then we moved to Virginia where she discovered that walking on a leash was pretty cool. After a couple years there, we moved again to Melbourne, Florida. She LOVED chasing lizards and bringing them into the house to “play.”
As she got older, she’d spend her time sleeping on one of the chairs outside and observing her domain. But she’d still chase the lizards.
I’ve honestly never met a cat who was so chill. She never ran and hid from strangers. She’d saunter over, sit in the middle of the room, and just wait for the new person to come say hello. If they didn’t, but were sitting down, she’d hop up in their lap and purr. Head butts were her favorite thing to give and she handed them out like candy, whether she knew you or not.
Sadly, she had a tumor in her mouth. The vet told us that mouth cancer is pretty aggressive in cats. She was 14 and I just couldn’t put her through any more than she’d already been through. Between cat nipple cancer, cat hepatitis, and not eating, I just couldn’t put her through any more.
We got her ashes today and I’m back to being teary eyed. We loved you SO much.
Added 4/18/24 @ 5:47 PM EDT: I realized that I left a few things out. I often called Addison a dog in a cat’s body. She begged at the table (and pretty much everywhere else). Her favorite “people” foods were King’s Hawaiian Sweet Bread and the non frosted part of a frosted sugar cookie but she also loved cream cheese, ice cream, and mayonnaise. (Yes, she had weird tastes. LOL!) When we first moved to Florida, she would go lay in the bushes behind our spa to sleep and watch what was going on in the pond behind our house. However, given all the creepy crawlies that are out there, we had to put up a mini fence with chicken wire to keep her out of it, thus the fact that she would hop up on a chair to observe her fiefdom.
When we first got her, my two boys were so enamored with her that they just wanted to love on her all the time (and I reminded them frequently that she needed her space). They were always looking for her, carrying her around, petting her, two inches from her face and she NEVER ONCE hissed, swatted, growled, bit, nothing at them. That was when I knew that we’d made the right choice in our cat.
And thank you all for your comments. I’m not all that great with organizing my thoughts (as evidenced by the addition here) so I don’t often write. But your words of support and sympathy to this “lurker” have touched me greatly and I am so very humbled and appreciative. Bless you all.