Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Day 14 on the road.
Well – things just don’t seem to be going our way.
We are admittedly Crazy Cat people. Before we left, we were treating one of the cats who had ulcers in his bladder – we hated to leave him when he was sick but can’t be in 2 places at one time and the kids were going to take care of all of our rescue family so all should be fine – right?? Wrong ☹
Toby had started out as our daughter’s cat. She came home from school almost 12 years ago and he was laying on our back deck. I got a call at work saying she had found him and put him in the garage so he’d stay safe. So even though we weren’t planning on adding another cat to the clan we had, he became one of the family.
He would always try to get into her bedroom by reaching up and trying to grab the handle by both his front paws. It was hilarious watching him try to get into the room and he frequently slept in there with our daughter.
When Covid hit 3 ½ years ago, the daughter and her new hubby who was living with us and with Dave’s high risk they were cordially asked to leave – they couldn’t take Toby since they moved in with his parents who had dogs and couldn’t have cats. Since we were isolated at home, Toby ended up being the big brother to all the other cats, and boyfriend of sorts to a few of the smaller ones and was always cuddling with someone.
And he became my cat as well. He didn’t really like males, so our son-in-law and Dave were not important to him. But with not being able to be with our daughter, he turned his attention to me. Working every day he would lay on my left armrest, would sing along with me when I was singing, yelled at me when I was doing dishes because he didn’t like the sound of clinking silverware, and anytime anyone would sneeze, he would meow in what I’m presuming was a “bless you” in cat talk.
He would meow back and forth with me as if we were actually having a conversation which was always fun – I keep wondering what was actually said. And he snuggled into my shoulder at bedtime and would help play puzzles on my iPad before we fell asleep. So even though he was our daughters cat, he was mine too.
Late last night, the kids called and Toby was extremely ill. They took him to the emergency Vet but there wasn’t anything they could do to help him and he deteriorated quickly and had to be put down.
My 2 criteria in any of this type situation is to #1 not let them be in pain and #2 not to be alone. He was medicated so that the pain wouldn’t be too bad and the kids were with him as was I on FaceTime.
My heart broke and I got little to no sleep afterwards . The next morning, Dave and I decided that everything seemed to be against us so we decided to just head home and forego Devils Mountain and Mount Rushmore for another time.
