November 15, 2010

  • Goodbye to my baby

    What a time we've had lately.  My precious kitty, Camille got ill.  She was peeing everywhere -- including in our bed when we were in it!  Eeewww.  So, we got her checked out at the vet, and learned she had advanced kidney disease.  It was incurable and there were only comfort measures we could give her.  We held on to her, probably longer than we should have.  So, why wait?  Well,  we shared 19 years of our lives together. 

    When she was a kitten, my former roommate brought her out from Oklahoma.  She became my kitty on January 1, 1992 after our other cat was killed the night before.  Camille was named after my roommate -- Kammy.  We had adopted Jon-Claude about a week before from one of John's former co-workers who didn't want a tom because he didn't believe in neutering.  When he learned that Jon-Claude was male, he was going to take him to a shelter, so we took him.  John loved Jon-Claude as a kitten because of how feisty he was.  Camille and Jon-Claude became friends right away.  Jon-Claude and Grace (the dog we had then) were true buddies.  Camille didn't like Grace and would stand up on her hind legs and bat at her like a bear.  Grace would get tired of it after a while and put her paw in the middle of Camille's back and hold her down.  We would laugh and laugh at the antics of our furry kids.  Camille was my baby.  She was not a people kitty, and when strangers came to the house she would disappear.  Eventually, she would stay on my lap and not run away when people came over. 

    Camille snuggled me through miscarriages, infertility treatment, and 2 ectopic surgeries.  She had a compassionate heart and more love than her little body could hold.  She slept with us, and would purr me to sleep if I couldn't fall asleep on my own.  She and John had a "love-bite" relationship.  He would pet her, she'd be purring up a storm and then she'd chomp him without warning.  It used to infuriate him.  But he would also swat her bottom and she would lay on her side, and pull herself around in circles and meow.  When he stopped, she would meow up at him, like she was saying why'd you quit? 

    She also went through our 2 adoptions, and other life traumas, including snuggling me through lymphoma.  She took such good care of me.  So, at the end, we had a hard time saying goodbye.