Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Princess



Princess is the latest addition to our family. She joined us in October, right after Shadow died. I wanted to wait awhile after she died before we got another cat, but Winston had other ideas.

Poor Winston. He was miserable without Shadow. To make matters worse, the day after Shadow died, Ron and I went away for a long weekend with some friends. It had been scheduled for months. That left Winston all by himself (we put the dogs in a kennel). Poor Winston, I say again. He must have thought we'd taken Shadow with us. He was happy to see us return, but he obviously was looking for Shadow. He kept calling for her (step, step, meow, step, step, meow). He was pitiful.

The next day I went to our vet clinic to talk to one of the vet techs. She does cat rescue and cat fostering and I hoped she would know of a cat who needed a good home. She did! Princess had been brought to the vet clinic, rescued from an abusive home by a neighbor. The woman brought her in, but never came back and ignored repeated phone calls. Poor Princess. She had numerous injuries, including a broken pelvis. Most of her tail had to be amputated, too, leaving her with a little three-inch stump.

When I talked to M, Princess had fully recovered and was living at M's, but M was glad to see Princess go to a good home. A few days later, I brought her home. She's a beautiful cat with long reddish-gold fur, big reddish-gold eyes, and the longest whiskers I've ever seen on a cat. She's so sweet, too, very affectionate. The best part is that she and Winston are so happy together! They're both young and playful. They wrestle in a playful (not fighting) way. Their favorite game is chasing each other all through the house at top speed. There's nothing like the sound of galloping kitties! It's such a happy sound. It lessens the pain of missing Shadow and Panther.

4 comments:

Elle said...

Beth, Princess is really, really beautiful. I can just imagine her racing Winston around the house. How great for all of you!

Anonymous said...

John's cat Turquoise has a stump tail too. She's short-haired, so the tail is quite visible--looks like Princess's might get lost in all that hair? It's funny to see Turquoise's little stump moving around and imagining what the eloquent tail would be expressing if it were there.

Glad you've got two happy kitties. Two chasing, wrestling cats are a delight. Now if they'll also wash each other, as Reilly and Burnside do, you'll really be in cat heaven!

Beth said...

Her tail is visible when she's standing or walking and it's funny to see her wiggle it around. She has very short legs and a sturdy walk. They wash each other sometimes. Big loves to wash Winston on the top of the head and on the butt. Surprisingly, Winston loves it when Big washes him. He even "asks" Big to wash his butt! Cats are so funny!

Elle said...

I've tagged you for a meme called "7 Random Things About Me". Now that you are blogging, might as well jump in and have fun with the medium. Memes are passed by doing the meme on a post (take a look at mine to get an idea), then tagging others to do the same. If you don't want to do it, it's OK, but some people follow the meme from site to site, so it can bring new readers, too. Whatever you do is OK with me. *hugs*