This winter we lost Nuts on December 20, 2011 and Outdoor Cat on January 9, 2012. Both were older with serious health issues so we knew it would happen eventually, but it was still heart-breaking. Nuts was my husband's cat, and she adopted him some thirteen years ago when a friend of his found her as a stray. When she was little she would run around like a crazy cat, and his young son said "This cat is nuts!" and the name stuck. She was the reason we kept a "Beware of the Cat" sign by the front door because she hissed at everyone except my husband and once chased our former landlord's dog out of HER yard.
Outdoor Cat was much shyer, and when we bought our house, we did not even know that she was living under our deck until our neighbor told us she had been there for some years. No one seemed to remember how long, but the previous owners used to leave food out for her, and everyone told us she was "not very friendly." I have described in previous blog posts how Outdoor Cat went through the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap Neuter Return program and ended up coming indoors.
She adopted me and slept on my side of the bed at night, while Nuts slept on my husband's side. Often the humans would end up squished together in the middle third of the bed acting as a buffer zone between the two cats, who would hiss at each other on sight. Fortunately since they were older female cats, they mostly pretended the other cat was not there.
Our remaining cat Ruby would like you to know that we do not need another cat. Ruby is enjoying having full command of the humans' attention and having access to rooms that had previously been the other cats' territories. She distributes her fuzziness equally between our laps.
