Sunday, October 15th, 2006
When we left Boston, we took our neighboors cat with us. Actually I asked to hold on to the cat for a while until they could figure out how to get him to CA without slipping him the dog’s sleeping pills and hiding him in a carryon. Needless to say, we had the cat until yesterday.
Bootsie was the smartest of many, many cats that have lived at my home. Mostly at my parent’s home, where cats were always around. He was smart enough to expect certain outcomes from his actions. One of the first things he ever did was headbutt the bag of dog food while standing on the couch. When it fell over, he hopped down to the floor and looked for the spilled food. The bag was still shut, and he was pissed that there was no food. He had to go upstairs to see his old apartment empty before he would stay the night with us. Things like that.
He was also an annoying shit. He would howl the entire time he was caged on car trips, and most of the time if he was loose. “Surely no animal can howl like that for 8 hours straight.” No, he will go hoarse before then, but still try to let us know how pissed he was. After going outside, he would come in and gorge, then purge. I cleaned up almost as much cat puke as Sammy (the dog) did. And he would yowl if his water bowl had dog drool in it.
Apparently the puking and constant thirst were signs that his kidneys were failing. Over the last week, he quit eating, lost several pounds, and became lethargic. Those are pretty much the only signs
[the rest of this post is missing. Bootsie died of toxic shock from a blocked urethra. We miss him. Dammit Bootsie.]