Over the weekend, we lost a family kitty. Ares Bastet our loveable thinks-he's-a-dog-in-cat's-clothing kitty died suddenly sunday evening. Laura and I were in Forest Grove visiting my grandmother like we do each weekend and I had to drive into Portland to pick up my mom, leave Laura with grammy, and stay overnight with her. We made her something with a little alcohol in it to help her get to sleep. In our family, pets' deaths are taken as hard or harder then human family members. I'm not sure why he died and it's driving me nuts. As a fully-certified veterinary assistant I feel like I should have known and prevented it; all I do know is that he died of acute-onset renal (kidney) failure but not what caused it or why. I'm inclined to think he was poisoned but I have found no evidence of poison. He had similar symptoms a few months ago (thought we'd lose him during my mother's birthday party in late January) but he recovered..or so we thought. He has also had digestive issues as long as I could remember. We got him the year I graduated from high school, so he was about 8 years old..just barely a senior.

He was a sweet main coon, one of the biggest cats I had ever seen even though he had started out very tiny. He loved to jump into my lap when I would go visit him at my mom's house and lay right on my chest nose-to-whisker with me and lick my chin with his rough tongue. Huge cat that we was (he was the size of a fully-grown raccoon and almost as heavy) he had a tiny little "Mew" for a voice!

Even though he wasn't technically MY cat, I'm taking it pretty hard. My poor mom is beside herself with grief. That was her baby. She got him when she lost our other family cat to hyperthyroidism. (It's now treatable, but 12-15 years ago, it wasn't.)







Goodbye, Sweet Ares, we'll miss you.

Note: Those first two pics are of Ares trying to get comfortable on my huge belly before Laura was born!
Those last three photos were taken with my shiny new Nintendo DSi! Since our digital camera died on us, I've been using my dsi more and more. Even more then my cell-phone camera (images are clearer then my often-muddy cell-phone pics)
I'll post more about the dsi at a later date.