Skip Navigation
所有
cats @lemmy.world
martine @lemm.ee

Tell us about your soul cat

How did they come in to your life, what was your connection like, what made them different from other cats? Are they still with you, if not how do you cope with the loss? Photos appreciated too obvs.

25 评论

  • His name was Doogle. He was a stray kitten One day he and his brother showed up at the first place I ever lived in as an adult with my roommate. He was a gray stripped cat. I'm a dog person, and he was the only cat I've ever truly loved. One day he was gone. I lived in a shitty trailer in a shitty part of town so maybe he broke out and left. Maybe he made it outside and didn't make it. But that year and a half he was in my life was great. I still miss him sitting in my shoulder from the back of the couch while I played video games.

  • I'm not sure I have just one.

    First there was Snowball. Adopted him as an adult from a rescue, and apparently he'd been returned a few times. Food allergies, likely irritable bowel syndrome. Over the next 12 years I cleaned up a lot of cat vomit. Seriously - we have three cats now and it's still far less than he produced. Eventually cancer got him.

    But he was my best bud for those years. When my girlfriend (now wife) moved in, she knew we came as a package. One time she said, "I don't think your cat likes me." And I was like, "Are you serious? He loves you!" She just didn't get cat language.

    Late in Snowball's life (we didn't realize how ill he was at the time), we adopted a female tabby we named Minnie. She was so cuddly. She'd come up to me at night, and I would lift up the covers, and she'd curl up under the covers with me for a while. She was spicy, as one vet tech put it. But she was so fun too.

    She had multiple medical issues that tended to interfere with each other, and she spent quite a bit of time in the animal hospital in her later years. We put her to sleep when she was 7 because she just wasn't getting better, and even if she had survived that incident, there was no guarantee she wouldn't be back in a few months with the same problems. I miss her so much. At least Snowball got a long life, he was at least 13 but could have been as much as 18.

    These days two of the three are pretty cuddly with me. Stitch tends to curl up on my feet at night, though my wife has spotted him in my arms while we sleep too. Nibbler usually curls up on my lap and arm when I'm in the comfy chair in the living room. I'll miss them both so much someday.

    And lately Stitch has been showing signs of old age, he has a few medical issues of his own, and his black tuxedo fur is fading some, so I fear he's older than we thought. (We've had him since 2016, and they thought he was about a year old then, but they really can't tell - he could be 5 or 6 years older than that.) I'm not ready...

  • So many stories. This turned into such an essay. Maybe no one will read this but there's some catharsis in writing it.

    Buddy was my best friend. He found my wife when he was a kitten, probably around seven months old. He followed her to her car on a rainy day a few days before Thanksgiving. His name was "Widow" for probably two or three weeks, my wife told me he was a girl and I just never questioned that. We were watching Elf at the time she discovered her mistake, so that's where his new name came from.

    We talked it over and we thought adding another cat would be a bit much with what our financial situation was (stupid rent increases for adding pets), so I took him to the closest animal shelter. They asked where we found him, I answered honestly and they said nope, we only accept cats found in our town, there's a fee otherwise. I didn't know I was supposed to lie about that, my bad.

    Our town didn't have a shelter, but we were told to take him to animal control and he'd be moved to the shelter associated with our city. So I took him there, explained the situation. The first thing I was asked was "Did you feed her"? Yeah, it's a kitten that was stuck out in the rain in the evening, of course we did. She explained to me (this still makes no sense to me, if anyone has an explanation please chime in) that by default if you feed a cat without an owner you legally become its owner, and that 49 states have reasonable laws to override that default but since Michigan has no laws about feeding strays on the books, I'm the owner. $100 surrender fee to give up a cat we own. Didn't know I was supposed to lie about that either, my bad.

    We gave him to my wife's sister and her boyfriend and Widow spent that entire night shitting all over their furniture and my sister-in-law demanded we take him back. At this point he's our cat.

    He never pooped on our stuff, but we knew there was an issue. I swear I brought like ten stool samples to the vet over his first year and they all tested no parasites. He was kind of a dumbass and at one point he ate some bristles off our broom and threw them up with a yellow worm-thing coiled around one, I didn't see it but my wife took a photo. I showed the vet and they gave him parasite meds which solved his issue for good. It's not something you hear people saying too often, but thank god my cat ate that broom, who knows how long he would have stayed sick for. For the record, if that happens, the recommendation is to put the worm in a baggie filled with water to bring to the vet, as opposed to taking a photo for evidence before trying to get it as far away from you as humanly possible, which seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time.

    Before getting him I always pictured cats as graceful animals, but he was so goddamn clumsy. Early on I was playing with him trying to get him to hop into a cardboard box that was not much taller than him. I threw a treat inside, and he looks over the edge of the box to see it and thinks it over. He hops into the box but hits his hind legs on the side of the box and faceplants. Oh my god dude. He jumps back out okay and I'm like let's try this again. He does the exact same thing a second time, he hits his hind legs and faceplants.

    Buddy's thing was he would sleep like he had just been hit by a car. Our repeated joke was to look at him and say "RIP". Some examples:

    The plastic shelves he's asleep on in that last photo were stacked above our dresser for extra storage. That was his most frequent sleeping place, it was to the right of my head, but way above. One time I was waking up from a nap and I'm like half-asleep and see him stretched out like a dead animal on the edge and I start thinking "this asshole's gonna fall". Then he started sliding off and when he woke up he tried to cling to the edge, but that just pulled the drawers and they fell with him. For an instant I was terrified that they were going crush him but I saw him sprinting out of the room before I really had time to process.

    There was a period of time where he was very curious about the world outside the apartment and we would have to prevent him from running out the door. He eventually snuck out at one point when someone came home late and we didn't pick up on it until morning. Right outside our door was mostly stairways, so I went down the stairs looking for him. I was calling for him walking the stairs and he wasn't coming like he normally would, it was terrifying. When I got to the cement floor at the very bottom he walks out from the darkness under the stairs and starts screaming at me, face completely covered in cobwebs. He never left home again after that.

    Buddy would flail his tail when he was happy, he was the dog I always wanted. He loved being the center of attention and loved hearing his name. He would be passed out dead and I would whisper his name very quietly and his tail would do a single flail.

    One time I was getting ready for my day at grad school like any other and I realized I forgot to close my shirt drawer, thought it was odd because I've never done that before. Whatever. I come back about nine hours later and he is not at the apartment door to greet me like always, instead it's my antisocial cat. When I walk into the bedroom she starts pacing around in front of the dresser and my heart sinks into my stomach when I make the connection. There's something to be said for moments of terror out of concern for someone's well-being that turn into pure comedy the instant you realize they're fine, he does a huge stretch and hops out all happy, best sleep of his life. Black cat curled up on black shirts in a black dresser. Later that evening I catch him opening the same drawer with his paw. He had just taught himself a new trick without having the courtesy to notify me about it.

    I had long covid and was not doing great, but the pandemic was the really the best time of Buddy's life. He was so happy that we spent most of our time at home. Our other cat hated it though.

    The night before our second wedding anniversary, we were talking about how it was sad we couldn't take off work to spend the day with each other. The next morning my wife is awake before me and Buddy is in pain in the litterbox, trouble peeing. Drive him to an animal hospital and we have to put him down. It was completely out of the blue. He always liked to be cradled like a baby and he died in my arms that way. We both took the day off to mourn.

    RIP Buddy Monster

  • This is Momo, my first cat. I adopted her a few weeks after our wedding in 2022. She was smart and cuddly. She liked to bring her little cotton mouse to us to play fetch. When I got home from work she was the first one to ran in front of the door to greet me. Even though she was a cat, I felt like I adopted a puppy.

    Fast forward to 6 months later, she was coming of age and needed to be spayed. I took her to the vet in my neighborhood, ran all of the test, paid for the highest option. I say yes to everything the doctor said just to make her experience the least pain as possible. The vet said the operation was successful and she will need to stay the night.

    I did not expect that the last time I saw Momo was the time I handed her to that fucking doctor. I got a call at midnight from the vet that Momo is unwell and dying. My wife and I ran as fast as we could to the vet, by the time we get there Momo was unconscious her heartbeat was really low. We tried to talked to her, her heartbeat raised up for a few minutes then flatlined. Momo died in my arm that day.

    It took a week for me to able to get up and go to work again. I adopted 2 more cats. One is abandoned, one is a stray but got stuck in a cement crack. They are living happily with us now but none them is as smart and gentle as Momo. I hope she is in a better place now.

    For some reason I cannot upload her picture. Here is the folder of all her photos

  • I have had two. They have both been cats that people say "uh, are you sure they're a cat" and they cannot get enough of play time. Here's the current one

25 评论