Pets – Page 95

Don’t Mind if I Do

I was sitting on the floor this afternoon when Boo came over unprompted and crawled into my lap and fell asleep. I wasn’t prepared for it and not sitting in a comfortable place, but I let him stay as long as he wanted. He’s still pretty skittish but the transformation he’s undergone in a few days is incredible. There’s a downside to this. I’ve been sleeping in the bedroom so Sam can keep his routine of sleeping on me, while my wife is sleeping in the basement with Boo, who kept her up most of the night showering her with affection.

Two Days Today

Two days ago Boo trembled in fear at our introduction. Today he curled up beside me and slept with his head on my chest.

Remarkable.

Say Hello to Boo

Meet the newest member of our family, a seven-month-old kitten named Boo.

I thought it most likely we would adopt one of the many impossibly cute two-month-old kittens at the Oregon Humane Society as it seemed like it would have the best odds of integrating with our other pets. But my wife found an older kitten named Bronco who had been at the shelter for a couple of weeks but was struggling with life there. His previous owners said he got along with cats and dogs so she went down Wednesday evening before OHS closed to meet him. He was extremely shy and shook like a leaf when she met him, but eventually he warmed up to her and she wanted me to meet him.

OHS was closed on Thursday for the 4th of July but we went down first thing on Friday morning. He shook at first too when I met him but then warmed up much quicker than I expected and soon was walking in and out of my lap and purring loudly.

It was settled. He was coming home with us, and getting a new name.

I didn’t try for pictures yesterday since it was such a stressful day for the poor little fellow but in the meantime his confidence has grown by leaps and bounds. Plus a new camera arrived this morning that is much less obtrusive and he was happy enough to be my first test subject, pausing for a brief moment while playing in a paper bag.

As with Scout, Boo takes his name from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. At the end of the book, Boo and Scout share a moment that is one of my favorites in all of literature. Our Boo and Scout never met as Boo joins us five months after her death. Their coloring is similar but that wasn’t a deliberate choice (that’s Boo above, Scout at a similar age below). The timing worked out nicely as a few weeks ago the similarity would have been too much for me to bear.

So welcome, Boo. You’re home now.

Adopted!

But by whom?

Psst! Hey Em! Do You Want to Know a Secret?

I think she just wants to sleep, Samwise.

The Slow Road

I always knew Scout’s death would be particularly hard for me but I didn’t expect it to be this hard. It’s been four months since she died but the road to recovery has been a slower walk than I expected. It hasn’t helped that work got unexpectedly stressful and hectic during those months, leaving me so worn out that I was often falling asleep after dinner. Rather embarrassing for a night owl like me.

They say you shouldn’t make any major changes in the wake of the loss of a loved one, and though I suppose the advice usually applies to the death of a spouse I’ve applied it here as well, for there have been a number of times the past few months I’ve felt like abandoning wildlife photography. I suppose that’s partly a reaction to the amount of time it takes to photograph the way I like and partly to the new telephotos being priced far out of my range.

It is true I haven’t been up to Ridgefield since January, partly because I haven’t felt like going, but partly because I’ve been too tired to get up at the early hours I like to visit the refuge. And I guess I did put my camera aside entirely for a few months until I started taking pictures of the pets again these past few weeks, but at least I did use my time away from Ridgefield to start expanding out the wildflower garden I started a few years ago. I’m slowly making the backyard more bird friendly, as I’ve been experimenting with shooting birds from my office window. And this fall when the birds migrate back, I’ll join them at Ridgefield.

Unfortunately I didn’t get much done on the computer since our cat Sam, who had been close to Scout and struggled too after her death, was constantly snuggled up on my lap where my computer normally resides. But coincident with the warming weather and opening of windows he has ventured further afield, so I’m making my return to blogging and hope to get caught up on email.

This picture of Scout is from January of 2007 as she sat in her heated bed in my office. Templeton was still alive then but would die at the end of the year, shortly before we adopted our cats Sam and Emma, a year before our dog Ellie. Life marches on and someday soon I’ll be able to look at pictures of Scout with all smiles and no tears, just as I can with Templeton.

I’m just not quite there yet.

Twelve

Scout would have turned twelve today.

This was my view these past twelve years as I edited nearly every image you’ve seen here, Scout in her heated bed, sitting right in front of me. Usually she’d be curled up in the bed but sometimes she’d watch me as I worked. She was a tiny little thing so if she was laying down she had to stick her head up to reach the top. It didn’t look too comfortable but it always made me laugh.

Oh Scout, you were the best, and I miss you so.

The Eyes of Ellie

We speak a different language, she and I, but her big brown eyes stare deeply into mine and ask what words cannot.

“Can I have a piece of your pizza?”

Sam & Emma

A shot from last fall of Sam and Emma.

The two are friendly but don’t often cuddle up like this, which is unfortunate since in the six weeks since Scout passed away, the ever-snuggly Sam has been on constant lookout to replace her affections. A lot of the time the two spent together they spent with me, so it’s not so much that he’s spending more time with me but rather that he wants to be up close rather than out on my legs, a favorite Sam spot since he was a wee kitten.

I don’t know if we’ll ever adopt another kitten in the hopes that the two will become close friends, just as he and Scout did five years ago, but in the meantime we’ve tried some commercially available Scout substitutes, such as

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Scout
Skout
Kiss Me I’m Scouttish

but so far none have worked.

For such a tiny little cat, she left a big hole to fill.

A Slow Recovery

Hard as it is for me to believe, it’s been almost five weeks since Scout passed away. Her loss has been particularly hard on little Sam but he’s been making a slow recovery and is now nearly back to normal, or perhaps has reached the new normal. Sam loves snuggling on my legs (shown here a few years ago), to the point that if life were a cartoon I’d have permanent Sam-shaped divots on my legs. But after Scout died he’d only sit in my lap tucked up tight against my chest, as though he was huddling against the cold. After a couple of weeks he relaxed a bit and while still in my lap moved a few inches away, and then a few inches more, but he still stays so close that I can’t really work on my laptop.

I don’t know if he’ll return to sleeping on my legs or if I’ll have to adapt to his new position on my lap. Sometimes he’ll walk down to where he used to sleep but he’ll turn around and come back, so perhaps it’s just going to take a bit more time. He did go all the way down to my feet the other day, but not unaided. Our dog Ellie was snuggling up next to me as well and suddenly sat up and began licking him in the face. He put up with the indignity for a little while but when it was clear she wasn’t going to stop, he moved down to my feet until the coast was clear when she fell back asleep, and then he came back.

His purr has finally returned. It didn’t completely disappear after Scout died, but it got very quiet and hard to come by and didn’t last long. Just in the past few days he’s purred loud and long when we climb into bed at night, so he is definitely recovering.

So too am I.

Scout was my near and constant companion so when I’m at home even now her absence is clearly felt. After getting past that initial wall of grief in the days after she died, a shadow of sadness lurks and at unpredictable times I feel her loss most acutely. But that is at it should be, she was one of the best parts of my life.

With Sam snuggling too close for me to do much typing on my laptop, I’ve been catching up on a lot of old classic movies and British mysteries, usually with Sam on my lap, Ellie tucked up beside me on my right, with our other cat Emma a few feet to my left in her heated bed. Scout’s heated bed lies empty, and that in and of itself is surprising. Sam loved sleeping in her bed and I assumed after she died he’d take it over as his. But right after she died he’d only occasionally get in, then for a few weeks actively avoided it. Now he’s back to occasionally sleeping in it, but mostly it lies empty.

He has been sleeping in Ellie’s beds quite a bit, but that’s not unusual, he’s always done that. Emma has started doing it too, and I had to laugh the other day when both of Ellie’s beds near my office were full of cats and Ellie was scrunched up over on the floor beside them.

What a blessing they are, these little ones.