When Ellie and I got back from her evening walk to the dog park, I noticed all three cats watching us enviously from the open window in my office.
Tag: Sam
A Year of Boo
It was one year ago today that we adopted a seven-month old black-and-white kitten named Bronco from the Oregon Humane Society. We renamed the shy little fellow Boo and slowly introduced him to the other pets over the course of a month. He was so terrified when we first met that he shook like a leaf, so it’s been fun to see him become a part of our family. On this afternoon in April, he and Sam snuggled up together on my legs.
My allergies flared up unexpectedly this spring so I spent much of my time the past few months relaxing with the pets draped on me, rather than writing or editing pictures. An unproductive time but not an altogether unpleasant one.
The Return of the Snuggle Fiend
Sam used to spend his days either curled up in my lap or in the heated bed beside our cat Scout, but her death over a year ago was pretty hard on him. At first he snuggled with me more than ever but then started spending much of his time on his own. Gradually he returned to me more and more and now can usually be found curled up in my lap, and at night follows me up to bed.
Sam & Boo
Sam had been sleeping on my legs when Boo, who had been with us for about six months, came in and snuggled up tight with him. I thought Sam would get up but instead they both fell fast asleep. I wanted to snap a picture as a reminder of how our slow introduction of the shy little Boo had paid off, and thankfully had my EOS M beside me on the couch.
The M doesn’t have an articulating screen so I held the camera out blind and hoped for the best. Thankfully I had the zoom lens attached as it has image stabilization, I needed to stop down to increase the depth of field and in the low room lighting even at ISO 3200 ended up with a shutter speed of a third of a second. It doesn’t combat the blur from their breathing but it did help quite a bit with camera shake.
Samwise
Sam and our oldest cat Scout used to sleep on me every night and I’d fall asleep to the sounds of their purrs as the two friends snuggled in the darkness. Scout died almost a year ago and it’s been a tough year for Sam without her. Even many months after her death he was tense and easily disturbed but he has started to relax more and more, and even gets playful at times. He curled up on me as I watched football this fall, but he only sometimes joins me at night, but at least now he sometimes purrs with abandon when he does come. I don’t know if we’ll ever fully get back the happy-go-lucky snuggle fiend he once was, but time is slowly healing his wounds.
While he’s worn this bewildered expression many times over the past year, this picture is from a year and a half ago when Scout was alive and well. He had been sleeping on our bed and the noise of the camera woke him, which he was understandably not too happy about. Thankfully now I have a quieter camera for shots like these.
Me & Sam & Boo & Who
Sam and Boo snuggle up on my legs as we watch Doctor Who.
Psst! Hey Em! Do You Want to Know a Secret?
I think she just wants to sleep, Samwise.
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.
Reaching for the Light
A picture of Sam from the fall of 2009 that I just got around to editing. My office received a makeover last year and a requirement of the new layout was that I still have a place for the three heated cat beds, as the pets frequently hang out in my office. I ended up putting a couch where his bed was in this picture and a low table beside the couch for the heated beds. He is sleeping in one of the beds now, but it is the one that Scout considered to be her own rather than this one. He and Emma both preferred Scout’s over the other two, and if they were in it when she wanted it, she’d come to me and ask me to evict them.
All three beds are from the same company but were bought at different times and are each slightly different. Scout’s bed is an older design that we bought when Templeton was still alive, I think its the best design of the three and the cats apparently agree. We’ve searched in vain to find a couple more but have only been able to find the newer models. Now that Scout has passed away, as long as Sam and Emma each seem happy in the other two beds, I’ll remove this little one even though it made for more interesting pictures, as because of its smaller size they were more likely to have their legs and feet sticking out of it.
Boolie 