When Diana and I moved in together, I went from one cat to four. Fortunately, I'm a cat person, and so marrying the Crazy Cat Lady was not the worst thing. I spent 2,500 miles driving in each direction from Cleveland to Seattle and back with those furry bastards, and it wasn't fun, but you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
Cosmo died in early 2013, and she was my cat, spanning two marriages, a vet student girlfriend, three moves and I don't even know how many jobs. I think 16 years is a pretty good run for a cat. She hated everyone else, but she always seemed to look after me, especially the in-between time when I was living alone. I miss her, because Diana's cats always kind of tolerated me, and only bugged me when they needed things. We lost Gideon about two years ago, but he was barely 12 when he suddenly developed a cancerous tumor on his leg. He was our gentle giant, scared of everything, despite his enormity. He actually warmed up to me in his last year or two.
That leaves Oliver and Emma. Oliver is closing in on 14, but he still acts like a kitten. He's dumb as a box or rocks and ticklish, but I guess that's part of his charm. Emma will be 18 in the fall, and she's showing her age. She's a fairly nice cat despite having the most irritating meow you've ever heard. She's been sick a lot lately, but hasn't lost any weight. She's slowed down a lot in the last few months. I've made jokes for years about her dying, not to be cruel, but she's beating the odds at this point, given the time that she lived outside. I'll be sad when it's her time, but not at all surprised. For some reason I expect that it won't be disease that takes her, we'll just find one day that she died in her sleep.
Oliver definitely needs playmates, but I've resisted more cats because I really wanted to be down to one before augmenting the pride. But then the pandemic hit, and it became obvious that Emma was in decline. We decided a long time ago that we wanted a pair, preferably brothers, because they tend to grow up as cuddle buddies. All of our cats previously came from shelters, and as bad as I feel about not doing that again, we really wanted to get ragdolls. My brother-in-law has two, and they're enormous, friendly cats. They aren't hypoallergenic, but they're potentially less sneezy because they don't have an undercoat, which apparently means less dander. That may be a minor win for Diana (yes, the Crazy Cat Lady is allergic to cats).
So there are two kittens joining the pride in a couple of weeks. They'll be neutered and ready to go. We have some ideas for names, but we really have to meet them first. Knowing we'll have to say goodbye to Emma at some point, hopefully the kittens will make the transition a little easier.
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