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| Precious |
Our family has had several cats.
They had odd names and quirky personalities.
Names like, "Baby", "Oreo", "Sherman", "Hurley", "Sparta", "Small Eyes", "Saving Private Ryan" and "Tigger".
They all came and went. But ONE stuck around. For a lifetime.
He was born on Canada Day 2004 in an house on Regina Street in North Bay.
The owner of the house was a fellow who was doing some work for me and happened to be in jail for drunk and disorderly conduct. (I guess that's another story in itself.)
He mentioned in one of his phone calls from the slammer, that no one was looking after his house and his cat had kittens and would be hungry.
He was concerned, so out of the goodness of my heart, I went over to his place to have a look.
He had mentioned that the kittens were almost ready to leave momma and be "adopted" if I wanted one.
We discussed it, and thought we would see if one stood out to us as a missing member of the family.
As we expected, the kittens were a bit wild, not having much to do in a virtually abandoned house.
They were all cute, but one had these special ears.
They were big and a little floppy, like they were too big for his head.
He had a bright face and was lively.
Right away I thought, if he's the one, we'll call him Yoda, because of the ears.
I told the family about him and we went and had another meeting. He was irresistible.
We took him home and decided together on a permanent name.
The big movies at the box office at the time were The Lord Of The Rings films, so in a nod to the ring itself, we called him "Precious"!
For a boy cat, it seemed a little bit feminine, but it really fit. He was "Presh" for short.
During his first few days at our place we discovered that he must have had to fight his brothers and sisters for any scrap of food he could get.
He ate his own kitten food, but, if any bit of anything fell from our dinner table, he pounced!
He would also jump up on the table and help himself!
He was so quick, that we could hardly grab him before he devoured our human food.
We decided, we need to teach him as lesson early that our food is not for him.
We took some Cayenne pepper and put it on a scrap of food and dropped it on purpose.
That was the last time he came lurking under the table!
His whole life he would squint when anything spicy came near him!
We had him get his proper shots, get neutered and also de-clawed.
He grew and grew. He was orange and fluffy. He did not really have much of a voice.
He would sort of cackle. He also barely purred. You had to listen very close.
The only time he would really speak up was when someone was doing the dishes!
He found the clattering of plates and silverware very ANNOYING!
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| He loved the sun. |
We knew he was happy, because he was pretty chill.
He chased many laser pointer dots over the years.
He came with us when we moved to Sudbury in 2008.
He adjusted to new surroundings in 6 new places.
He never liked the outdoors. He was an indoor cat, seldom touching his paws to earth or grass.
He DID like to eat grass like most cats!
He loved being under blankets.
He loved head scratches and rubs under the chin.
He loved lunch meat, popcorn, fruit, bacon and chicken nuggets.
Precious has been living with my daughter, Victoria in Sudbury.
She has taken care of him and taken him to the vet. Over the last few years he'd been slowing down.
He was on medication. We knew his time was coming.
In March of this year, he began to act oddly. He would seek solitude. The signs of the end.
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| Just days before... |
After 14 years of furry snuggling and bringing joy to our hearts, he passed peacefully in my daughter, Jasmines arms.
We are all sad.
We miss him a lot.
We're comforted by a gang of new cats, "Graham", "Kylo", Gizmo" and the latest..."Jango".
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| Precious and Jango Christmas 2018 |
Precious, you were a good kitty.
