WereBear Guest Cat Posts

This post was scheduled to run last weekend, but then I found out WereBear had to say goodbye to their beloved Olwyn, so I decided to pull it and let her write up a little bit about Olwyn to add to the original post.

WereBear writes:

A sad addendum: we recently lost our sweet Princess Olwyn at the age of thirteen. This was after a long illness of many months. It was one thing, it was another. But we now think she was just running out of lives, which is why she would bounce back after each crisis, then lose ground again.

After the last one, we decided to not rush into something so stressful to her when she was clearly signaling she’d had enough. She quietly died in the arms of Mr WayofCats. Which is what both of them would want under such sad circumstances.

She was his first Heart Cat and he’s devastated. We got Rhiannon at the end of last year, with no idea we’d be losing another cat so soon. Now it’s three in six months and we’re wiped out by it.

Still, we find solace in our current four cat configuration. Rhiannon was sought for and planned, while Bud & Lou were actual rescues. Sir Tristan, who arrived as a 3-week-old and became a “failed foster,” is ten. He will never be ready to be the oldest cat. But I reassure him that he’ll always be MY baby.

That is the beauty of Cat Civilization. It’s a cuddly reminder that life does go on.

And it should.

Deepest condolences to both WereBear and Mr. WereBear. They leave those pawprints on our hearts forever.

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On to the original post:

WereBear has bestowed us with another wonderful post. Welcoming her newest furbaby.

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Welcome, the Divine Queen

When we rescued our six-month-old kitten, Rhiannon (yes, just like the Fleetwood Mac song,) it was at the very end of the year 2020. Pandemic considerations made her adoption especially challenging.

I am thrilled that adoptable kittens and cats are in shorter supply than ever before. This is one of the societal changes, wrought by the Pandemic, that I hope we keep. As it turned out, Rhiannon herself was dealing with challenges.

We’d suffered pet losses in 2020. Our thirteen-year-old, Reverend Jim, had passed away. He’d been the heart of our Cat Civilization, and helped us raise Bud and Lou. Mithrandir, himself a feral rescue, grew up… and decided he wanted to be an Only Cat. After all my attempts otherwise had failed, and our vet agreed with the diagnosis, the only way to make us all happy was letting her rehome him.

Then our oldest cat, twelve-year-old Olwyn, suffered a serious infection. She’s still recovering, mostly alone in the bedroom, out of the social swim. At her age and as close as she came, we’re happy to give her a low-stress environment and devoted nursing from Mr WayofCats.

But that dropped us into a new problem. Ten-year-old Sir Tristan was living with two rowdy teen cats. And he hasn’t happy about it.

Bud and Lou, our pair-bonded feral rescues, are delightfully social cats. They missed RJ, and reached out to Tristan. Who found himself flipped from the Fun Uncle to the Grandpa Mason-style Kitten Wrangler. Not his style, not his skill set.

Which resulted in an example of my favorite cat advice. The solution to your cat problem is more cats.

I needed the right age of kitten, teen or younger, who would mesh with Bud and Lou as a playmate. They needed the social skills to pull our Cat Civilization back together. And the people involved hadn’t gotten a kitten in six years. This was a case of Kitten Fever that was completely treatable.

The hunt began. This was different from any other “cat hiring” process I had ever experienced. My speculative, near-science-fiction, dreams of a rescue cat shortage had come true. This was thanks to the Pandemic, which had emptied so many shelters. It also kept me from my favorite tactic of grabbing a friend and Just Showing Up.

With masks and the knowledge that the shelter in question was also following best practices, we set out on a six-hour car trip, to a place we’d never been before.

This was my fourth attempt at focusing on a prospect. So many potential kittens were feral rescues. Not a problem, but that had been our last three kittens. We did not regret the six years we’d invested in loving Mithrandir. Without our patience, he never would have found his true home. Bu7t now, we needed a different dynamic.

The previous three I’d emailed about turned out not quite right. I had seen this dilute tortoiseshell kitten in the orange bag every time I looked. But she was part of a pair-bond already, with her brother. Still, it had been a couple of months. Things change. I emailed. And they had. After waiting so long in kitten-time, they had adopted the brother out. And broken them up.

It was a pair-bonding situation that had led to Bud and Lou. I watched them move like a dance team in their cage, via an unplanned, pre-pandemic vet visit for Tristan, who turned out fine. Unlike me, who was gripped by the conviction that I had to take them. Because I knew the cute, fluffy, more social Lou would appeal to someone who wouldn’t want the solemn, shy, Bud. And that would, in cat terms, be a tragedy.

Good thing I did. A few months later, the world changed. Raising Bud and Lou turned out to be a wonderful gift to a couple locked down in their home.

My phone chat with the kitten’s foster mother sealed the deal. This baby sounded like she had the right qualities. Mr WayofCats, passionate Tortie fan, was an easy sell. He’d already been molded into shape by Olwyn. He had experience.

It’s been two months now, and things have only gotten better as Rhiannon, the Divine Queen, took over every heart in Kitten Country. Bud and Lou were instantly Smitten Kittens. Tristan had to be worked on, but there wasn’t a more charming kitten on the continent. He’s completely won over.

Olwyn is still convalescing, but she’s got her ruff growing back in. It was such a narrow squeak her body had given up on the coat maintenance. Since she’s growing bossier by the week, we know she’s on the mend. And I have no doubt that when she is, they will have a good time taking turns bossing Mr WayofCats.

Our trip to farm country has paid off. I wouldn’t have been able to gamble so had I not lived in NY. I kept my searches in-state, and everywhere we went people were masked. Even though the last stretch was tiny back roads, not a lot of help from Google maps, and three wrong stops, we found her. Fell in love. Brought her home.

And thank goodness Mr WayofCats was co-piloting when we were mere minutes down the road and I looked into the rearview mirror to see a tiny kitten, perched on the back seat headrest, having Houdini-ed her way out of the carrier already. It was a barely plowed road with culverts on either side and no place to pull over. But he was able to snag her, and the carrier, and assemble both of them again.

We turned off the airbag and let her be in the carrier, but on Mr WayofCats’ lap. That was what she wanted. That’s what made her happy.

Because the Divine Queen loves all her devoted subjects.

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Thanks to the Trump Administration and my “seemed like a good idea at the time” mid-career switch to the tourism industry, I am now a full-time Cat Guru. :)

I’ve got a book, The Way of Cats! And people seem to love it. +Follow me on Amazon to get notified of my second book, in progress, Cat Civilization.

Listen to the stories behind the posts with my NEW Behind the Blogs podcast on Patreon. Open my vault of cat advice at WayofCats.com.

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Thanks, WereBear!! She’ll be around for cat chat, so bring your questions to the comments. And feel free to share your favorite pet stories and rescue stories.

 

I’ll probably drop another duckling post sometime this weekend. They’ve been let loose to run around the living room supervised for exercise and their first bathtub swims, both of which I need to get video of and share with you (follow along here until then).

WereBear Guest Post: Welcome Rhiannon and a Sad GoodbyePost + Comments (90)

WereBear posted they had to say goodbye to Reverend Jim just before the holiday and I kept meaning to ask her if she’d like to do a guest post on all he meant to them. Luckily, she read my mind and asked me to share this. He was a beautiful boy, Werebear.

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Our cat Reverend Jim was thirteen when we shared that last vet appointment, a few weeks ago. It was sad, but it was also my privilege. He was an extraordinary cat.

Reverend Jim’s rescue involved me convincing the police department that it was time to take him out of that “material witness” category. He’d had three weeks of vet care, which saved his life, but he still wasn’t thriving. At only 12 weeks old, he needed a home, but he was so scrawny no one would see him as the kitten he was.

Mr WereBear had asked me to, “Get someone mellow. You know, like Reverend Jim on Taxi.” He probably didn’t expect me to bring home “the most pathetic kitten in the place,” as a friend once said of my choices. But soon, he realized we couldn’t call him anything else. His Joy Face at cuddles and a full bowl was so evident, and so much like Christopher Lloyd’s, that this name turned out to be inevitable.

It took some time for him to catch up on his brain development being stunted by neglect, but he made it all the way back. I will always think of him during the holiday season, when his abundant wise-ass tendencies got highlighted. We would bring out the little, kitten-proofed, tree we got that year. It had all the lights and ornaments wired on, so when it fell on the carpet, we could just put it back on the table again.

But when questioned about these incidents, RJ would protest his innocence with his face. He would demonstrate that he wasn’t playing with the tree. He was playing with the wire from the tree. See?

He was an excellent example of cats being lawyers.

RJ’s legacy lives on through his mentoring of five kittens through the years. He was a world class Kitten Wrangler. He was taught by James Bond, who was trained by Beelzebub, who was mentored by Myron. That’s decades of unbroken tradition which stretches into the past, and the future.

When we lose them, always too soon, it hurts to think about the future. Without them.

Our good friend Amir Khalid recently lost his sweet cat, Bianca. In that thread, germy shared this:

WereBear wrote something once that brought tears to my eyes. She wrote about us giving our pets a knowledge of love.

So Bianca knew love, and that’s something.

Thank you. I believe love is what we are here for. Those of us who love a pet see that love returned, every day. Having someone who shares our lives acts as a multiplying force on our emotion. It blooms and fades and flowers again. As emotions should.

Our pets tell us that it doesn’t matter who that someone might be. They blast through walls of bigotry with their sheer joy in our presence. They regard us as a fellow being, who is their friend.

This makes right-wing quibbles about skin color, hair texture, physical abilities, language differences, and who we love and in what ways… meaningless.

Our heart knows that.

My readers have told me they find reassurance in, After a loss, how long before we get a new cat? Because they feel guilty that their period of mourning is not long enough. That wanting another pet, “too soon,” diminishes both their love, and their loss.

In this post, I explain that pets are different. We can’t use the lenses of “human loss” with them. Because the time frames do not match. The whole of their life fits into fractions of ours.

I believe pets fit into the “dear friends” category. That’s not like partner or child or parent, which are more restricted, and not as easily found again.

Pet loss is similar to friend loss. We usually have a number of friends, and we are always willing to entertain another. But this is also how pet loss hurts us so deeply. It’s a special category we can’t get from our fellow humans.

Pets are woven into our lives. Yet, with pet loss, our life goes on in ways indistinguishable from the outside. For most of us, our society does not acknowledge this special niche our animal friends give us. It’s only been quite recently that cultural acknowledgment of this special grief exists at all.

One of the reasons I “lost my religion” as a teen in the Deep South was how I was told “animals have no souls.”

I knew that wasn’t true.

I hope Amir finds love again. I know my home will, too. Right now, we are waiting for the universe to send us another “cat who needs us most.”

When we are pet rescuers, especially, the universe has that tendency.

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Didn’t see it coming. My destiny turned out to be Internet Cat Guru.

Explore the blog at the Way of Cats.

Reverend Jim was memorialized in my first book, The Way of Cats. He’s on the cover and I get to tell his story. Check out my author page on Amazon. +Follow me to get notified of my book-in-progress, the multiple cat management system I call Cat Civilization.

Is it a gift-giving season for our cats? Explore custom blends in Mr WereBear’s creations, Herbal Cat Toys. The herb IS the toy!

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TaMara here again. Feel comfortable using this thread to tell us about the critters you’ve loved and lost. We have all been there.

Guest Post: WereBear – The Arc of Getting and LosingPost + Comments (81)