Taz, just a couple of days after we brought him homeTaz has been gone about 4 weeks. The twins still miss him. They watched and learned from him. He allowed them to be near him, when he wouldn't allow any of the other cats near.
Charlie and I talked about it the other night and decided that we would have “another baby”. I was happy and said “We’re expecting!” We don’t know when, but we know that it is what we want to do.
Before Taz, we had talked about getting a kitten for about two years. Rowdy and Calvin were getting older and we thought that a kitten might be a buffer for us to deal with not having them one day.
During the two years, Charlie was on and off travel. He told me that if I wanted to get a kitten while he was gone, it was okay. He trusted me to get a "good" one. But, I didn’t have the urgency to look.
Then in December of 1998, all of a sudden, we had the urge to go and look for a kitten. We went to the County shelter. There was a little male kitten who looked like the one. When we asked, he was already taken. So we went to the City and found nothing there. The next weekend, we went back to the City. We went into the “cat room”. One cat was meowing. It was a cute little gray striped cat. I said to Charlie, “I don’t think I could stand much of that noise”.
Across from him in a kennel, we saw a little kitten and went to look at it. It looked like the cat we wanted. Charlie checked and she was taken. Then we turned around and I said “What about that one?” He was the one meowing when we walked in. We went over to him. He was in a cage with a little black cat. We asked if we could take him out. When we held him, he kept wanting to get down. He kept looking down at the little black kitten in the cage with him. We decided that we wanted him. His name would be “Taz”.
We put him back in the cage and watched him. We noticed that each time the door to the cat room opened, he looked at the feet of the people coming in and then immediately looked at their face. I thought that was amazing about him.
We adopted him that Saturday, December 19, 1998. The rules then were that we could have brought him home and then have him neutered by our vet, or leave him at the shelter and they would have him neutered by one of the vets who were contracted with the animal shelter. Then we would pick him up from that vet. We decided to leave him and pick him up from the contracted vet on the following Monday.
On Monday, I received a call from the vet in Imperial Beach, who was going to neuter our kitten. They had not neutered him yet and were asking if we would pay for a pain medication that he might need after the neutering. I was kind of surprised that they had not neutered him yet. I’m sure he hadn’t had anything to eat since midnight and here it was almost noon. He was about 6 weeks old and had nothing to eat since the night before! I told them that yes, I would pay for a pain shot after neutering! When we got home from work, we were excited about picking up our kitten from the vet’s. He would be ready at 6:00pm. So, we decided to go and get something to eat and then pick him up.
We got to the vet’s office and it was crowded. We checked in and were waiting. All of a sudden we heard the loudest screams coming from one of the examining rooms. Somehow, we knew it was our baby, Tax. Everyone was looking at each other, I’m sure wondering, “What in the world are they doing to that poor cat?”
We were called into the examining room. There was our baby, Tax, on the table. He was screaming! The poor vet looked like, “I didn’t do anything to him, honest!.” Over the noise, he desperately tried to tell us how to care for Tax, post-surgery. We really didn’t hear anything he said. We were both thinking, “Did we just adopt a feral kitten? Now what?” We had brought a blanket, so we wrapped him up and walked out through the waiting room. He was screaming his head off and of course, everyone was staring as we walked through. We didn’t care. We were more concerned about what kind of wild animal did we have here?
As we walked across the parking lot, Taz squirmed and was like a slinky. Even in the blanket, I had a hard time holding onto him. He was very small though and I managed. We knew that if he got loose, we’d have a hard time getting him back, if ever, and it was dark.
We got him home and decided to keep him in the master bathroom for a few days until we could introduce him into the household. We didn’t know how Rowdy and Calvin would accept him and we had Chelsi too. We fed him and he was ravenous. Then we spent some time with him and he meowed and fought sleep, but finally fell asleep while I held him in my hands.
If we’d had it to do over again, we’d have brought him home that Saturday, taken him to our vet to have him neutered, and then he wouldn’t have had to go through this. He was so little and had gone so long without eating and then he was in such pain, and being the shy little cat that he was, he had been handled by so many strangers that day.
But, he was home with us now and thank goodness they don’t dwell on things like humans do. Before long he was running around the house, playing with Rowdy and Calvin and getting to know his dog, Chelsi.
Rowdy and Taz
Calvin and TazI know he loved his life with us and we loved him so much. I would have liked to have him longer. But, like my friend Mary told me the other day ,“I told Princess that we’d be together again some day”. Then she said, “I don’t know if I believe that, but it made it easier to say good bye to her. Otherwise, what are you going to do?”
I don’t know if I’ll ever see Taz or any of our other babies that we love so much again, but I would like to think that I will. Heaven to me is seeing the loved ones who have gone before you, people and pets. I know I’m not the only one who thinks like this.
I have a friend who told me that sometimes when she goes to bed at night she still thinks of dogs and cats that she had when she was a child. They are the most innocent souls. You can’t forget them. It sure hurts when they leave you.
We’re expecting another baby..........sometime soon, hopefully. He won't replace "The Baby", but I think me, dad and the twins will be ready to spoil him!
"The Baby"More later...........
I'm getting anxious to go and get "the Baby's Boy".
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