I am sad to report that another of my cats has passed: Shiloh.
She is well-known to longtime Dopers, as I’ve posted about her since she was a tiny kitten. One thread about her, for example, is “Weaning a Kitten,” from 2002:
There was a lot of good advice in that thread; so good that Shiloh grew and thrived. Remember, that was in 2002, and Shiloh passed this past Wednesday. She was 18 years old. She would have been 19 in May. The advice was solid–a long-overdue thank-you to the Dopers of that time in that thread is in order.
I pulled into the driveway of a friend’s farm one May Saturday morning in 2002. My farmer friend had called me to help out, but said that he might not be there (he’d be in town for gas and supplies), but I knew where the spare key was hidden, so I could go in and make some coffee. I did, and soon was enjoying coffee, in a lawn chair, on the farmhouse lawn. There was a small grey tuft on the usually immaculate farmhouse lawn. What was it?
It turned out to be a tiny kitten, most likely from the barn, where there were a number of cats. I guessed her to be about 10-14 days old, as it appeared that her eyes had only opened up recently. She was trying to “swim” through the grass.
Well, my ex-wife and I took her in. She was so tiny, that we had to hand-rear her by ourselves. Or rather, I did, since my ex went off on a three-week business trip the next day. Every four hours, I mixed up her “Feline Mammilac” formula that we got from our vet, warmed it in the microwave, laid her on her back in my left hand, and fed her through a bottle that a little girl might have for her dolly. She grew. I must have done something right, even though it cost me a good night’s sleep for a number of weeks.
Perhaps because of her unorthodox upbringing (I was trying to play Mama Cat, after all), Shiloh was never really a “lovey kitty.” She preferred to be left alone, and resisted being picked up. But she loved head skritches, her “Temptations” treats, and greeting me at the door when she heard me fumbling with my keys outside.
But she managed a flight in the cargo hold from Toronto to Calgary, when we moved to western Canada, enjoyed playing with small toys, and loved the top of the cat tree, where she could nap in peace. She grew to enjoy the company of our other cats, especially Fiona, with whom she would often nap; the two of them curled up together.
Perhaps more than any other cat I’ve owned, Shiloh was “mine.” I found her, I raised her, I nourished her when she was a kitten; and though I never got to hear her purr while napping in my lap, I like to think that it was my care that gave her a good, long, happy life.
She was pretty special to me. Please, Dopers, spare a thought or a prayer for my dear Shiloh.
