After a very brief
visit cage side, the shelter was closing so we put a hold on her and
they said c'mon back early in the morning to beat the crowds. So we went to the pet store
to stock up on cat supplies! Got her the litter and food
the shelter was using (for easier transition) and a brush, rope
scratching post, carrier and a fancy drinking fountain that circulates
the water and keeps it fresh in preparation for picking her up Saturday
bright and early.
July 9, 2005
Had a hard time sleeping last night, felt like Christmas Eve!
Got up nice and early to be at the shelter when it opened as it was
closed to prospective adoptive parents until noon I wanted to show up
for 9am and get her out of there before the zoo started up.
Tashi got one last
booster shot on her way out and we came home after she had spent exactly
one month behind bars, as it were. The three of us
spent most of the day on the bed together napping or just sitting. Now she considers the
bed "home base" but she hasn't even been under it at all. As shy
and nervous as she is, she hasn't resorted to hiding at all. She
ate a little and even used her cat box down the hall, so she did very
well for her first day and by evening was considerably more relaxed.
July 10, 2005
We woke up early to Tashi's stretched out limbs coming from a mostly
upside-down curled up body smack between our pillows. She's the
picture of bliss this morning! She still doesn't want to venture
off the bed for much more than a quick trip to her cat box. She's
afraid of her fancy water fountain, so I might have to give her boring
old water-in-a-bowl... much the pity.
She's purring
noticeably this morning and seems quite content and happy, but she's
also discovered sleeping underneath the covers and that's pretty much
where she seems to want to stay all day.
Until after dinner time
when I walked into the bedroom and she was up on the windowsill.
That seemed to trigger a walk-about and with some encouraging pets from
me, we walked all around and started checking out the rest of her new
home together. She has been all around now a few times and spent quite a bit of time
out of the bedroom this evening. Even a couple minutes on the sofa
with me as long as I had some pieces of food. She's made her
little squeaky meows a few times too and got told NO! when going on the
dining room table about 3 times and the 4th time she listened to the NO!
before jumping, so that was very good. She seems very smart and
able to connect well with people. Always much encouraged by pets
while exploring... seems to boost her confidence to get a little pet
along the way. Especially from her Daddy... she hangs out with me
more but she's a Daddy's girl for sure. Her first owner was male
so maybe that's why. Another big day for Tashi and us. We
are SO owned.
July 11, 2005
Another quiet day with evening hours walk-abouts again. Tashi
spent most of the day giving us dirty looks (and hisses!) due to her
nails being caught in everything all the time... like it's somehow our
fault. Tomorrow she'll find out what nail clippers are if she
doesn't know already. I can only imagine the dirty looks to come.
She did get to new
areas on her walk-abouts so progress is being made every day, but she's
still quite shy and runs to the bed if anything scares her... and
promptly gets her nails caught in something and gets mad. Poor
thing, life is so hard sometimes.
July 12, 2005
Wow, what a difference a day makes... or was it the catnip?
hehe! She began her walk-abouts first thing in the morning and
kept it up every couple of hours all day. She stops when she's
scared by a noise but she doesn't back away. After a pause, she
goes towards the noise to see what it was! Impressive. I had
to rub some catnip on her scratching post as she was ignoring it.
This brought on an immediate little love tryst with the scratching post,
so that worked perfectly. After this major chill-out she relaxed
so much that her always-stuck-on-everything-claws seemed to retract
fully and now she can actually walk around without getting stuck on
everything. (Big surprise, LOL!) So today was a very good
Tashi-day I would say. She even checked out her fancy water
fountain instead of skirting around it. Yay!
Her little pan of cat
grass is starting to come up already. I had started it the night
before we brought her home and it should be a day or two ahead of where
it is, but she knocked it over her first day home. OK not sure
that's why it's a little slow but it's coming up nicely now anyway,
that's the main thing... so she'll have salad greens soon.
She also relaxed enough
to notice the big fish in the
big tank today and sat staring at them for
some time. She's an excellent jumper and I'm pretty sure she'll
jump on top of that tank sooner rather than later, but she won't be able
to gain access, so it should be okay. Plus I'll be watching with a
water bottle ready should she not heed a NO! But so far she hasn't
needed any help in figuring out what NO! means.
July 13, 2005
Tashi most likely has Soft Paws
in her near future as her nails are just too sharp and she's pretty
interested in scratching just about anything. Why sustain damage
while training her what not to scratch? Today's breakthrough: she
played with string instead of being afraid of it. She also was out
with us most of the evening instead of keeping to herself in the
bedroom. Still no lap sitting and no kisses, but I'm not giving up
hope.
July 14, 2005
Check out this beautiful shot I got of Tashi today! She was a very good kitty today,
she spent a lot of time relaxing in the sun coming in thru the windows
and patio door and a lot of time around us too. This evening she's
decided her grocery bag near my computer desk is a great spot to nap.
At one point she got out of her bag and
sat outside for about 15 minutes. Then she got up so I put my hand
down and she wanted to say hello and get a pet. Then I patted my
lap and you could see her seriously think about jumping up! Then
she went back to her paper bag and settled inside for another nap, but I
don't care. The fact that she was seriously considering my lap
makes it clear to me that this is something she *will* do in the future,
and that is good enough. Now I'm still holding out hope for
kisses! hehe!
July 15, 2005
After making a sandwich today I had a little piece of ham left over
on the counter and gave it to Tashi and she licked my fingers after...
does that count as an almost kiss? LOL! She had a bit of a
nap on Mark's lap today but he had to sit on the floor with her... she
still doesn't want anything to do with lap sitting on the sofa.
She did quite a bit of playing with crumpled paper and string today and
had a nap on the piano bench and also under the bookshelf in the dining
room, so she's starting to feel comfortable all over the place.
She did one noticeably louder meow this morning too and had a fixation
on the washer and dryer while I did laundry. You'd think the noise
would have bothered her, but nooooooooo, she was seemingly very
interested in every aspect of it. Well that's the end of Tashi's
first week with us and we all think it went GREAT.
Late July
Well during Week 2 Tashi got a cold from her vaccines. Poor
thing did a lot of sneezing and at one point all three of us had to go
sit in the steamy bathroom so her nose could unstuff a bit so she could
smell her food and want to eat a little bit. The other big news in
Week 2 is that Tashi has discovered, nay embraced, the pleasures of lap
sitting! I think the extra body heat helped with her cold
recovering too. Anyway, I figured she had it in her, but I didn't
know it would come out so soon! I think she somehow knew we were
trying to help her through her cold and she just bonded even more from
that, I don't know. But she's really getting relaxed now and very
lovey dovey and everything you could hope for in a nice cat.
Another great week of improvements. The scratching has largely
subsided, so she's avoided any procedure to her nails for now. I
guess the first couple of weeks she was maybe marking or something, not
sure but she's not doing it nearly as much, so I'm cutting her some
slack.
First Fall
Tashi got her AVID microchip,
for just in case she gets outside and lost somehow. She also
passed her full physical with flying colors and she's up to 4kg from her
shelter arrival weight of 3.3kg. Vet says this is a good weight
for her, so now she'll slowly eat more canned food and less carb-heavy
crunchy (hopefully) and we'll get her all stable and see how things go.
She's extremely happy and purry. When we got back from the vets
she seemed absolutely overjoyed to be back home and not ended up in a
shelter or something. I thought she'd be a little miffed at me,
but she was just too busy being happy. She slept a lot as it was a
big day (taking worming pills is hard work!) but now she's all set and
good to go, full steam ahead into her new life.
She hasn't sat in my
lap since she was sick but she did sleep on Mark's chest for a while so
it's sometimes one step forward, two steps back or one sideways with
her, but she honestly seems more loving and friendly every single day,
and her cute little meows are really something too. She LOVES to
greet vocally and get into little back & forth conversations about food
or saying hello.
She's just adorable and sweet. She's still extremely prone to
going to her special towels placed around the house like a magnet, so
that's great as I can throw them in the wash and keep
her favorite areas fresh. She makes caring for her easy, that's
for sure. She's a joy. She's stopped scratching things so
much too, so her claws are safe from the evil clippers for the time
being.
I got her some
honeysuckle pom-poms from
Kunder Cats and boy does she ever LOVE them! She likes catnip
but she just loves honeysuckle. The product is actually
made by Kitty Kottage, but
inexplicably they charge so much for shipping as to make buying direct
from them really crazy. Kunder Cats even beats their base price in
some things, not only their shipping, so I highly recommend Kunder Cats
for your cat toy needs. Her other favorite at this time is
crumpled up pieces of paper, so I'm going to get her some more toys that
makes a noise as that seems to be very attractive to her. Maybe
combine honeysuckle with noise - that should be a big hit.
This is precious...
when we go to bed at night we just say "C'mon Tashi" and she always
comes with us to bed. She also will do this if we leave the
computer room and go watch TV for a while. She LOVES to be a
threesome! It's her favorite thing for sure. How cute is
that.
First Winter
Tashi now regularly jumps up on my desk to get put into my lap for a
little snuggle. Sometimes she stays for as little as 10 minutes
but other times she has stayed for an hour and more. Sometimes
she'll even jump up 2 or 3 times a day! My confidence that she'll
indeed grow up to be a nice lap cat has never been higher.
She's doing great in
all other respects as well, although you could never say she progresses
quickly, there's no denying that she does indeed progress at her own
little Tashi diva cat speed. Her biggest accomplishment I would
have to say has been her ability to make us both positively squeal in
delight at her cuteness on a daily basis. When we talk to her in
our special "sweetie Tashi" tone of voice she not only normally talks
back in her ultra-cute little Tashi squeaky voice, but she gets so happy
she has to flip herself upside down and it's just too adorable for
words. She lets us pet her while she closes her eyes in a state of
total and utter bliss as she gently kneads the air with her little paws.
TOO CUTE!
Spring 2006
Well Tashi has really filled out and her weight is up to about 12
pounds now, which seems a LOT considering she was a measly 7 when we got
her. She really was just very scrawny at the shelter, but there's
no way she was the year old they thought she was. Maybe six months
we're thinking. Anyway - she's a big girl now with a beautiful and
soft coat. She's also turned into a HUGE snuggle bunny and big
time mama's girl. She's quite clingy and often follows up an
intense and long wakeup snuggle with a "must" lounge all over my desk
between me and the keyboard. It's like she just can't get enough
attention, loving, snuggles. She doesn't get all "bitey" after a
few minutes like most cats... she *can* very very softly get bitey
eventually but it takes the better part of an hour and one little "hey"
and she stops. Speaking of "hey" she stops anything bad she's
doing with one little "hey" and you don't even have to raise your voice
when you do it. She just stops and looks at you as if to say "ok"
and sometimes she gives a little meow as if to say "ok but I wasn't
hurting it", hehe. She's not a big talker but can almost always be
depended on to vocalize if you're in the kitchen and you talk to her
first. This seems more related to the kitchen than to her food and
water bowls, but I'm sure their proximity doesn't hurt matters.
She's gotten MORE loving as the months have gone by and so far there
just seems to be no end in sight to her development as a loving and cute
kitty, although the great strides in her losing her shyness and
inability to be snuggly have leveled off, she does still grow and mature
as a loving kitty.
Summer 2006
That soft kitty bed we got Tashi nearly a year ago that she wouldn't
even LOOK at is now her favorite spot to be in the whole world, LOL!
She was all into her bed on top of her tree house at one time and then
just *HAD* to be in the cubby hole on her tree house and then life just
was no good if she couldn't constantly be in the bucket of her tree
house, and then she went through a huge phase of NEEDING to be stretched
out across my computer desk on a towel between the keyboard and me, so
I'd have to type with my arms kind of going 'round her. Then she
had an extended stint on a towel on the sofa... ahhh this is the life,
right? Wrong. Now she simply *MUST* be in her kitty bed.
Very happy and content over all but quite unhappy to be left alone
because she's become used to my constant attendance.
Early 2007
Tashi has really come a long way... she's just as cute as ever.
I think she actually gets cuter as time goes by, if that's possible (and
it is!) She's got quite a bit more vocal the past few months.
She's got very certain meows for different situations. A little
squeaky one for wanting food and the cutest little cheerful one for
saying good morning... that goes with a very cute double arm and leg
stretch with toes fully extended. And yet another one for when we
come in from being out and leaving her abandoned, the infamous "WHERE
HAVE YOU BEEN?" meow. Her favorite toy these days is pistachio
nuts inside their shell. She likes the sound they make when you
shake it in your hand before throwing it. I'm drying to get her
some mexican jumping beans and see what she makes of them, but I doubt
there's any local... I'll have to check eBay I guess. Tashi is
such a happy girl. She really seems very content lately.
Looking forward to another great year with her.
Late 2007
Pistachio nuts still rule as far as toys go. Tashi has
developed this cuter than cute habit of meowing this very special and
delicate meow when you wake her up in the morning. A little "hi"
meow that is just about the sweetest sounding meow you could ever hope
to hear. The kitty bed is still "out" and I mean way out after
being so very very IN a couple of years ago... how funny. It's
still in her space but she refuses to go near it. She's all about
her cat tree lately. If you even try to get her off to go to bed
some nights, she scrambles into the cubby to hide. Too funny.
Then if you leave her, she sits up a couple hours later and yowls
because she's been abandoned... what a spoiled kitty. So cute tho
and her second favorite thing to do besides hog the top of her cat tree
is to curl up next to anyone reading in bed, so no complaints there.
October 6, 2018
Tashi was so affectionate her last few years. She would bury her
head into my hair as hard as she could while being held, and hang on for
minutes. She did finally love us with all her heart and learned to
show it. Somehow the years went by so fast, but in the Summer of
2017 she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and started to rapidly lose
weight and she was eating and drinking a lot. We started her on a
medication, which she took beautifully because of a little product that
is like a soft treat, and you can push medicine into it and they'll
gladly scarf it down, thankfully. But no treatment will really
save a cat from hyperthyroidism, or so I've read, including the
expensive surgery that the vet tries to talk people into, or in my cause
actually tried to shame me into. At any rate, we kept her as
comfortable as we could for as long as we could. When the bad
out-weighed the good, and she was suffering too much, we lovingly took
her in (to a new vet) and put her to sleep and out of her misery.
It was THE HARDEST thing I've ever done - as it was the first time I
ever did anything like that. I didn't know how to breathe in or
out after that for weeks if not months, but somehow - six months later,
I am recovering from the massive grief. It helps that we got a new
cat, named Honey. But there'll only ever be one Tashi and I will
always love her like my own little girl. She was lovely and I'll
always miss her, until we meet up again in heaven. Goodbye for now
sweet girl. Mommy love you always.
