Cats – Icemark

About 14 years ago Rebekah and Jacob visited the Eden Animal Rescue in Cumbria with their Grandparents and picked out two brother and sister kittens, who they named Timmy and Tilly.
I’ve never really been bothered about pets since leaving my parents home, but when we moved house in 2012 I felt that the house needed a cat, but it wasn’t until early the following year that we managed to get one. Bob and Joyce moved from their home in Cumbria and Timmy moved ‘down south’ to join our family.
Sadly today he passed. He has had a heart condition for a long time, but as a result of that two weeks ago he very suddenly had a blood clot which temporarily robbed him of the use of his back legs. Over the following few days he became more mobile and appeared to be having a miraculous recovery, however he stopped eating and became even more withdrawn; he was in Kidney failure. In the end only his heart or his kidneys could be treated, not both, and treating one would cause the other to fail.
He’s stumbled through the last few days but was a shadow of himself.
We were preparing for today, and am so grateful that despite the subdued nature of this Christmas period we were able to spend it with him.
He was a loving cat, friendly, and funny. Extremely picky about his food, and always overly interested in whatever you were doing. Often a pain in the arse when he would choose to sit on you as soon as you sat down, even if he was quite comfy where he was already; frustrated the hell out of me many times. But I don’t think I really understood the bond between human and pet until Timmy. Last night, I sat watching TV until the early hours of the morning, just so that he could deaden my legs for the last time.
Taking him to the Vet this morning with Rebekah was probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.
I know I will miss him terribly. The house already seems empty with out him.

Full gallery of Timmy pictures…

*Thanks to Fergus for the post title.

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Everyone seems to go on nowadays about the current degeneration of this generation…. ASBOs everywhere… we all know that it’s the previous generations fault, and because the problem is actually due to a lack of discipline and direction from the parents, then that means that the problem started many generations ago and all those Old cronies stood gaggling about the “Youth of today” wearing their hoodies and standing about on street corners… can rinse their hair safe in the knowledge that it is all their fault.

Anyway, more importantly than all this is the fact that I think the problem has manifested itself in cats.

We have a number of cats around our house, and when we moved in 4 years ago we inherited a cat with the house. I know that sounds odd, but the cat had been bought when the owners moved in to a brand new house 18 years prior and they were now moving to Australia and coudn’t take the cat with them. So it seemed such a shame to us that the poor thing would get put down after such a good innings, that we decided to keep the cat. It lived another year before croaking it with age related internal problems. To be honest, the only thing the cat was good for was keeping the garden free of other cats. I guess their is some irony in there somewhere!

Now, to tie all this information together; when I was a lad cats used to shit in the soil and cover it over. Cats were considered a clean pet unlike a dog that will drop its load anywhere. But it seems that the hoody wearing feline of today is quite content to shit wherever it feels like and leave it for someone else to clean up. Sound familiar? Yes yes I know it’s only cat poo, but its actually a problem when you have little kids and worse still for babies and pregnant women. Cat poo is a carrier of Toxoplasmosis. Not to mention the more important issue of your kids trailing cat shit around the house!!!!!

So is this a problem that has managed to jump species or are we looking at a more serious evolutionary problem? How long before we are giving ASBOS to cats?