Saying Goodby To Katie Kitty, The Official Office Cat.

It was 10 years ago, at the Oakland Boat show, when Katie & Jessie Kitty were brought into the show in a box, with 8 other kittens about two weeks old. Jody and I, along with Katie & Jessie (who worked with us for years on the magazine) fell in love with two that stumbled out of the pile. Jody & Jessie chose Jessie, Katie & I chose Katie, and for the next ten years they dominated our lives at home and at work (since we work from the Bitchin Ranch in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

Jessie was lost to a Bobcat a few years back, but Katie, more of an office/house cat lived on. When she was three she was attacked by a large pitfall, and her stomach was torn up pretty bad. She died on the operating table but was brought back. Three months later she was released to come home.

She became our “office Emotional Support Animal.” When we’d take a break from work, she would be sought out. Each afternoon was her play time, and each night she slept between our heads in the bed. Each afternoon she would lay on my desk, always trying to get her paws on the keyboard of my computer, like in a game. To say she was a part of the family would be an understatement.

3 months ago she had to be taken to the vet’s, as she had kidney stones. They operated, and that was the start of her demise. After the operation, and for the next 3 months the scar from the operation would not heal due to the dog bite all those years ago. Her belly skin lining was missing or weak, and after 3 months she stopped eating, and a day later she stopped grooming herself, and would hide on my office chair, not moving.

We took her back to the vet again, and we learned the wound would never heal. She had a 4″ by 6″ hole in her stomach lining that was getting larger and leaking blood. Our only option would be to try to sew a net into her stomach lining, and the Doctor said it would be hard on her for 4-5 months IF it worked. And the chances of it working were slim and none.

It was the hardest thing I ver had to do, but we decided it would be best to put her out of her misery, and she was miserable.

When they brought her back into the examination room and we saw the gapping hole in her stomach, and thought about how miserable she’d been the past couple months, wrapped in a bandage, unable to go outside. I could not imagine her going thru another 6 months to a year of torture, and then the Doctor told us even if we did have the operation done, she might still not make it.

There was nota dry eye in the room, as we held her as they injected propophal into her leg. Her eyes’ looked at us like “Okay Mom & dad, I am ready to stop this pain.”

Her eye’s closed for the last time, and she was at rest at last.

Jody & I carried her home wrapped in a blanket, and in the morning we buried her under her favorite tree that she loved to lay under and look out over the valley & lake she loved so much. jack, who lives with us on the ranch cut a headstone for her, and jody planted Katies favorite flowers around the grave.

I have always felt that animals are better than people. You look in their eye;’s and you “know” them. Not so with a human. I can tell you the best moments of my life the past few years were the time we spent with Katie & Jessie Kitties on our morning walk around the ranch. They would walk in front of us on the paths we’d worn into the dirt, “protecting us” from whatever dangers there might be. At the end of the walk there was a double swing Jody & I would sit in, watching them play on the cut-off logs near the swing.

I cannot believe how lucky we were to have known “family members” that makes saying goodbye so hard.