The BookieMonster Kitteh post.

Now seems like the right time to tell you all about Blimpy. When Dean and I first moved in together, on the very first day we turned up at our new house, there was this really manky cat hanging around. Her nose was a mess, she was sort of skinny and sort of bloated looking at the same time with the saggiest, baggiest tummy you ever saw – basically she was just your general cat hobo.

But she was amazingly friendly. She greeted us straight away and seemed very happy to see us. I figured with that sort of friendliness she had to belong to one of the neighbours so said hello, but then sort of ignored her.

So time goes by and she’s still hanging around. She often says hello to me outside and occasionally we find birds neatly eviscerated and lying on the path to our front door (cats are just charming serial killers that way). She keeps looking manky and skinny and we realise that those screeching cat noises in the night are probably her fending off the horrendously persistent advances of male cats. At this point I start to mull over things… I don’t think she does actually belong to anyone. I think she needs some help with food and things. I don’t think she’s got that long to go anyway. I know Dean (Mr M) does not share my overwhelming love for teh cutes floofy nanimules.

So, I “accidentally” buy some dry cat food at the eepermarche. I assure Mr Monster that I’m just going to put some out by the back door. We start moving into the winter months. I casually mention that perhaps “Cancer Kitty” (as we have started calling her) could come inside occasionally. Mr M reluctantly agrees. At this point I worm her and put a flea collar on her. Her food comes inside. Her highness comes inside. Within a week she’s settled in front of the fire with her head just about catching alight.

A little more time passes and we decide to call her Blimpy on account of her… blimpiness. It’s hard to describe because she was never fat. But she had something of a barrel on her. I realise that she has few to almost no teeth left, except for long, vampire-like incisors. Mr M finds her trapped in our kitchen one afternoon, being bailed up by a nasty male cat, who is seen off the property quick smart. From that moment he can do no wrong in her eyes, is her hero and her saviour.

After being in our tiny house for a year and a half we realise we have to move. Plans are made, actions are taken. Shortly before the moving date I throw in a “and of course we’ll have to move Blimpy.”

Mr M is slightly stunned. I just say “She’s ours, honey.” And I know he knows.

After moving she becomes even more ours. It’s like she saw us packing and thought we were leaving her, but we didn’t, we took her and we proved to her that she was part of the family. So she’s happy. Her nose almost completely heals up, her coat becomes glossy and we realise she is quite possibly the nicest cat you could ever meet. She’s patient with little kids, slutty with any kind of male person, so talkative you wish she’d just be shush now please, and terribly, awfully sadistic with crickets (pulling legs off one by one with pauses in between to watch their desperate attempts to get away and eventual death throes). We are a little family of three (with part-time sibling additions).

I bore friends and family with constant anecdotes and updates on her health. (Thanks everyone for listening so kindly!) When I start BookieMonster I start referring to her as “the BookieMonster Kitteh”. I feel like she deserves a space. I love her almost more than anything else (except Mr M). I smell her head a lot. It smells like old, wet carpet. Her tummy has the softest fur. When I’m in the garden she follows me out and plays “panther”. Because she has no front teeth she dribbles most of the time, and every so often her tongue gets caught and sticks out slightly. It’s the funniest thing we have ever seen and we fall about laughing every time it happens, which gets her nose out of joint.

Last year she starts going a bit… well, old. Her meow gets more strident. She gets lost in our backyard, which was an impressive feat as our backyard is about 2m square. I would have to rescue her as she couldn’t find her way back around to the front. She gets grumpy easily and we make jokes about her going do-lally.

A few months ago she starts losing weight. After a while you can feel what seems like almost every bone in her body. Her coat is no longer shiny. In the last few weeks she eats close to nothing and I realise she’s having trouble cleaning herself.

Late on a Monday night we can’t find her. She’s gone outside and hasn’t come back and I’m worried. I’m worried she’s gone forever. Eventually Mr M comes into the bedroom with a small pile of soft, warm black fur. I know something has happened. I lie with her all night, with my hand lightly on her chest so I can feel her heart and sometimes just holding her paw. I doze and wake up and every time I do I feel her heart again to see if she’s still there. She is. She moves very occasionally. She purrs very quietly, a purr that gradually disappears as the night goes on. She keeps breathing. She stays warm. She stays soft.

In the morning I know it’s time for her to stop breathing. I know she needs to go. So she does.

I feel better having written this. When you lose someone you love you want everyone to know how worthy they were, how much impact they had on the world, even if that world is just the world of a few people. Our “not long to go” lasted almost 7 years. I like to think they were as close to the best 7 years of her life as they were of mine.

And now you know why I love the kittehs.