Peaches, June 2016 - March 10, 2025
Well, it's been a hot minute since I posted here. February was a little nuts due to veterinary issues that... well, didn't end well unfortunately.
RIP Peaches, June 2016 - March 10, 2025. What started out as a routine dental cleaning turned into multiple extractions, which turned into compromised kidneys requiring IV fluids (possibly a complication of the anesthetic), which then revealed burst sutures requiring another surgery to correct, which then turned into failing kidneys (again, possibly a complication of the anesthetic, but who knows). After a month of not eating, vet visits, hospitalization, surgery, and tube feeding, I just couldn't put her through it any more. She climbed into my lap the Sunday night before; I knew with that intuition you get after sharing your life with pets for a while that she was ready to go.
I became fascinated with calicos after watching Vertasium's Why Women Are Stripey. I had lost a cat about a month before, so when I saw Peaches on Cat Welfare Association's website, I was instantly smitten. She wasn't particularly social in the shelter, but she perked right up when I got her home and she realized she only had to share the place with a human.
Peaches didn't trust easily, but once she did, she stuck with you. If she wasn't lounging around near by me, she was almost always on the same floor of the condo as I was; usually in a warm sunny spot or on a comfy chair. (What do you mean, YOUR chair?) For the first couple of years she was quite the lap cat. We often spent Saturday mornings cuddling together in my carnivorous reading chair.
She certainly didn't have it easy. She struggled with occasional vomiting that intensified and lead to surgery to remove what I'm going to call a "thingy" from her abdomen. It wasn't a foreign object; even though we thought she might have swallowed something at first. It certainly had the vets stumped until they had it sent out to the lab for analysis. All I remember is "mesenteric something something lots of words that end in -ic". She ended up hospitalized after that with compromised kidneys too; fortunately fluids and a lot of love from my sister and her family got her back on her paws with no further vomiting issues. (I was having my own issues at the time).
Peaches, I'll miss our "conversations" and getting meowed at while I shower. ("Wait, you're getting wet ON PURPOSE? YOU'LL DROWN IN THERE GET OUT!") I'll miss your gentle paw reaching out to me and asking to be pet, and the big, happy purrs that were my reward. I'll miss how I could almost set my watch by you; you knew when it was time for lunch treats and time to go upstairs to bed. I'll miss listening to you crunch on kibbles as I drifted off. Rest In Peace, Peaches. You are forever loved.
