It’s been exactly one year now since I had to have Zoe put
to sleep. One year that my sweet,
lovable, big round calico cat has been gone.
Sometimes I still imagine her waddling across the room for her share of
strokes, or treats or play time. And
though I don’t burst into tears anymore at the thought of her, I do still miss
her soft, soft fur and her demands for attention. The good news is that I
remember the good times more and more. I
still wish I could have spared her that last week of fear and pain, but that’s
not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of her any more. More often than not, I remember the fun
things now.
So perhaps it's now time for that "good time" post on my girl, Zoe.
First of all, she was a scrawny, flea-infested scrap of
calico when I got her, since her mother was an outside cat. She very quickly adapted to the apartment and
quickly latched onto Addy for companionship.
Addy of course, hated her, and slapped her down whenever she got too
close. But Zoe refused to give up, wouldn’t
accept “no” for an answer, kept coming back, and eventually the two became best
friends.
Zoe was always needy.
She needed to be around others, be they human or cat, and when I was around, she wanted
attention. When she was little she’d
climb up to my shoulder and suck on the ends of my hair behind my ear. She very quickly became too big to do that,
but always wanted my lap when I was sitting.
Both girls did, and both became very territorial when it came to
me. Zoe was only smaller than Addy for a
short time and pretty much as soon as she became bigger, she’d use her weight
to push her way in. Addy would try to
rebuff her, but Zoe was adept at ignoring that . Almost always, Addy would leave pissed off,
and Zoe would claim the lap. 
Zoe loved boxes her entire life. I spent a lot of time with empty packing
boxes in my apartment or house, because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them
away when she enjoyed them so much. She
loved hiding in places she could see out of, especially boxes, including
coca-cola 12-pack boxes when she was little.
She would even use plastic trash bags as hiding places if I left them
lying around. Later when I moved into my
first house, she was absolutely in heaven when I let the peach tree overgrow
and the branches hung down to the ground.
She would spend the whole day laying out in the yard, hidden among the peach
tree branches.
She never climbed the tree though. Zoe didn’t like heights and would panic as
soon as her feet left the ground when you picked her up. She never leaped up on counters, tables or
furniture, nor leaped across open spaces.
Even getting up on chairs and couches, she climbed using her claws
instead of just hopping up. I often
wondered if she had some sort of inner ear imbalance that made her
uncomfortable without her feet on the ground.
One of Zoe’s favorite things was stalking birds. She never caught one, being too slow and
clumsy, but she never tired of trying.
She would stalk them back and forth across the yard all day long,
perfectly content being outside and chasing her birds. She also loved to chase grasshoppers, and
many times brought a large grasshopper she had caught into the house to play
with. She inevitably would release it
near me so that it would leap at me when she let it go. And then she’d chase it down all around the
house. Grasshoppers were about the limit
of what she could catch, except once she brought in a large praying
mantis. Addy caught and brought in small
lizards and snakes, and once a hummingbird moth, which I then had to catch to
take back outside.
Zoe really liked the
outdoors, especially if there were places for her to hide out there. She was a big fraidy cat, running for the
house at pretty much anything that startled her. Often she really just wanted to be able to lie
in the open doorway. She was inside the
house, but on the edge of outside in case anything moved out there that she
needed to chase. Lying in an open
doorway was one of her favorite places her whole life.
Zoe liked to play in
water, or at any rate to drop her toys in water. She’d mostly use her water dish for this, but
when she was younger she would drop her toys in the toilet. I quickly learned to look BEFORE sitting
down. Like all cats, she especially
liked to drink fresh water and would sit and stare at me until I put fresh
water down if I let it get too old. Then
when she was drinking it, particularly from her favorite blue bowl, just the
very tip of her tail would slowly wave back and forth. She especially took to the cat fountains when
I began using them.
Zoe liked to curl up in small spaces in which she just
barely fit. I think she felt safe in
enclosed spaces. She was also very set
in her ways and changes to her routine might take her weeks to get used to. When I moved into my first house and then 11
years later into my second house, she spent the first 2-3 weeks each time under
the bed in the master bedroom, slowly venturing out in little short time
periods to begin to learn her new environment.
She was very definitely a scaredy cat, and a one woman cat, freaking out
if anyone but me was in the house. She
would completely disappear if the doorbell rang, until whoever it was was
completely gone. And if she was in my
lap when the doorbell rang, She would leap to run for a hiding place, often
leaving me with deep gouges. If people were in her house, she was nowhere
to be found. I began having a pet sitter
watch the girls in their old age, and it took her probably 2 years to get Zoe
to come out from under the bed when she was at the house.
Zoe liked toys that bounced.
She turned her nose up completely at soft toys, but delighted in things
that bounced and rolled. A particular
favorite of hers was pencil pillows, the foamy things you put on a pen or
pencil to cushion your grip. She loved
them because they would get hung on her claw and when she flipped her paw they
would go flying for her to chase. She
really liked it if they landed on a bookshelf, giving her an excuse to clear
the shelf of books trying to retrieve her toy.
I finally had to stop giving them to her to play with when I realized
she would eat them after playing long enough.
Christmas balls were another favorite, so I had to have extra every
year.
Zoe was not very bright and fairly clumsy. No usual cat grace for this cat. She
rarely just laid down, more like flopped over on her side when she was ready to
lay down, and she loved laying on her back with her feet in the air. She never did grasp the idea the claws were
not to be used always. And she loved to pull things down and lay on
them, towels if she could reach them, clothes in the clothes basket, things I
left laying in chairs. I used to leave
small fleeces on chairs specifically for her to pull down and lay on.
