Yesterday Andy left my world.
I got him when he was just a few weeks old. I worked at a Pet Hospital and I was going to "foster him for the weekend." He couldn't be left alone and still needed to be bottle fed every couple of hours. Yeah, that was in the spring of 2000.
Some of my memories of him are falling asleep while playing with a feather toy, peeing on the bed, because he hated Barak, punking Loretta because I had the audacity to bring another cat into our home, and putting his claws into my neck, because I took him outside to see snow.
He was never a lap cat, but a sit next to you and lean cat. My legs were the preferred night time sleeping area. And 5am was a totally cool time to tell me to get up and give him breakfast. It was none of his concern that I had stayed up late. HE was hungry.
Always the regal one, he did not drink out of a water dish. Bha! The drinking glass on the nightstand was the preference. If he could have talked, I am positive he would have had a British accent.
While living in Tennessee, I had the pleasure of being home with just the cats during a tornado alert thingy. As a native Californian I was freaked out and I decided to open the door leading to the basement so the cats could down there- just in case - the tornado touchdown happened. They were not allowed down there, so of course they were in the basement within moments of me opening the door. The weather passed and it was starting to get dark and I wanted them upstairs. I think there was one light in the basement and though I am sure it wasn't always flickering and swinging from an old metal wire that is how it seemed, especially after the severe weather. Anyway, I looked around and could not find either one of the cats. Panic was setting in because it was dark, the cats never went outside, and the last thing Barak needed was a panic phone call.
I shook the food bag and Loretta was in the kitchen. I locked her in the laundry room and opened a can of tuna (Andy was a tuna enthusiast) and hoped he heard the sound of the can or could smell the fish. A few minutes later he emerged with so many cobwebs on him that it looked like he was wearing a mummy mask.I wiped him off with a towel to discover he was covered in dirt grossness and had to give him a sponge bath in the sink.
When my daughter was born, we stayed at my parent's house for the first couple of weeks and my in-laws stayed at our place. Andy did not care for this and he stopped cleaning himself. He had a mat on his belly that was 3 inches by 6 inches. The groomer gave him a lion cut and he looked so cute. And mad. When I would be up in the middle of the night he would sit next to me or by my feet, or if I was in the rocking chair on my lap with the baby, while I fed her. He would sit next to her crib when she was sleeping. If she was fussing he was usually nearby keeping watch on the situation. It must have been exhausting for him, since he normally slept 15 hours a day.
The past year he had not been in the best of health and in the winter is when I knew his time with us was limited.
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