Cassie Kirby March 1998-March 2011 Beloved Kitty

Cassie was 13 yrs old, she was born in the basement of our little house to the last of the feral cats we inherited when we bought our house. Doug came running in to tell me about her when she was born & told me that he was keeping her. Wh...en she was first born she was black, but had silver guard hairs over the top of the black. That's baby Doug holding baby Cassie. We ended up weaning her & her sister & brothers when their mom disappeared for 24hrs when they were 4 wks old. We bottle fed them for a week first. When they were old enough we found homes for the other kittens, but Doug got to keep his kitten

I love this picture of her. It's actually framed & hanging in our dining room. Cassie was very independant & did things her own way. She could come in the house anytime she wanted to, but wouldn't. When is snowed a few months ago, I tried to bring her in, it lasted all of five minutes. She loved her family, but really didn't let anyone else close to her. She was an excellent ratter & mouser.

About 10 days ago I noticed that she was bloated in her abdomen. I thought she had worms so I wormed her. A couple of days later she was still bloated, I still thought it was worms, but a more serious case, so I took her to the vet. It wasn't worms, her abdominal cavity was filled with fluid. They drained off the fluid & sent some off to be tested. None of the results would've been good, it was all pretty much a death sentence. They sent me home with some antibiotics for her & pressure bandage around her tummy. I kept her inside as long as she would stay, but short of keeping her in a kennel, it wasn't going to happen. She hated the antibiotics and after a couple of days on those she disappeared. The neighbors were seeing her, but she wasn't coming to anyone including the kids.

This morning I went about my regular routine, got home from Zumba about 10:45am. At 1:30pm I went outside to get the mail. Sometime in that almost 3 hours, Cassie had come home, crawled into her bed and passed away. She buried not far from where she was sitting in the second picture...she loved to sit up there and watch. I'll miss you so much Cassie, who will be waiting for me on the front porch when I come home from work? Who will sit on the front porch with me and keep me company on summer evenings? We love you, safe journey.