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Our Smudge passed from this life August 9th, 2004. She was 19 years, 3 months old, and had endured much illness
with great spirit and determination and love for us, especially this past year. Finally her chronic renal failure became acute,
and in combination with diabetes and anemia, her great heart began to fail during these last weeks. Despite our great sorrow
at losing her from this earthly life, we let her go to God with our love and blessing.
Although our Smudge is no longer
with us in body, she will always be with us in spirit. We firmly believe that the beloved companions God created for us will
also be with us in heaven, and we are comforted to think of Smudge whole and healthy again, running and playing and waiting
for us in heaven.
Smudge was born on May 15, 1985. She was a most intelligent cat, devoted to her human servants, and
always willing to comfort them or bring a smile to their faces on rainy days. Smudge had exceptionally soft and luxurious
fur; it was this unusual quality that led her to be dubbed the Rabbit Kitty by a former neighbor's child.
In October
2000, Smudge received radioactive iodine treatment for severe hyperthyroidism, an affliction which strikes many older cats.
In January 2001, her thyroid levels had fallen from the pre-treatment level of 17.2 (normal levels are 0.8 to 4.9) to a completely
normal level of 2.7 ! The seizures she had been suffering as well as her other symptoms essentially disappeared within 6 months
of this treatment.
However, one concern about lowering thyroid levels to normal in an older cat is that the increased
kidney perfusion caused by excess thyroid hormone can mask declining renal function. Unfortunately this proved to be the case
with Smudge, and she was diagnosed as being in mild to moderate renal failure at the end of the summer of 2001. At the time,
our vet said she might only live for a few months if the renal failure progressed rapidly. But as always, Smudge literally
lived up to the highest expectations and hung in for 3 more years. Her kidney function continued to decline during this time,
but at a mercifully slow rate, and we were very thankful for this unusually slow progression of the disease.
However,
a new complication arose in September 2003 when Smudge became diabetic. She was a very good kitty and tolerated her insulin
injections amazingly well. Renal failure and diabetes are diseases that are difficult enough to control alone. In combination,
they carry an especially grim prognosis. This, along with a chronic debilitating diarrhea due to inflammatory bowel syndrome,
began to take its toll this year. Her last days were spent napping on her bed (which was on the floor since her hind legs
were too weak to allow her to jump up on anything anymore), getting brushed, petted, and fed (until the last week and a half
of her life she had a very hearty appetite and was able to drink LOTS of water each day, a critical thing in feline chronic
renal failure), snoring when asleep, and purring when awake. Smudge had the best and biggest purr in all catdom, even in her
old age!
Although Smudge had always been extremely happy to be an "only cat", we could not resist adopting Stony Grappone
in September 2001. We found Stony in a stoneyard (A.P Grappone & Sons) in Richmond, and as you can see from the image
below, she looked very much like Smudge except for the lack of a black nose. Her personality was amazingly like Smudge's when
Smudge was a kitten in one way: agile, playful, loving, and intelligent. There, however, the similarities ended. While Smudge
was always fearless of people and walked among strangers in our home with impunity, Stony was very affectionate with family
but extremely shy where strangers were concerned and would run under the bed whenever the doorbell rang. We theorize that
this behavior may have been a residual of her feral beginnings in the stoneyard. Smudge's interactions with Stony never improved
from hisses, growls, and swats despite our constantly reminding Smudge that she alone was and would always be The Number One
Queen of the World Cat By Which All Other Cats Will Now and Forever Be Judged!
Little Stony, our dear little scaredy kitty, passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly from what our vet said was a heart
attack in 2011 when she was only 10. And so with these two very similar yet very different kitties, we experienced both the
long goodbye and the short goodbye. The long goodbye does give one time to prepare while the short goodbye is a complete
shock. We can't say one is to be preferred over the other, however, for both were tearful and full of grief in the end.
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