Emmy Lou joined the family while I was working at the Vet. She had been caught in the middle of a divorce. The lady & her children had to move in with her parents. She had a dog (collie) & a cat Em. Her parents said , we'll take you, the kids & one pet so Em was brought in to be euthanized. The lady said it would be fine if we wanted to find her a new home instead.
After me looking at her every day for weeks back in the surgery room, I couldn't see her put down so I said if we did a declaw I would take her. She was 9 years old so a declaw at that age is very hard on a cat but it was either that or die - we opted for the declaw. She had a hard time for a couple of weeks instead of the normal couple of days with a declaw but we got thru it.
I've never had a dog that really liked cats but but they always seem to put up with each other. I did my best to make Em an indoor cat but having lived outside for 9 years, my efforts we all in vain - she became an outdoor cat again.
Em brought a lot of joy & fun to my life. She discovered a rose arbor at one ed of the house & used it to climb up on the roof. In the summer, she would climb up in the afternoon & lay right on top of the furnace heat vent to wait for me to come home from work. When she would see my car turn the corner, she would stand up & stretch like a Halloween cat. So cute to see her up there & a great welcome home.
Like any cat she did bring a few things home while I was at work. I came home one day to find the living room full of feathers & a half eaten, dead Dove in the hall - another day I found a fifty cent size fleshy lump of something on the living room floor - never figured out what that was.
One evening when my nephew was living with me, Em came in from the backyard with something in her mouth. It looked a little like a brown coaster for a glass. She put it down right in front of us. It didn't move, she looked at us as to ask what it was - we didn't know either - she put her paw on it & it started to move & unwind. Turns out it was a baby snake only about 8" long. I took it outside to the garden. Em loved to catch the frogs that came to my little backyard pond. She would bring them in & then watch me chase them.
Then there was the time when I caught her just ready to come thru the doggie door with a mouse. I said "Get that back outside, you know better" - she pushed right past me, jumped up on the counter & dropped it in her dish. Then she look at me as if to say "it's food, isn't it?" I had to laugh because she was right, it was food as she knew it but I still took the dead mouse back outside.
She had a bad habit of biting when you wanted her to move & she didn't want to but she gave that up & became very loving several years before she died. I treated her for a bad heart for about a year before she died at home at the ripe old age of 20.
She was a great cat that left some wonderful memories behind.
