TBT here: I got to thinking about World Cat Day. You know, with cats and Dad being around... I read the blogs and see the kittehs who have had long happy lives with one Bein like me. I see the rescue/shelter blogs where kittehs long for homes. It tears my heart. The hard part is when I think "could I do one more"?
For now, the household is calm and happy, and I will not change it. Marley settled Ayla and Iza down from girlcat hissyfits, and all is good. I am reluctant to chance disrupting a peaceful household (not being sexist, a girlcat can settle two fussing mancats too). But peaceful is peaceful.
But there will come a day when (if I live as long as family history suggests), they will pass over the Rainbow Bridge before me and I will want more cat-companionship.
But until then, it will be Ayla, Iza, and Marley.
On that day, I will seek out an old cat that needs a final place to call a "forever home" for the first or last time. And I will cherish it for the love of THAT cat, and for all older cats in general. If it wants to live alone with me, I will do that. If it wants a cat-companion even in old age, I will do that too.
Unless there is some unusual situation, there will be no more kittens at my house. I'll miss that, but it is a practical matter. I might not outlive them. So rather than uproot a growing cat, I will help old cats the next time around. Its not a good decision either way. Kittens deserve homes as much as older cats do. But I think older cats need homes, get ones fewer, and are probably feeling lost more than kittens are. Sometimes no choices are perfect.
I suspect that giving a few older cats some safe house and loving attention at least one final time, when I am old too outlive kittens, is probably the sensible thing I can do. It will be a while. Ayla is oldest at 5 and I'm 62. Marley just turned 2. But when I am 78, Marley will be 18, and that is about the best I can hope for. And after 78, I'll be "iffy". It wouldn't be fair to bring a kitten into the house then, knowing it would likely outlive me.
When my mother, at age 80, and declined to get a new cat after her loved cat Jeremy died, I suggested she get a kitten, assuring her I would take it in if she couldn't care for it. Now I understand better.
In my last thoughts, there will be many cat names to recall. My last thought may be Skeeter. Or perhaps Iza, one never knows. Iza is astonishingly me-oriented and I can't say for sure which cat will be on my last breath. But I hope it will be the thoughts of ALL the cats. When I pass over the Bridge, I will hope to see them all.
But just maybe, there will be one I left behind and I will linger on the Bridge for, to make sure it can join me.
One never knows...
