Emo April 2002 - 3 Feb 2019

I'm struggling with my grief for Emo, although I know it's early days yet. The first day was the hardest as everywhere I looked there were reminders that she wasn't there. The empty food bowl, the water bowl in the bottom of the shower. No Emo in the kitchen while I'm cooking or making breakfast, meowing when I take the milk out of the fridge. No one following when I get the mail or sitting with me when I'm having my lunch or reading my book. Flashes of memories keep coming to me so I thought I'd record them while they are still so clear. It's one of my greatest fears that I will forget. Not the love I had for her, but that the specifics of the memories will fade. Having had two grandparents with Alzheimers/dementia, and a cat, plus another grandparent in early stages of dementia, one of my worries is forgetting things. So I am mostly recording these for me, and in no particular order:

• Her long long tail and big feet, which seemed out of all proportion to her kitten body when we brought her home.
• One of her back paws/legs was perfectly half black and half ginger even though she was a tabby. Looking at her from behind it was almost like a line up a the middle, one side black and the other ginger.
• She liked to climb on the clothes airier when she was a kitten - it looked like she was using it as a jungle gym.
• She would snuggle up to my ex-husband B a lot as he spent a lot of time in bed.
• Emo was an excellent hunter, and when she was younger she always brought in her latest catch and put it by my side of the bed.
• If I got meat out to defrost and left it on the bench she would jump up and eat it out of the plastic. I had to put things on a plate in the microwave so that didn't happen.
• When she was a kitten she sat on my shoulder while I studied. When she got too old to sit on my shoulder she liked to sit on my knee or the desk. In the last year when I worked from home she sat on a cushion next to me, or on a blanket in the document destruction box.
• We got a dog when she was about 8 or 9. She was terrified and ran away for 4 days. My heart broke and I took the dog back. I loved her too much to put her through being scared in her own home for my own reasons.
• She was very gentle and tolerant. G loved to pick her up and cuddle her, and only after extreme amounts of this attention would she growl at G and flick her tail. She never once bit her, though G did get a few scratches for not obeying the warning growl.
• The only time I ever saw her take an interest in the TV was when I watched "The Secret Life of Cats". She sat close to the TV with her ears pricked up like she was watching. I was sure she must have seen or heard something she understood.
• She was happy to be with us, and was very flexible around where that was. Due to various mental health issues in the last 5 years, and life stuff before that, G and I have spent periods of a week to 6 weeks staying at my Mum & Dad's. She came along on these stays and never objected to having a new house temporarily. Her and my parent's cat tolerated each other reasonably well and stayed out of each other's way.
• Emo handled car trips well and in recent years I never bothered with a box or cage to take her to the vet. I would just put her on a blanket in the front passenger seat next to me and she'd look out the window, and then settle on the seat or in the foot well.
• At our last trip to the vets in June 18 I just held her wrapped in a blanket in the waiting room and she was quite calm. Wide eyed but never tried to get down or run away. Her heart beat a little faster but she was happy for me to hold her and comfort her.
• Emo liked to climb on the roof of the Nissan Tiida I had, while it was parked in the garage and then up onto the storage shelf area. There was a box of out of season clothes that had a collapsed lip so she would sleep in it. Sometimes I would need to go out and put the garage door down, which would have meant she couldn't get down, but she'd refuse to get down. A couple of times I was late for work because the cat wouldn't climb down from her hiding spot!
• If I left the windows down in the car she would climb in a curl up on the drivers seat, or occasionally in the back passenger foot well. When she was starting to get dementia she'd forget how to get back out of the car and I'd have to go and rescue her.
• She liked to sit at the table with G and I for breakfast and dinner. She'd climb up on the chair next to me and sit waiting until I'd finished, and then switch table sides and sit next to G hopefully, waiting to see if she'd get scraps.
• If there was a drawer left open, chances are Emo would climb into it. Open the wardrobe or shed and she'd go in. She loved to get into the airing cupboard and sit next to the hot water cylinder on the clean warm washing. She would even climb into kitchen cupboards and over all my pots and pans exploring.
• When I gardened she would grab weeds or plants as they moved and want to play fight with me.
• She loved to chase after the palm tree fronds that fell down. Especially when she was younger she was very playful and happy to play lots of chasing games with sticks and bits of plant, or her toys. As an older cat she would still like to chase after toys thrown in the air for her.
• Pegs and towels were two of her favourite play things. She would pull pegs off the clothes airier so the clothes fell down, and throw the pegs up in the air and chase them and chew on them. Towels she liked to roll on and grab then play fight with her teeth and feet. Her feet looked like a kangaroo's back legs when she was doing this kicking move on the towel with them.
• Sometimes she forgot to put her tongue back in when she was giving herself a bath :-) she'd have this little pink bit of tongue poking out, it was so cute.
• She would sometimes lick me if I'd been scratching under her chin or patting her just right. It was a little sign of affection when she was especially happy.
• She loved to snuggle but she was not one for sitting on my knee. I move around a lot, and even in bed I don't spend much time staying still. She would sit next to me on her blankie, or on the footstool in between my feet, but very rarely on my knee. 
• She liked to sit on G's knee though, and often G would cover herself in Emo's blanket and sit crossed legged with Emo between her knees. It was G's favourite way of stalling her bedtime - "I can't move, the cat's just sat down/got comfortable/will get upset".
• She had a particular place she liked to lie in my bed - always on the side of me closest to the edge of the bed. I often had to lie closer to the center of the bed so the cat could stretch out as she pushed me further away from the edge.
• A lot of the time in the last couple of years she'd lie right up level with my head, sometimes with her head on my pillow or resting on my arm. In winter she liked to snuggle under the covers in the little crook between my tummy and legs when I was sleeping on my side.
• In winter she'd go out to hunt in the night and come back to bed covered in dirt and paw at the covers to be let back under to warm up.
• When she wanted to wake me up she'd tap on the wall with her claws just out enough to make a scratching sound without actually scratching the wall. That got me out of bed pretty quick. Or she'd tap on the covers of books next to the bed.
• She loved the rustling noise of a plastic bag. If I had one on the floor in my room she'd spend ages playing with it, sometimes getting fully inside it.
• Sometimes she was naughty and teased the neighbour's dog by sitting right next to the fence just out of her reach. The dog would get worked up knowing she was there but just out of reach.
• In the winter she liked me to open and close the doors for her constantly. She had a cat door, she just preferred the human door opener to do it :-)
• Often it seemed like you'd just let her out one door and then she'd run around the house to the other door and you'd have to get up again to let her in. Then she'd walk straight through and want to go out the other door again!
• She was very good at letting me know if she wanted to go in or out. She would tap on the glass or the door and meow. Some of the doors don't latch very well so she'd push against them and let herself through.
• For the first three or four years of her life she couldn't meow. She'd make the face but no noise would come out. It was bizzare. You'd look at her and know she was trying to communicate but no noise happened. She also didn't purr during that time either. I don't remember when this changed but she certainly didn't have this problem in her later years!
•  When she developed deafness and dementia it was the strange sounding high pitched yowling that alerted me to something being wrong. She started doing this really horrible yowl - at first it was only occasionally, then several times a week, and gradually got worse. It was like she was confused or couldn't find something. At first she responded to you calling her name when she did it but later she stopped. 

I'm not really finished recording my memories and I'm sure I'll think of more but for now I need to get some sleep. 

Ka Kite