Snowball

Snowball's Arrival

I was in the front yard one evening, walking by the bushes in front of our garage windows, when I heard something rustling in the bushes. It surprised me, so I stopped and looked into the bushes to see what had made the noise. Way back in there I saw some eyes peering back at me, then I saw that it was a white cat, maybe a year old. I was not sure where he came from, but finally it became apparent that he was from our neighbor's house. I figured he was on patrol and stopped in our bushes on his way back home. He did not seem interested in visiting, so I left him alone.

A few days later, he was back. He was just sitting there staring at the house next door. He was a bit thin, and a little dirty, but a cat on patrol in our neighborhood gets that way wandering around in the wooded areas between the houses. Once again, I left him alone.

The next time I saw him, his tail was bloodied and a bit bent. That did not look good, so I corralled him and walked him over to the neighbor's house. The lady of the house went back inside and got a pillowcase,and slipped him into that. She said she was going to take him to the vet to have that tail looked at. I was not thrilled with that procedure, but he was their cat, so I left him in their care.

The next time I saw our neighbor, I asked about the cat. She told me his name was Snowball (what else would you name a white cat?) and he was getting picked on by the kids in their house. The neighbors ran a foster care program for the state, and had a lot of kids passing through there. Apparently, they picked on Snowball to the point where he stayed away from the house until he got really hungry and then he would return for some food. That explained why he was camping out in our bushes. He was hungry, but not enough to brave going to that evil house with them mean kids.

The vet had said there was nothing he could do about that tail, and she could put him "down", or just let it heal on it's own. I seem to remember they put a bandage on it, so he was now wandering the neighborhood with that on his tail.

Feeding Time

After a while, it was becoming common to find Snowball in our bushes looking at his home. He clearly was not doing well at feeding himself, and was getting thinner all the time. Finally, Cheryl and I decided we could give him some tuna. We put some in a dish in the garage, and he snarfed it right down.

This went on for some time. Soon, Snowball was hanging out in our garage, hoping we would feed him more tuna. So, we added a water dish to the mix, and Snowball started using our garage as his "home away from home". We even started leaving the garage door open about a foot so he could get in there during the day.

Snowball's new pattern was simple. Sleep in our garage during the day (bug us for food occasionally, then head out into the neighborhood in the evening. We figured he had some friends out there he would habg out with and "cat around" so to speak!

Cheryl's Omaha Trip

One time, Cheryl headed up to Omaha for a doctor's visit, and I was left in charge of cat sitting. Snowball returned home from one of his adventures, and he was a mess. He had blood all over one paw, and was obviously showing signs of being on the losing end of a fight. He looked bad enough, I decided he needed to go to the vet. There was a vet up the road a couple of miles, so I took him there. They said they could not treat him unless he had all of his shots. I had no idea if he had all of his shots or not, and our neighbors were not really folks I wanted to ask about that. I was not thrilled with the pillow-case treatment Snowball got last time!

So I called Cheryl.

"Hey Cheryl, I am at the vet!"

(Silence)

"Why are you at the vet? We don't have any pets!"

I told her about Snowball, and we agreed to give him his shots (the vet said it would not hurt him if he already had them), and I would pay to get him patched up. $300 later, he was fine and back at "home away from home".

Searching for Snowball

By now, Snowball was a fixture in our garage. Cheryl would be worrying about him if he did not show up on time in the evening, so I started going out on my own "cat patrol" to see if I could find him.

He had a route that involved wandering to each house on our side of the street, and eventually, wandering into a depressed area behind the houses used to hold water when it rained so things would not flood. That area fed into a run of trees with a small creek, and connected with an area in our neighborhood that is still undeveloped and full of deer. I would trace that route, slogging through the bushes looking for the silly cat. Most of the time I never found him, but on an occasion or two I did spot him.

This was getting silly. We did not have a cat, but we did have a cat. And he was fine with all of this! He had a nice place to sleep during the day, with food and water, and could wander the neighborhood as he liked. What more could a cat want?

The Mighty Hunter

I was sitting on the patio in the back yard one evening, and I say Snowball coming up from the back fence. Hi was carrying something in his mouth. It looked like a chunk of rope from where i was, but as he got closer, I realized he had a snake!

Great, there are evil snakes in these parts. Just what we need, a snake-bit cat. The vet will be happy!

He walked up on the patio and dropped the snake right in front of me. He seemed pretty proud of what he had accomplished!

Then I saw that the snake was alive, and not happy at all. I looked him over. He was an innocent variety snake, nothing rattling on this one. He had two small puncture marks from where Snowball held him in his mouth, but did not seem all that injured. I picked him up and carried him to the back fence and dropped him over that into some bushes. Hopefully, he lived to tell stories to his snakelets later in life!

Snowball was miffed at the loss of his prized catch, but some tuna and he forgot all about it!

I did not tell that story to Cheryl, she would never have walked into our back yard again!

How to Squash a Cat

Remember that open garage door? One afternoon, I came home from work and the garage door was open as usual. In order for me to get into the garage, I had to close it first, then open it. SO, I pushed the button on the opener.

Just as it started down, I saw Snowball start to come under the door. But it was too low, and he stopped and tried to back up. I saw that he was going to be squashed by the door, so I leaped out of my truck and ran to the door, grabbing it just before it went all the way down. Snowball was laying there under that door, obviously being crushed. I yanked on the door enough that he was able to struggle back into the garage, then I let the door go and it closed all the way.

I looked around, and my truck was wandering down the driveway all by itself. I did not put it in park, and it was slowly backing into the street. So I ran after the silly truck, and managed to get to it before it went into a ditch.

I was breathing pretty hard from all of this.

I pushed the door opener button again and the door started up.

Out shot a white fur ball moving at Mach 9! Snowball had enough of that garage was was running for his life. I was worried that he had internal injuries, so I took off after him.

Several houses later, and several adventures hiding in bushes, I managed to catch him.

Off to the vet again!

The vet looked him over and did note a bruise on his side where the door had hit him, but she said he had survived the ordeal, and would be a bit sore for a while.

More cash out taking care of our non-pet cat, and we were back home. I needed to calm down, this was getting pretty hard!

Evolving into a House Cat

Snowball got back into his normal pattern, and life returned to normal. Cheryl had said, "He can stay in the garage, but under no circumstances can he come into the house."

Yeah, right!

Snowball would walk up to our kitchen door if it was open and started walking inside.

"Snowball can come into the kitchen, but under no circumstances can he get on any furniture."

Yeah right!

Then he found a white chair in the living room, and started taking cat-naps on that.

"Snowball can sit on that chair, but under no circumstances can he go anywhere else in the house."

Yeah, right!

Next thing we know, Snowball has the run of the house, and we are allowed to stay there at his pleasure.

Feeding moved into the kitchen. He still spent the night in the garage, but now he had free access to our home if we were there.

We started off keeping hm in a bathroom at night, with water and a litter box for company. Eventually, that went away and he slept wherever he wanted!

FIV

I do not remember what happened that sent up back to the vet, but we had him there again. He seemed to get into fights with neighbor cats, and usually ended up on the losing end of that.

This time, the vet declared that he had FIV, an immune system deficiency that is spread between cats through fighting. Cats with FIV are not supposed to live a normal life, and should not be allowed to wander outside. FIV can be controlled with Interferon, so Snowball started getting daily doses of that one week on and one week off for the rest of hi life.

So, Snowball became a house cat! We brought him inside the house and he stayed there most of the rest of his life (except for visits to the vet, or when we put him into a boarding home when we went on trips.

Kitty Condo

As all cats do, Snowball took to scratching on our chairs. Cheryl was not to thrilled with that, so we decorated the important chairs with anti-cat sticky tape, except for one white chair in our entryway. That chair became hiss favorite scratching post.

Eventually, we decided he needed one of those cat climbing gadgets you see in the pet stores. Those looked pretty expensive, so I thought I could build one! I even found pan on the INternet that looked like something we could build.

We bought the wood at Home Depot, and Cheryl and I found a rug remnant at a local rug store. We called it the Kitty Condo, since it had an open topped small room at the top, and several landings at different levels from the floor up to about six feet.

We wound rope around two of the legs, and padded everything else with rug, inside and out.

After looking it over, Snowball decided it was pretty cool. He would tear through the house, spinning around the landings like a corkscrew gone wild, and end up in the room at the top.

When we could not find him in the house, half of the time we would end up seeing him lying in the door to the small room watching us look for him

If a kitty could grin, Snowball would have been doing that!

King Kitty

Snowball ruled our home for several years as an only cat. We fell into the pattern of taking care of him, doing "kitty poop duty" every day as we cleaned his litter boxes (we ended up with two, one in the laundry room and the other in the bathroom where he slept for a while).

He did really well on the Interferon, and gained a fair amount of weight. All in all, he was doing fine.

Snowball the Art Lover

One day, we came home to find Snowball sitting on the chair in our entryway. Above that chair was a painting of a house, and Snowball was staring directly at that painting. We decided he was becoming an art critic. It was a nice painting, but that was not what had his attention.

I puzzled over this situation for a minute, then gave the painting a closer look. I peeked behind the thing and found the real object of Snowball's attention.

There was a gecko hanging onto that painting for dear life. There was no way he was going to climb down as long as that durned cat was sitting there waiting for him!

Snowball developed a habit of adopting all kinds of critters as his personal pets. He seemed fascinated by geckos, but the occasional flying bug was just as interesting to him. Usually, I managed to rescue the critters and get them out of the house before Snowball figured out what to do with them!

Enter the Villain

Cheryl had taken a job as the Executive Director of the Austin Humane Society. A lady in Victoria, Texas (on the gulf coast) had spotted a part Siamese kitten wandering lose in the streets, and decided to bring him to Austin. The Austin Humane Society was a no-kill facility, and she wanted this kitty to have a chance.

The kitten was named "Victor" (for obvious reasons), and when they let him wander around, he found Cheryl's office. He decided she was pretty cool, and would hang out with her.

Then they discovered that Victor had FIV, and they could not adopt him out. That meant he would have to be put to sleep.

One of the techs, noting how Victor and Cheryl got along so well, noted that we already had an FIV cat at home. Victor should go live with us. So, now we had two cats!

Victor's nickname was "Thug". When he came into our home, we initially kept him in the bathroom to see how he and Snowball would get along. There was a lot of growling and sniffing going on along the bottom of the bathroom door, but eventually they started putting up with each other.

Victor had a kind of swagger in his walk, like he wanted to be the boss! He developed the habit of taking a swipe at Snowball as he walked by, but soon enough they were best friends.

TKB

Both cats liked to look out the window. We have two windows with padded cushions right along the window. We would open the window about six inches, and both cats would hop up onto the cushions and sniff the air and look at the birdies. What really set them off was the occasional gecko that would walk by on the window ledge. There was a serious risk that one or both of them would attack through the screen and they would be gone. We kept the window close enough that they could not squeek (meow?) through.

The sight of those two sitting on the cushion was funny. We started calling it "Two Kitty Butts" or TKB for short.

Cat Sitting

One big problem with having pets, is figuring out what to do with them when you travel. We found a local boarding place that had a bunch of rooms they would put pets into and let them run around. Snowball and Victor would share a bathroom area when we traveled.

The only problem with that is that we needed to make sure both cats got their FIV medicines.

Eventually, we discovered that some of the technicians at the vet facility we were using did cat sitting duties, and would come to your home as needed when you were away. We started using this service, since then the cats could just stay home and there was no problem with dealing with the medicines. It was a much better solution since these folks could take care of anything, even haul them back to the vet if needed while we were away.

Life with the Cats

We settled into a comfortable pattern with the cats.They would greet us when we came home, demand food, then ignore us until they wanted something else. You know:

Dogs have masters, cats have servants.

They added something to our home, and they seemed content to wander around the house looking for comfortable places to sleep. Cheryl seemed to have problems finding the cats. I would end up searching for them everywhere.

Snowball found several interesting hiding places. One was under a hassock in our living room. It seemed to short for him, but he would hide under the skirts around that things often.

My favorite hiding place was funny. We have a desk on one wall in our entryway. Snowball would jump up on that desk and lie down next to a flower pot. He was in plain sight, but we did not expect him to be there. So we would both walk past the desk on a "Search for Snowball" action and not see him. We once found Victor doing the same thing on top of the refrigerator. How he got up there is a mystery!

Getting Older

Snowball started to show signs of aging a few years ago. He started not eating as much and had problems with his intestinal tract. What he ate was not working its way through him. Eventually we took him to the vet and discovered two issues. Snowballs muscles were not working right to push stuff through his system, so we had to add medicine to his daily diet to help with that.

A worse problem was his heart. He had a "galloping" heartbeat, not a normal one. We ended up taking him to a heart specialist who put him on still more medicines. ALl of that seemed to be helping.

Snowball started getting really picky about what he ate. In the beginning, we fed both cats a dry food, and added a wet packet for variety. Slowly the wet food replaced the dry food. We would go to Petsmart and stock up on small cans of food, and feed Snowball half a can every meal. Meals happened at 7am and 7pm.

Then Snowball got more picky about which canned food he would eat. If we fed him something he did not like, he would only eat a little of it. So, we started feeding him more often, and recording what he would eat and what he did not like. Snowball figured this out, and started begging for food any time he wanted something. Feeding wend from twice a day to four times a day.

Cat Demands

Cats are normally part of a pride. The pride defines who is top cat, and who is on the bottom. In our home, I was at the top, and Cheryl was at the bottom! For some reason, Snowball never bugged me during the night for food. But Cheryl was his target constantly. I know why! She always caved in and got up to feed him, no matter what time of day it was! Snowball liked to jump up on our bed and lay down next to Cheryl's head and purr. LOUDLY. She would wake up and go feed him. He never did that with me (probably because I would not leap up as easily!

In his last few months, he did start jumping on my chest when I lay on my back. That might happen in the middle of the night, but , more often, it happened when I was waking up in the morning. I would be on my back, and Snowball would walk up my stomach and lay down there and start "exfoliating" my face! He would lick furiously on my forehead, and nose, while I gave him a head massage. He loved it, and it always ended with Snowball being carried out to the kitchen for breakfast.

It was our routine.

Cats in the Sink

We always kept a water dish in the kitchen, and another on in Cheryl's office so Snowball had plenty of water available. He would drink out of the one in Cheryl's office, but seemed to ignore the one in the kitchen.

His favorite watering place was Cheryl's sink in our master bathroom. He would jump up there and wait until someone came by to turn on the water, then he would lick at the stream of water. After he was done, he would lay down and watch the water run.

He would demand to go to the bathroom a lot, and he even trained our cat sitting folks to take him there when they took care of him. When he was smaller, he would curl up in that sink and wait! We often found him there on cat searches!

More Medical Woes

While we were working on getting his system working right, we discovered another ill. Snowball had developed diabetes! That meant we needed to add insulin to his daily medical needs. Cheryl, ever the accountant, put together a spreadsheet we used to track what he ate, (when he pooped for a while), and when he needed what medicines. It took a full page to list all of that and we had cells for each day of the week. The pattern was to record what was given so we both would know what had been done. I have to admit i was not that good at recording things on occasion, but the spreadsheet helped a lot as his list of medicines grew.

All of this was hard to keep up with, but it helped. Snowball seemed to be doing well, but he was not a agile as he had been. He could not jump up much, so we had to lift him up to the sink, or onto our bed. Still, he was active and pretty normal for a cat.

Bad News

I was in Dallas for a short trip. Cheryl called me to say she had Snowball at the vet. She had noticed a swelling around his rear end, and it seemed to be getting worse. She decided it needed looking at.

It was a tumor, and it had grown pretty big. The vet was pretty sure it was cancer, and it was big enough that removing it would be very difficult.

She recommended a specialist, and we took Snowball there and again got the news that operating would be very hard. Snowball's heart and age meant he might not survive the surgery, and even if he did, the end result would not be good. He would have no control over his bowels, and would have a tough life. Add to that they were not even sure they could get the tumor completely out.

Snowball was obviously in pain, so we added pain medicine to his list. The first thing we tried made hom very wobbly. He had a hard time standing up. We switched medicines and he did better.

Still, the only thing keeping him going was all this medicine, and our constant care.

One of our good friends, who occasionally took care of him, and called him "My Pal" recommended his vet, and got Snowball an appointment. Yet another confirmation of what we already knew and we had to make the hard decision.

Snowball was in pain, and it was only going to get worse. We decided to spare him that pain.

We took him to his doctor, a lady who had tended to him for years, and as we both held him, we ended his pain.

And our real pain started!

Saying Goodbye

Snowball was part of our life for almost 15 years. Cats with FIV are not supposed to live as long, but the vets all said he was still with us because of the love and care he got at home. He was happy in his home! He was a kind and gentle cat, and, once he got over being afraid of other folks, he was friendly with everyone who came into our house.

Snowball had a way of making himself part of peoples lives. The staff at the vet clinic all loved him, his vets loved him, and we loved him.

We got cards of condolence from everyone who knew him. All of the staff at the vet clinic signed a card, we got cards from all of the doctors who cared for him or saw him in those last few weeks.

The worse part of losing Snowball was removing all of his things. We did this slowly. Now, the only thing visible in our house is the "Kitty Condo". I am not sure what we will do with that.

It is hard for both Cheryl and I to come home and not find a kitty waiting to greet us.

Rest in Peace, Kitty!

We buried Snowball next to Victor, who we also lost to cancer four years earlier. Both kitties are in Kitty Heaven now, chasing each other and looking for geckos.

Rest in Peace kitties, and thank you for sharing your lives with us!