Goodbye Tumbleweed.

You know I really didn't expect to grieve for a cat. Especially considering that I'm allergic to them and have very little interaction with it for the last several years.
I found Tumble when we first moved to the San Jose Bay Area back in 1992. I was working for the phone company as an installation technician at the time driving a work van around to my different jobs. This included making connections at those refrigerato- sized green boxes you see everywhere out on the bigger streets. Ok, maybe you don't. They are designed to be unobtrusive, but if you look you'll see them. I was at one of these boxes in a not-so-nice part of town when I heard an odd sound. I couldn't quite make out what it was so I went looking. It sounded like an animal, but I wasn't quite sure. I crouched down next to the weeds next to the box and sure enough spotted this tiny little gray kitten underneath the tumbleweeds. I pulled the tumbleweed to the side and the kitten ran further underneath it. Obviously it was scared, but this was in a somewhat industrial part of town with no houses, or other animals, anywhere nearby.

I went back to my truck and grabbed my leather pole-climbing gauntlets and proceeded to pull the big tumbleweed up out of the way so I could get to the kitten. I scooped her up in my glove and she barely filled the palm of one hand. Obviously this cat would not survive out here on the streets for long. I took her back to my truck where I found a rather large cardboard box I could put her in. She looked so very tiny in the great big box, and obviously not too happy about it, so I ripped off a piece of the tumbleweed that she had been hiding in and put it in the box with her hoping it would make her feel more secure.

I finished up my work for the day stopping to put a little dish of water in the box for the kitten. When I got back to the garage at the end of the day the rest of the technicians thought it was hilarious that I had this tiny little kitten in a box with a tumbleweed. "What are you gonna do with the cat, Randall? What are you gonna call it?" I told them I would take the cat home and call her "Tumbleweed" of course!
We had a couple more cats that we picked up as strays over the years, but none of them lasted very long. One was too far gone after we found it in a less than ideal abusive situation. Another just didn't seem to know it wasn't safe to run out in front of cars driving down the road. Tumbleweed on the other hand didn't have a lot of interest in wandering around outside and rarely even left our property. On one occasion that she found her way into the neighbors yard she was too scared to even be able to climb the fence when they went to chase her back into our yard. After we moved from San Jose to Boise six years ago we kept her in the house to get her used to her new home. She really didn't like it outside after that and would cry until we let her back in. She stayed downstairs in Josh's room most of the time venturing out every once in a while to get in spitting and barking fights with the dog. Most of the time the dog ignored the cat, but every so often on or the other would look cross-eyed at the other and we would have to separate them.

After Josh moved out to join the Air Guard we moved Tumble into Toby's room so she wouldn't be so lonely. Oh, a word on the shortening of her name to "Tumble." My friend Dave would affectionately refer to her as "Tumble Fumble Stumble Mumble Crumble" which we of course had to shorten to just plain Tumble.
In any case over the last few years Tumble's health and well-being had started to deteriorate. She began to limp around the house and it wasn't as though she could have hurt herself jumping since he biggest feat was getting up onto Toby's bed! Birgit took to giving her baby asprin in her cat food on the advice of a veterinarian friend. This helped for a while, but she began to no longer make it to the litter box and that's not so nice for an indoor cat. She also developed a wheeze (maybe she grew allergic to me?) and began to grow cysts on both her eye-lid and neck. Obviously her quality of life was deteriorating and it was time to consider putting her to rest. I took her for her first time to the vet where I take the dog. The vet said that considering her age and the number of afflictions she was suffering euthanasia was the right choice.

The vet was very sensitive to us and offered us a lot of choices including whether we would stay for the procedure or wait outside. I thought since I had found this cat it was my responsibility to stay there with it to the end. Toby also decided to stay but Kira said that she "doesn't like shots" and opted to wait in the reception area (Toby took the picture above for his photography class and it one a "Best in Show" award at the Idaho Fair). The doctor and nurse were both very gentle and soothing with her and us and it was a very simple procedure in which she just went to sleep. I am still surprised at the impact it has had on me as I am crying again as I write this. It was the longest I have ever owned an animal and the first one I have ever had to have put to sleep.

Goodbye Tumble. You were a nice, gentle cat that gave joy to my family.