Farewell Sweet Piglet - A Rainbow Bridge Crossing

 It is with great sadness in our hearts that our sweet Piglet crossed the Rainbow Bridge on February 14th.

Piglet showed up in our neighborhood sometime in 2011.  He had apparently been dumped or wandered off and just hung around our place and my mom's house.  We took care of him outside by leaving food, water & shelter for him.

These are pictures of him during his outside years:

 

Sunning himself on our sidewalk.

Enjoying a siesta on the grass

Showing off his belly

Laying on the lawn chair on my mom's porch

Hanging around with Fluffy another neighborhood cat.

Enjoying time with Coleen
 

This is probably one of the earliest pictures we have of him when he first showed up.

One of my favorite shots of him.  I looked outside my craftroom window one day and he was laying on top the flowers in my planter.  I went outside and snapped a few pictures of him.

 

 

We occasionally would let him inside for awhile at night while the other cats were in the bedroom.  Then let him back outside when he wanted to go out.  Here he is enjoying some time with Mike & I on those nights:

 In January of 2013 it was really cold and he had gotten beat-up by a neighborhood cat and then got really sick to the point we decided we had to take him to the Vet. You can see where his ear had been hurt in the fight. - By the time we got him to the Vet he had an Upper Respiratory Infection, Ulcers in his mouth, ear infections and was near death.

After he was able to be released from the Vet's he went to live with my mom since we thought he couldn't be around our other cats due to the respiratory illness he had.  She agreed to take him in.  He spent the next 6 1/2 years living at her house.  While my mom wasn't super affectionate with animals she took good care of him and he had a good life over there.  

Pictures of him from his life at her house.
 

The above is a shot of him and a toy that she bought for him to play with.  We still have the toy.

 Everyone loved him.  This is a picture of him and Greta together.

 

This past two weeks we noticed that he was starting to eat less and just didn't see like his old self so we took him to the Vet on Monday and they did a blood workup on him.  I found out on Tuesday, Valentine's day that he was in "End Stage" kidney failure.  So we opted to have him euthanized rather then see him continue to decline and suffer.

A few years ago I took this picture of him on Valentine's Day and it seems fitting to share again since he passed away on Valentine's Day. 

 Finally these are the last photos we have on him which we took on Tuesday before we took him out to cross the Rainbow Bridge:

 

                                            2011- 2023
             Rest in Peace sweet Piglet.   You will be missed.
 

Rainbow Bridge Crossing

 This week has been rough emotionally for me.  We had been dealing with a sick kitty since last Wednesday.

 

We spent the week trying everything we could to get him to eat more which he tried but he just wasn't eating much at all.  I gave him tons of attention and he seemed happy and content but also not himself.

 

We did blood work (twice) and all the results came back negative.  Then Thursday morning we took him in for an Ultra Sound and when our Vet called us the outcome was not good.  He had lost yet another pound and she had found a rather large mass in his abdomen that she felt was most likely cancer.  So at that point we opted to Euthanize him.  It broke my heart.  

 

 He got the name Spooky-Boo because he was very timid and would hide whenever anyone new came to the house.

He loved people though once he got to know them.  He loved attention of any kind (especially tummy rubs).  He had lots of nicknames, Boo, Pukey Boo (because he often ate food and puked it right back up), Badger Boo because of the white streak running down the middle of his head. Those are just a few.  He had such a gentle loving nature and the sweetest meow and he loved to purr.

This was one of his first days with us back in February of 2018.  The blue color on his left ear was how they use to mark that the cat had been neutered (they have since stopped that practice)

Relaxing on the couch.

 

Coleen dressed him up once in a cowboy outfit when he was young.

 

 

Here he is look out over the stairway.  He had such beautiful eyes.  They were such a pretty green color.

He enjoyed play and sleep time with the other cats. Here he is with Bandit who is now much bigger then he was in these shots.

He had amazing whiskers which I loved.  These two shots are some of my favorite black/white shots of him.

There is so much more I could say and while he didn't live as long as many of our other cats he packed a lot of love into the 8 years he was with us.  He will be long remembered and forever loved in our house.

 

Rest in Peace sweet boy.

 

                                             Spooky-Boo

                             February 18, 2014 - March 3, 2022

 

Crossing the Rainbow Bridge - An Unexpected and sad Day

 Yesterday - September 5, 2021 began pretty much like any other typical day. - The cats were fed in the morning and had spent a little time sleeping in the bedroom before they were let out shortly before noon.

That's when things went south in a hurry. - I happened to be walking by the bathroom when I noticed a couple of our cats in there and heard the horrible sound of one of them in distress.  I found our sweet, Captain Cuddles on the floor with what appeared to be really bad constipation pains. - I quickly called Mike in to help me and we noticed that he seemed in unbearable pain and could not stand up on his back legs. - Being that there are no, "on-call" Vets in town on the weekends we knew we had to do something to get him in to a Veterinarian as soon as possible.  We called a near by Clinic (about 17 miles away) that often will take emergency calls on weekends and after about an hour of waiting they finally got back to us and told us to bring him in right away.  The Vet did not sound very optimistic about the outcome after I described his symptoms.  But we hoped for the best and prepared for the worst.

Upon arrival she explained the he had something called,  Saddle Trombus  - The prognosis was not good and in the end we opted to, euthanize him as he was in tremendous pain and the likely hood that he could survive this was extremely slim.- So with heavy hearts & lots of tears we said our good-byes to our sweet, Captain Cuddles.

 

This was the first photo we took of him when we rescued him back in November of 2009. He had wandered into the neighborhood and was being mistreated by some kids when I brought him into the house.  We had decided to find his owners since he was wearing a collar until I noticed that he had fleas & ear mites both and figured they didn't deserve to have him if they weren't going to take care of him.

 

He was a gentle and loving cat so we named him, Cuddles, which quickly became, Captain Cuddles and we finally added on to that so that he became, Captain Cuddles, Defender of the Universe!

 

He was loved by everyone who came into the house because of his sweet and loving nature.  Here are shots of Mike & I with him.

 

 
 Coleen loved him as well. He went through a lot with her.  One time he came into the room and he was all wet.  I asked her what had happened and she said,  "I baptized him! "  I ask her where & she said, "In the toilet!"  Another time she cut his whiskers off, he got locked in her toy box, and she had a private ceremony (we weren't invited so no pictures) where she married him.

 

Here are shots of them together when both we much younger.

 

 He loved sleeping and was often either on the couch, in a window, on the desk in my office, on the bed etc...here are some of his strange sleeping positions.

 

 He got along with all the different cats over the years.  I tried to find pictures of him with all of them but couldn't find one with him and our newest cat (Gidget) but here are a few of him with the others.

 

 From L-R - Cuddles & Harley, Cuddles & Pepper, Cuddles and Callie-Jo, Cuddles and Spooky Boo.

 

Cuddles and Bandit asleep in Mike's Guitar Case

 Harley, Cuddles & Spooky Boo

 

Cuddles being stalked by a giant ant.

Cuddles enjoying a box of newspaper.

Side Profile

Asleep on the Wi-Fi box in my office.

 

Sleeping on the laundry basket.

                                                               DEFENDING THE UNIVERSE!

This is the last photo I ever took of him.  I had no idea he would be gone so soon after this photo was taken.

 

 Finally one of our favorite photos of his sweet face:

                               Nov. 2009 - September 2021.

We will so miss him.  He loved to run and jump up in my arms, try to escape out the back door, head bonk us, purr, and so much more.  You left us far to soon.

Rest in Peace Sweet Cuddles.

Nov. 2009 - September 2021.

Over the Rainbow Bridge sweet Pixie

 Hoping for a good start to the New Year hasn't panned out so well.

This past Monday marked the 23rd passing of my dad which is always a hard day to get through and more so now that my mom is gone as well.  Worse yet was that we had to make the hard decision to say good-bye to my mom's little dog,  Pixie.

She came to live with my mom shortly after her dog Rusty died.  We got her at the Humane Society and she was approximately 2-3 years old at the time.

My mom decided to call her Pixie (instead of her first owners name of Fluffy).  Pixie fit her so much better.

She was the sweetest little dog and loved going for walks.

                   Greta and Coleen with Cricket and Pixie

Mom wasn't able to walk her so I often took her or Coleen would take her as well.  

She loved to run...

Mom would often stand in her bedroom window and watch Pixie run in the back yard.  She would open the window and say, "Run Pixie, run. Go Pixie, go!"  - The black blur is our dog, Cricket.  We had tried to introduce them when my mom was alive but she was always worried that Cricket would hurt Pixie so we gave up putting them together. - Of course after my mom passed away that all changed as Pixie came to live with us and they became pretty good buddies.

Digging was another favorite pastime so we ended up having to line all the fence line with bricks so she wouldn't dig out from underneath the fence and run off.

Here she is with her favorite toy, a little raccoon that had a squeaker in it.  She love playing with that thing.

 

When Coleen stayed with my mom she would often sneak her into the bedroom at night or during the day.  Mom wasn't one for letting pets on the furniture.  But doesn't she look comfy!

 Just prior to Christmas we noticed that she was drinking water constantly and would not eat food everyday (although that was something she did quite often almost all her life).  We took her into the Vet and they told us she was Diabetic and had some pretty bad dental disease going on as well.  They gave her an antibiotic and she seemed to do okay for a couple of days but then just stopped eating completely and barely drinking water.  She just seemed to have lost her spunky spirit and so we took her back to the Vet and she said that with a dog her age and with the problems she was having that it would be extremely hard to treat her for the Diabetes and that the humane thing would be to let her go.

 

It breaks my heart that we had to do it and it was like losing a piece of my mom all over again.

 

Fare-well sweet Pixie,  You have crossed that Rainbow bridge and are running free now.

 

 Rest in Peace - Pixie 2010-2020.  Forever in our hearts.