(Bitty with Courage...he was so adorable!!!)
One Saturday, me and my girls, Arthur and Courage, were running errands and stopped by the Kroger store at the intersection of Hwy 78 and Rosebud Road. Upon entering the store, we saw a young girl of about eleven or twelve with a box and a tiny kitten.
The girl said she had had a box full of kittens, and this was the last one. Her family had rescued a momma cat and her kittens, but now it was her job to find homes for the babies. She had given them all away except this one. At the same time we had walked up, an older lady also walked up and she and my girls were both ooohing and aaahhing over the baby.
It was really tiny and cute. It was gray with darker stripes and some white. It had big eyes and ears. The girls took turns holding it and it climbed up to their neck and nuzzled and meowed. They begged me to have the kitten. My life flashed before my eyes as I thought of Hubster coming home to find a new cat in the house. But for some unknown reason, I said yes. The older woman commented she should have gotten there just one minute earlier. I told her I was sorry. But she smiled.
(Bitty - at 4 or 5 months...giving Courage a neck message while other kitties, Blacky and Siamese, lay close by.)
The girl held up the tiny kitten and informed us her name was Sweet Pea. My girls took Sweet Pea and we went inside Kroger to get whatever we came for, plus kitten food and kitten milk. When we got home with her, we fixed a bed out of an old computer monitor casing (turned upside down it made a perfect little box with an open door). An old throw pillow stuffed down into it made the perfect bed for a tiny scrap of a kitty. Now we placed the bed and it's occupant in the girls' bathroom and closed the door and I said a little prayer. Please let the kitty be quiet.
It is hard to believe, but that kitten never made a noise. She slept all night to the best of our knowledge, for in the morning when the door was opened, there she lay, still on the pillow in the monitor casing. Only after we opened the door did she open her mouth and let out a bitty meow.
We actually were able to keep 'Sweet Pea' hidden from the Hubster for about a week. When he finally saw her, he looked at me with a look I interpreted as a 'I'm ticked off and hurt at the same time' kind of look, and he didn't speak to me for two weeks.
Sweet Pea was soon scheduled for a visit to the vet and lucky for me, Arthurwas of driving age and she did the honors. She called me later with a report, giving me all the hi-lights of Sweet Pea's first doctor visit. First of all, she stated, Sweet Pea is a 'him', not a 'her'. Wow!
So, the girls changed the name from Sweet Pea to Frisky.
(Laying with Siamese, who grew to love him after just a few months!)
The name Frisky lasted about two days...we couldn't get over how 'itty - bitty' this kitty was, and the name 'Bitty' was born from that.
Bitty tried his best to make friends with the other two cats in residence...Blacky hissed and slapped. This really shocked us because Blacky supposedly nursed orphaned kittens back in her days as a 'pound kitty'. Siamese Kitty didn't do too much hissing or slapping, but she more or less tried her best to ignore Bitty. She would either walk away from any area he was in, or she would turn her head if he came up to nuzzle her.
(Bitty cleaning Blacky's ears.)
Eventually, Bitty did make friends with both Blacky and Siamese. Neither of the older cats cared for his rambunctiousness, but both loved it when he calmed down and wanted to cuddle. He would lick their faces and clean their ears for them, and they would return the favor.
Bitty's most favorite thing to do was to 'give massages'. He would take almost any opportunity to lay on your chest and massage your throat or neck. He had been de-clawed as a young kitty (of about 5 months old), but he still had some claw nublets that could really dig into your flesh. Any one who lay down or sat in a reclining position for more than a minute was to be treated with one of his famous massages. If you felt sad and lonely, he could bring you out of your funk really quick with his kneading and the touch of his cold nose.
(Bitty loved to play with string and ribbon!)
Another thing Bitty loved to do, was leap for things. With a string or ribbon, you could have Bitty doing backwards flips and flying leaps high off the floor. His curiosity often got the best of him, and his leaping abilities helped him investigate things he normally could not reach.
One day my husband installed a peep hole in the door going from the kitchen into the carport. I do not know what the peep hole looked like to an adolescent cat from the floor, but it didn't take Bitty long to decide to check it out at closer range. From a sitting position on the floor, Bitty launched himself straight up into the air and he would look at the peephole - for a brief second - before gravity pulled him back down to the floor. After a few leaps he graduated from taking a look to grabbing it with his fore claws, and then all four feet grabbed at the circular thing as his leap crested just at the peephole. Eventually, he had seen and felt enough. For that day, anyways.
Bitty loved to get inside things. Clothes baskets, shopping bags, boxes, anything that would contain him. He would also sit in the box or basket as it was lifted and he was twirled around. He did not try to jump out or seem afraid.
Bitty did not like being shut up in a room, away from whatever it was we were trying to keep him from.
One evening, the minister of our church and his wife came for a visit. I immediately locked all three cats into the upstairs bedrooms as I knew Bitty would have to climb over them and sniff them and I didn't know if they liked cats or not. In fact, it had seemed to me that I had heard the minister's wife was allergic to cats. We were having a nice visit with them and now they were getting ready to leave, so we bowed our heads for the reverend to say a prayer. During the prayer, we heard a loud, insistent 'yoooowwwwwl' from upstairs. Me and girls struggled not to giggle.
(Bitty did not like this Santa hat one little bit!)
He was a tiny little kitten when we brought him home, but now over the years he had grown into a lean, sinewy, long-legged adult cat. When we had him 'fixed', we discovered he had a form of viral herpes, that caused him to have a rattle in his chest and also cause him to have cold-like symptoms sometimes.
One time, when he was about 3 or 4 years old, his illness flared up and Bitty would not eat or drink water. I knew if he didn't drink something soon, his kidneys would shut down and we would lose him. His nose was clogged and he breathed from his mouth, and he sat huddled under the bed. We begged him to eat, even putting food in his mouth, but he wouldn't chew and wouldn't swallow. Water squirted in his mouth just run back out in a pool at his feet. Finally, I remembered something...if you cannot smell something, you cannot taste it. His nose was clogged. I remembered from childhood my mother putting Vick's Vapor Rub under our noses to loosen up our clogged sinuses. I dug around in the medicine cabinet and found a jar of the stuff and proceeded to massage a blob of the stuff onto the top of Bitty's nose and under it on either sides of his jowls, being careful not to get any in his eyes or mouth. In a just a few minutes, Bitty began blowing big snot bubbles from his nostrils! Then the mucous started running out of his nose. After he drained some, Courage approached him with bits of tuna fish on her finger tips, and he ate some!!!! Not long after that, he drank water. It was all down hill from there!
Bitty was not an angel by any means. He was always into something...you couldn't leave anything laying around that you didn't want chewed up, carried off, or messed with. When he wanted to play, he terrorized the other cats. When he wanted to massage, he wanted to massage RIGHT NOW. But little terror that he was, he had a special place in our hearts and we loved him dearly.
One evening, Bitty lay on his side and did not get up to play, eat, or massage. When we pet him, he growled. A friend who was over had worked in a vet's office for awhile, and he now pulled open Bitty's mouth and looked inside. Bitty's mouth was white inside; a bad sign, according to our friend.
Bitty spent Friday night in a fancy little vet's office off Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road. The vet tech there took him in, hooked him to IV's, took x-rays, and gave us bad news. They said Bitty appeared to have a blockage in his kidneys or bladder, I can't remember which now. They kept him over night and charged us $1,600.00. Arthur paid this bill, as she was in a better financial situation to do so than I was at that time. Our normal vet would take him early the next morning.
Our (cheaper) country-style vet took Bitty in the next morning and kept his IV's going, and said he would keep him a few days and see if he could 'fix' him. I worried about two things...if Bitty would live and what this would cost.
For several days Bitty lay in a drug induced stupor while Dr. Ferris tried to get him to start urinating again. He informed me over the phone that when Bitty would start coming out from under the sedation he would remove his catheter. He said he would re-insert it and drug him again. He said he put a plastic cone collar on him, but he still managed to get the catheter out. Finally, after several days of this, Dr. Ferris informed me that the tumor in his kidney was too large and in a position impossible to remove, therefore he would have to put Bitty to sleep.
Arthur and I drove to his office to be with him a few minutes before he was put down, Courage could not leave school for this, not even for a half hour or so. So are stupid school rules. Yes, I said it, STUPID SCHOOL RULES at Loganville High School.
Dr. Ferris warned us that Bitty was drugged with an anti-anxiety medication...that he would seem relaxed and quiet. When he brought out our little friend, Arthur and I cried. He did seem relaxed. He seemed his normal self in appearance. He was laying on a towel on the examining table and we petted him, kissed him, and stroked his fur for the last time. He was drugged and I am not sure he knew it was us. He was probably thinking 'where in the hell have ya'll been while I've been laying here in pain?' Dr. Ferris had been keeping him hydrated with an IV, trying to make him urinate. I wondered now if he was hungry, thirsty? He didn't appear to be in pain at this moment, but what about during the night when his sedation wore off and he felt he needed to tear out the catheter. I wondered now why Dr. Ferris kept him alive that many days...was he experimenting on him? Was he truly trying to help him, or help us, or was this for his own knowledge and/or use? He said he had studied the x-rays once again and realized he could never get the tumor out of the way to let him urinate again. Why didn't I ask him to put him out of his misery earlier? Why didn't I insist Dr. Ferris let me in the clinic after hours to see him at night after work?
Now the time had come, and we held Bitty as Dr. Ferris gave him an injection in the skin at the nape of his neck. Bitty slowly lowered his head, and closed his eyes. Very quietly he stopped breathing; stopped living. Arthur and I cried and continued to stroke his soft fur.
Later, Arthur's friend dug a hole in the back yard, under the big shade tree where the birds and squirrels gathered to tease Bitty as he sat looking out the back window. He started out as the baby of a throw-a-way cat living in a drainage ditch, rescued by a kind hearted girl and her mother, adopted by a family who loved him and kept him as an indoor-only cat, and now he was gone and laid to rest in a hole as big as the one left in our hearts.
Bitty gave us as much love as we gave him. He had purpose on this earth and I know one of his purposes was to prepare me for a bigger grief coming the next year. You see, he taught me deal with the death of a loved one. For the next year my Granny died. I know losing him first helped me prepare for that.
(Bitty passed out on the floor after helping everyone open Christmas gifts on Christmas morning...probably 2005.)
