dalthauser

I feel like I want to mark the passing of my cat Cyber with a journal post dedicated to her.

Cyber came into my family in the summer of 1997.  I'd recently moved to Japan to work for MWR, and I wanted to surprise my daughter Sierra with a kitten when she came to join me around Christmas that year.

Cyber was always Cyber - even as a kitten.  By that I mean not overly playfull; definitely independent.  She was like a roomate (who didn't want to be bothered too much).  We still adored her regardless of her lack of kitty cat personality.

While living in Japan Cyber's home was our 3LDK Mansion apartment.  She was predominately an indoor kitty, but she slipped by us and out the door occasionally.  This wasn't really a big deal to us until one day she didn't return.  I think she was gone almost 4 months when she returned not too worse for wear (she was missing a tooth). She never strayed again.

In 2004 we moved back to the United States, and Cyber came with us.  The base vet perscribed her some sedatives for the trip.  She traveled under my seat in her carrier, and she was a real trooper.  I already owned my house when we got to Texas; we just didn't have any furniture in it yet.  Cyber went from cat carrier to the top of the shower stall of the master bedroom after being turned loose.  She stayed there for a long time.

We got dogs shortly after we moved to Texas.  This didn't make Cyber very happy, and there were some tense moments.  She got through them though.  We kept the dogs outside and Cyber inside.  For the most part everyone learned to live together.

When Marcel came along in 2009 Cyber was skeptical.  She retreated to her safe place (above the hot water heater in the laundry room) for the first few weeks after he started visiting.  Eventually she would stay in the same room.  Then she would allow him to pet her.  Then she would jump into his lap. After we married I was still living in New Braunfels and Marcel was commuting from the coast up to me every week.  The plan was, eventually, for me to move down to be with him.  Since I couldn't be with him - I sent Cyber down to live with him.  They formed a nice bond when that happened.

We noticed in the past 5 years that she was "showing her age".  You could tell she was moving slower and it took her longer and longer to find a comfortable place to lay down.  In 2014 she developed quite a serious infection in her eyes.  We struggled with it back and forth until finally I asked the vet to remove them (she was already blind by that time).  Once the surgery was done she gained weight and was coping fairly well. Not long after this we sold the restaurant and moved to the house in New Braunfels.  She came with of course, and she was doing fairly well considering her age and blindness.  She slept most of the time only getting up from her bed to eat and poop.  Still - she was doing okay.

Then the infections returned.  The vet perscribed two antibiotics, and we kept her on them for two weeks.  No change.  Because her eyes were goine - the area just above her eye swelled up.  She was not a happy camper.  After getting the advice of the vet - we made the decision to let her go.  We didn't want her final weeks to be miserable.  We held her while the sedative was administered and she was relaxing, and we held were both there when they gave the final injection.

I felt sad, but I also felt like she was still with us in spirit.  We buried her under the fig tree in front of the garden shed.  I am going to make a market stone for the little plot.

We are feeling very empty at the moment - we have constant reminders since she used to live in our bedroom.  We are both okay though - we know she is where she is supposed to be.

This is just a journal post to honor her memory :-)

My niece Jerrica got hold of and scanned several pictures of my grandparents and some of me recently.  I copied them to my Photobucket for posterity.  I'm going to post the pictures of me (and one of my sis) first - later I'll put up some from the "old country".

These are of me when I was about 16 years old. They were taken at the stables (no longer there) at Schofield Army base in Hawaii.   My horse's name was Ka Hekili au ka Makai (Hekili).  He was a poi, but I always told people he was Morgan-Arabian because it sounded better than Mutt. :-)  We competed in English/Western pleasure at 4-H shows, but really we just hung out together and had a good time.  He was much more a pet than anything else.  I am grateful to him for keeping me out of trouble in those sensitive years when it's easy to get caught up with the wrong crowd.







And this is my sister Zoe when she was a senior in high school I think.  She is 4 years older than me.

My daughter made this for me when she was a teenager.  I always keep it on the fridge, but I decided to scan because I know it will eventually deteriorate - and I never want the memory to.