By Romana Annette
Naomi was born on June 12, 1983. She came into this world by way of her parents, Cindy and Scampy, whom we had had since they were kittens. |
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We had another cat named Misti, with whom Scampy had also mated. Misti had given birth to six kittens, three sets of twins, three weeks earlier. Misti had considered the big event of child-birth to be quite special; she was very upset when Cindy gave birth to more kittens. |
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Now it was Cindy’s turn,
but she did not want to push, so her five kittens were late. Naomi was born on I-405, on the way to the
emergency vet in
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We had eleven kittens at the same time. While we are well-known for being the odd couple, people at that time simply thought that we were crazy. Cindy and Scampy both had Russian Blue in their bloodline, and there was one Russian Blue kitten, Boris. Boris went to live with my wife Carolyn’s brother.
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Naomi was the first to find a new home, but she was brought right back, for pooping in someone’s bed. Naomi’s brother, R-Two, was taken instead and never returned.
Naomi was the runt of the litter. Carolyn thought she was so adorable that she demanded that we keep her.
Cindy was glad to see all the kittens but one leave. When Misti got tired of her kitttens, they all moved in with Cindy.
Naomi’s life was filled with survival-challenging events. Practically every day of her life, we were worried that she would not live much longer. At six months of age, she went to the vet to get spayed. She died on the operating table, but she was resuscitated.
Two months later, she again went to the vet, and the surgery was successful. However, there were some complications: since they had to use ether with tubes down her throat, they damaged her vocal chords. This defect gave Naomi an unusual vocabulary of strange cat words.
Many years passed; yet, despite expectations, Naomi did not die. The date is uncertain, but it was about 1994 when Naomi was diagnosed with severe thyroid problems, that made it difficult for her to put on weight. We decided to pay for radioactive iodine treatment, which turned out to be quite successful.
In November 1994, Naomi lost her mother to cancer.
Naomi liked to watch squirrels. Once, when she was watching a squirrel in the planter, outside the front window, I let Naomi out. Naomi proceeded to sniff the squirrel’s rear end. The startled squirrel leapt three feet into the air, before it dashed off.
We lost many cats, but Naomi kept going. Whenever there were new feline arrivals in the household, she always asserted that she was the head cat. Just before the turn-of-the century, Naomi was diagnosed with kidney failure.
In July, 2000, we moved to a
house in
Still, Naomi kept doing all the things she had always done. She would jabber away in her own cranky dialect. Since she thought she was a person, she would always check out everything we were doing.
Once, when we woke up in the morning, there was Naomi between us, with her head on one pillow and the rest of her body under the covers.
It was November 9, 2001, when I got a call at work from Carolyn. I had to rush to the vet at once. Even though Naomi seemed merely cranky, as usual, she was in serious shape, since her entire digestive tract had shut down and turned to thick paste. This was an agonizing condition which elderly cats cannot survive.
During the late afternoon, Naomi ascended, but it had been preceded by an excruciating procedure where she refused to die.
Naomi was just a great house cat, so it is hard to say she did anything really fantastic, but she was tenacious enough to pull through many life-threatening crises.
