@ddlowan,
Boida....posted this on Friday (Thursday your time) on Facebook:
For those of you who know Dodi.
She’s doing that awful last weekend with a beloved cat thing that is so hard.
It never gets any easier, I think, no matter how often you do it.
I’ve been doing it for my animals since I was 14 and I swear it gets harder.
Vinnie Ching is goodness knows how old...I’ll have to check.
Now, I have always imagined that when a Dodi cat dies, the neighbourhood cats hold an anxious ballot to see who gets to mooch in and fill the post.
Vinnie already had a home but he was a wanderer. A very debonair chap, who looked very oriental...probably part Burmese.
I suspect he decided that he was on too good a thing and shifted allegiances.
These are people who are trained to get up at anytime of the morning to let the cat out. 3 am, 4 am, whatever, the cat’s wish is their command.
They paid a fortune for an expensive cat garden system of connected lodges. Vinnie didn’t like it. There it sits...all overgrown like Manderley.
Vinnie was like Kipling’s The Cat Who Walked Alone....only the occasional caress was permitted...he, like the butterflies, must be free.
In later years he came to love his daily brushing, delivered punctually before dinner. He began to spend more and more time snuggled near his adoring slaves. He spent more nights on the bed.
He remains shiny and beautiful to this day.
He is pretty much blind now, but the coup de grace is some kind of tumour in his bladder.
No more cats they say, but somewhere, I think, the cats of Campbelltown are gathering for a long awaited lottery....
Vinnie was euthanized yesterday....calm and wrapped in his favourite sheepskin.
he was 19
