This is Hazel when she was a baby, six weeks old. She came to our home to help rescue Louie, our old Mr. Sweatpants (one of his thousands of nicknames) after his brother Sal had to be put to sleep. She was mean then, and she’s grouchy now. But she loved Louie, and when he finally got used to her, he would lie down on the bed and she would nuzzle up to him, grasp a mouthful of the hair on his belly, and start nursing. (Ick, but cute…you had to be there).
Now Hazel is seven years old, and Louie died almost three years ago. Hazel has used up at least half of her nine lives, and if you’ve read this blog for a while, you may remember her brush with death when she dropped from eleven pounds to four pounds and had to be tube fed through the neck.
It was an eight week struggle back to normalcy, and even looking at the pictures of her shaved and emaciated makes me dizzy.
Well, we are calling her recovery complete: she has tipped the scales at almost 16 pounds and is a sleek, fat and gorgeous tabby once more. She still complains in her Ethel Merman voice, but she is fiercely loyal to everyone in the family and routinely crawls under the covers with me to cuddle. Even if you don’t like cats (and I’m talking to you, Linda) you have to admit, she’s a beautiful thing.
Stumble It!
1 Comment
November 6, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Weren’t Hazel and Molly the cutest little kittens? Hazel is much more beautifully marked than Molly, I’ll give you that. Once in a while Molly will give her Hazel voice try but she’s pretty quiet otherwise. Unless she decides it’s time for EVERYONE to go to bed and starts yammering at us and trying to lead us to the bedroom. She still does her mambo head jive, and, like Hazel, likes to find very small boxes to sit it. And she weighs about 4 lbs.