Flashback to 2025: Cats

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 In 2009, we acquired four cats from my sister April. Originally we were going to "cat sit" for a year, and then return the two older cats, Abish and Ishmael to her, while we kept the younger ones, Moroni (Momo) and Lamoni (Lala). See other blog posts about the cats: The Adventures of the Destructo-Cats,  the time Lala caught a baby rabbit, The imposter part 1,  part 2, and part 3,  Ishmael's Ordeal.

Momo passed away in 2015 as we were preparing to leave on a trip. 

Abish disappeared in 2018 and we never figured out what happened to her. 

Lala passed away in September of 2022. I didn't blog about his passing at the time. I think he had been sick for a while: he had lost a lot of weight, stopped using the litterbox, and meowed constantly. I was dealing with my second cancer surgery and overwhelmed with bills and life, so we didn't take him to the vet as we probably should have. It was kind of a relief when he passed though. 

In 2025, Ishmael was the only cat left, and he was showing signs of age. He had broken his tail in a cat fight at some point so it dragged behind him. He slept a lot of the time and wasn't as spry as he had been before. Steven and I got a wood crate that he could use as a step so he could get up on our bed, but even then he seemed to meow a bit every time he had to jump. He was still very affectionate and still liked to drool in my hair. 

Ishmael loved to wait for us to finish dinner because that was when he was fed his can of wet food. He waited patiently until the moment that someone started to get up from the table, and then he could barely wait for the can to be opened and set down within his reach. One evening, he wasn't there waiting. We went outside and called for him, and he usually came running when he heard the word "can", but this evening he didn't. I couldn't remember seeing him around all day, which wasn't completely unusual as he frequently spent the day sleeping on someone's bed. But he didn't show up that day, or the next. It was three days before I came across what was left of him on the grass up the hill from the house. We think he was attacked by a fox - we saw one walking down the street a few days later. There was enough left to be sure it was him, but it wasn't a pretty sight. Steven buried him with Momo and Lala. I found his body on July 24, 2025, just two days before my dad passed. 

There was an elderly brother from church, Brother Boe, who Steven ministered to and was good friends with. When Brother Boe's elderly cat companion passed away early in 2025, Steven accompanied him to the shelter to adopt a new cat, a black female around 6 years old.  Brother Boe himself passed away in September of 2025, but before he passed, he asked Steven if he would take care of his cat. So not even two months after Ishmael passed away, we found ourselves with another cat.

We decided to name her Jasmine. 

Jasmine is a hefty cat - she weighs about 22 pounds right now. She is very social and likes to be around people. Her favorite activity is to chase a long piece of paracord, and it is fun to hear the baDum baDum baDum as she gallops down the hall chasing it. She loves to scratch but hates having her claws trimmed. Luckily we acquired a scratching pad for her shortly after her arrival and that has helped with the scratching quite a bit. She does tend to pull up carpet fibers and scratch door frames when the doors are closed (she wants to be where the people are) but she does leave the furniture alone, which is good. We may eventually be able to replace the sofas! 

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