Taking Our Best Memories Along Part V
With the sale of our house pending, the subject has come up of the bittersweetness of leaving behind a home where we have so many happy memories with so many pets. In the summer of 2014 I completed a project here that was very close to my heart – a memorial garden for all of those pets. I am sad to leave that behind, but I will be taking many parts of it with us, and creating a new garden at our new home.
This trellis holds a tag for each pet that lived with us at our current home but have since passed on. In this series I am sharing about each of those pets and how their memories tie in with our home.
By the early summer of 2002 we had been in our house for almost 9 years! Our pets consisted of two dogs and two cats. Our cat Don Juan was getting on in years – he had been born the month that my hubby and I got married, September of 1988 so he was almost 14 years old. Our other cat Conrad didn’t really get on with the dogs, so we wanted to be sure we had another cat to keep him company when we lost Donny (which luckily didn’t turn out to be for another 3 years).
My brother’s cat had kittens born on June 1st and we went to see them with the intention of picking one cat, but ultimately ended up coming home that summer with the two females from the litter. Samantha who is still with us and her sister Katie settled into the household nicely. Katie and Conrad became very fast friends and very close and stayed that way until we lost Katie suddenly to cancer in the summer of 2011.
Samantha was more of a loner, but Katie was not only besties with Conrad, she loved the dogs Maggie and Kobi as well. She was a cat who didn’t like to be picked up or held, but she was a sweetie nonetheless. Her favorite game was to run by the dogs and see if they would give chase, therefore getting yelled at! She was never afraid of the original two dogs or any of the three that came later, she would run and then stop dead in her tracks, then turn around and sit there, daring them to do something! The poor dogs never knew just what to do!
Katie and Sam were our first totally indoor cats, so all photos of Katie are taken inside the house, and many illustrated a lot of the changes we had made over the years.
We’ll have one more post in this series, sharing Sheba’s littermate, our golden retriever Moses. You can read more about Katie in my post “My Life of Pets in Photos – Black & White Kitties“. If you are interested in the other posts in this series, you can find the links below:
- Part IV – Two is Better Than One
- Part III – Healing Hearts
- Part II – First Home, First Dog
- Part I – Taking Our Best Memories Along
Today we are joining the Thursday Barks & Bytes blog hop. Thank you to our hosts 2 Brown Dawgs blog, and Heart Like a Dog. Please visit other blogs through the links below!
She was a very lovely kitty, thank you for sharing her with us.
I love the trellis! That’s really cool. And all the tags on it are so sweet. Kissy’s and Callie’s cremains are sealed in the boxes they were put in by the pet crematorium. Kissy’s box looks like a miniature treasure chest, covered in burgundy-colored cloth. Callie’s is a beautiful wooden box. Kissy’s sits on top of Callie’s on the top of the entertainment center that Sam built about 12-15 years ago; and I have only to look up from my recliner to see my girls’ final resting places. Yet, their common spirit is always with me, even when Callie is busy watching over Sheba, Katie, Maggie, Emmett, and our other doggie friends.
Love all these memories you will be taking with you, that you have been sharing…enjoyed every memory with you
Sweet Katie sounds like she brought lots of joy to your family. It is so hard when they leave but nice when you can remember how wonderful they are.
Katie was adorable. You have so many good memories to take with you.
Happy TBT! I love how Katie was an oreo kitty, sorry for your loss. 🙂
Katie sounds like a very cool cat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a close up of the tags on your memorial trellis, it actually brought tears to my eyes. 🙂
Two of our daughters have cool cats that really tolerate the dogs well. Ollie would be snugged up on the couch and Sampson would run in, put his nose under Ollie and nudge him and it wouldn’t bother Ollie a bit!
Bob wanted desperately to be part of the dog’s pack and they resisted, especially when it came to sharing our bed. We had them living with us at different times, but Delilah got along well enough to share her chipmunk window with them. Although on occasion, she would chase them along with Sampson.
Thanks for joining the blog hop!!
I love when cats and dogs live in harmony. Katie was such a cutie ☺
Our last set of cats was b/w. We had three of them, but they are all gone now. Such pretty kitties and wonderful memories.
Good job Katie standing up to those dogs! Thanks for sharing your memories of Katie on the hop. Good luck with your move!
It was great to hear such cool things about Katie… what a clever idea to play with the dogs… probably a feline Macchiavelli :o)
One great thing about memories is they are forever in our hearts…..we might leave bits and pieces of the “physical” nature but our hearts are full of all that love and joy and lessons learned always no matter where we live. This was another lovely post!
Pam and Sam