Kitty Cat Callie

One downside of always renting a home is that most landlords are not particularly happy with their renters having pets.  During the thirteen years that we rented our homes the only pets that we had were fish.  About a year after we bought our home DH and I decided that it was finally time to get a "real" pet, so we adopted Callie Howes, aka Kitty, a beautiful Calico kitten from a local shelter.   She was only a few weeks old when we brought her home and she quickly became a part of our family.  As a kitten she loved to jump and climb and we would often find her in such places as on top of the freezer or the kitchen cabinets, or even on the kitchen table licking at the butter!

Of course, like many cats, Callie loved to climb into boxes and drawers.  If there was ever a stray piece of paper lying on the floor, that's where she would want to sit, especially if it was someone's homework or the newspaper that they were trying to read.  Any time I would try to lay out a quilt to prepare it for tying, that's just where she needed to take her nap.   Of course with a house full of girls she sometimes had to put up with being dressed up like a football player or a  baby doll . . .  

or tucked into bed with a teddy bear.  

Our kitty loved playing with string, catnip, feathers, balls, paper, spiders, and the plastic caps to milk and water jugs.   She played a pretty mean game of milk cap soccer and would sometimes even play fetch.   Callie was quite tall, and as an adult cat was able to reach the door knob and turn it to open the door by pushing it forward with her own weight.  She was a fairly good mouser and would sometimes leave us a present of a mouse or a bird by the front or back door.  

One of Callie's favorite games was carrying around a helium balloon.  Whenever we had balloons in the house she would grab the ribbon or string with her mouth and carry the balloon around for a while.

Most of the time Callie was a very mellow, gentle cat.   When she was only about one year old, we had our plumber come to the house one day to install several new water heaters in the laundry room where Callie usually ate and where she first slept as a kitten.  There was a lot of noise and some welding, and at some point during the day a frightened Callie Kitty escaped from the house and didn't come back.  Of course we searched the neighborhood, but couldn't find her.   We left food for her outside, but she didn't return home. After several weeks we had given up hope, imagining that our dear kitty had met her fate on one of the nearby busy roads.  Then one day I heard a meowing from the front door, and there was our dear Callie kitty cat, a thin little whisper of a cat, mostly skin and bones, who wouldn't leave my side for hours.  She rarely left the house after that adventure, and as far as we know, never left our yard again on her own.  

There were times when out of the blue, Callie would strike out at a family member or a visitor that she didn't know, but most of the time she was a gentle, loving pet for our children, even when the boys and their friends did their best to tease her.  However sometimes in photos of our kitty the light hits her eyes just right, and she earned the title of Demon Kitty:

Callie was a part of our family for nearly seventeen years.   As she grew older it was harder for Callie to climb up and down the stairs to the basement laundry room, and she started spending most of her time upstairs.  As the children grew up and left for college, we knew that she missed them, especially the girls, and she lovingly welcomed them home when they came to visit.  In August of 2014, DD2 was in the Midwest, finishing up the last weeks of her job responsibilities after earning her Master's degree before moving home to look for a new job.  We all knew that Callie was in her final days, but she waited for DD2 to come home, and within a few hours passed on to Kitty Heaven in our daughter's arms.   We held a sweet little funeral service for our dear kitty cat, and buried her in the back yard underneath the cherry tree where she had spent many happy hours resting in the shade and watching the birds.  We love our kitty and hope to see her again some day in the world to come.  RIP Callie Cat Howes, Itsy Little, BBF.

Do you believe that all kitties and puppies go to heaven?