Our Mama Cat: Saying Goodbye to Olivia

This has been a very sad weekend. After saying "goodbye" to Manly at the beginning of December, just one month and a day later, on Saturday, January 5, we had to say "goodbye" to Olivia. She was the super Mama Cat that came to our house almost seven years ago. She presented us with a litter of seven kittens right off the bat. They were all born in the dining room and spent their first six weeks in there. We've lost four of those babes now (Manly was one), but they were certainly one-of-a-kind kittens.



On the morning that Olivia had an appointment to "get fixed", we heard a huge crash coming from the front room downstairs. You guessed it! She had knocked a window screen out and made it onto the front steps. She wasn't out there ten minutes --- but that was long enough t meet up with the little Romeo who was waiting at the front door. Back inside she bounded, happy as a lark.

So, two months passed and Olivia presented us with five more kittens. Two were born dead, but the other three grew into the cutest little lover cats you've ever seen!! One of those is my special babe, Samwise.



Since then, Olivia has lived a happy life here. She loved to eat (no small babe, she weighed about 35lbs. at her peak!), sit on the kitty tree house and look out the window, rub on catnip toys and eat dried catnip off the rug, sleep on Elizabeth's bed, get petted on her head and cheeks and occasionally have "wild mansies". She hated thunder storms --- which would send her hiding under the wash tubs in the laundry room or a big chair upstairs. She'd wait 'til everything had passed before coming out again, too!

Three of her kittens never quite grew up. Manly was on the level of a three month old kitten all his life, so he was never parted from his mother. They ate together, slept together, played together and bathed together. Well, Manly never bathed --- but Olivia would lick him instead. It was a blessing that Manly went before his Mommy, because he wouldn't have survived without her. Frodo and Avis were also Mama's babies, so they are having a pretty rough time of it right now. They go from one of her spots to the next, waiting for their mother to come back.

Olivia was probably fifteen years old or so, which is pretty aged for a kitty cat. We were certainly blessed to have her for almost seven years, and she's left a big hole in the house. There are five of her kittens surviving her, though, so she's left us some pretty sweet reminders of herself. It's been a hard couple of weeks, since we've known this was coming before Christmas --- and it doesn't really make it easier to have advance notice.



Olivia was a perfect pet. She loved all the attention that you were willing to give her, but she never pestered you or irritated you. She was quiet and just plain sweet. What a cat!

Elizabeth wrote a lot about her on her blog, so you can READ THAT HERE.