Thursday, March 28, 2024
catscookiedaily photogarden catsgarden spriteskellymy household of felinesnamirsenior catsstories of my cats

Old Friends

two cats on picnic table
Namir and Cookie supervise the back yard from the vantage of their picnic table.

I’m remembering my Namir today, and our wonderful years-long friendship among him and Cookie and me, out in our back yard. Here they are, each keeping watch on our backyard wildlife habitat from their favorite spot and mine, the picnic table. When I think of being out there with the two of them, I think of this, or something like it.

Each of them would keep an eye on me and sidle off into the brush around the fences now and then, but most of the time they stayed with me even when they didn’t want to, and I could eat my lunch and work while they watched the goings-on that my feeble human senses could never perceive.

In 2005 he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after a session of congestive heart failure and a stay in the emergency clinic and visit with the specialists. He was given at best six months to live, even with treatment and medication, but he said, “Ha!” and made best friends with his doctors and the emergency hospital staff and lived five more years with occasional visits to his buddies at the ER and more and more medication. Three years ago today was his last visit to the ER when they could finally not remove the fluid build-up or remove him from the oxygen cage without respiratory distress. This photo was taken three days before he died, and you can still see the area on his neck that had been shaved just two months before when, at another emergency visit, we knew his time was just about up.

But he lived as he wanted to up to the last minute. We spent time out on that picnic table when I brought him home from the emergency hospital that day so that he could be out in his back yard one last time while we waited for the veterinarian.

I still miss that goofball, but he left behind so much of himself in what I’m doing today that I remember him with fondness every time I open The Creative Cat. He came to my home and my life with Kelly, and was her soul mate, each of them sharing their fears and strengths from the moment they met. And of course he was a great friend to Cookie as they became my most recent feline garden sprites.

I wrote a remembrance of him on my website after he died, My Good Friend, Namir. I also post an article about him each year around his birthday, Not a Bad Deal on a Pre-owned Cat, and he inspired what I feel is one of my best articles, the first I wrote with the intent of what to do with this new blog, Perhaps the Storm is Finally Over.

In honor of his passing I am putting together a little story from the day this photo was taken, a wonderful day for the three of us. I can’t wait to share it.

And we haven’t hear—or seen—the last of him!

Read other rescue stories and stories of my cats featured here on The Creative Cat.

————————————

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used in any way without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.

Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

11 thoughts on “Old Friends

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this:
Verified by ExactMetrics