For Christmas in 2008, my brother and I gave my dad a gift card to the Humane Society; this was after his wife, our mom, had been moved to a nursing home as her Alzheimer’s Disease progressed. With the gift card, Dad adopted a beautiful young calico cat, named Winnie, who would end up being his companion for the rest of his life. He often took Winnie with him when he visited my mom in the nursing home, and following her death in 2011, the kitty accompanied him in his move to an independent living facility, and later, assisted living. She was the perfect feline companion: affectionate, loyal and often playful. When, in December 2019 at age 99-1/2, he passed away during the night, she was the only other soul in the room with him.
Following my dad’s death, our son Andrew agreed to take Winnie, but for reasons I can’t remember now, Andrew’s living circumstances changed and she ended up living at our house after a few months. So this kitty who started out as my stepsister became my granddaughter and then my adoptive daughter.
We had other adoptees, too: an extremely energetic dog named Daisy and later a somewhat cooler but still rowdy dog named Sam. Any attempts to have dogs and cats in the same room were immediate disasters, so they were forever separated, the dogs on the first floor, Winnie on the second. There was one exception: during COVID, my office was the back bedroom on our first floor, and I’d often bring Winnie downstairs to hang out with me while I worked with the door closed. She was a great work partner, although she liked to hang out on the computer keyboard or in the space between the keyboard and the monitor, blocking my view. Either that, or she was trying to rub her face against my fingers, making it difficult to type.
A year or so ago, when I retired, I moved my home office up to the second floor, so I was now sharing space in her domain. The arrangement worked out well, although I think she always wished I would spend more time in my new office.
Sadly, the passage of time caught up with Winnie. Over the last month or so she started losing weight and slowing down; the decline sped up dramatically over the last week, and yesterday her story came to an end, lying on my lap in the veterinarian’s office.
We don’t know how old she was when my dad adopted her back in early 2009, but Jean remembers her as already grown so she must have been at least six months old or so at that time, meaning that she was at least 17 when she died, probably a little older. Whatever the exact number, she brought a lot of joy—and left an indelible mark—in many people’s lives in that time.
