They call her Tutone, Tutone,
’Cause she’s a good cat,
And she’s a bad cat,
They call her Tutone!

Sydney, 1995 -- March 5, 2011

We got Sydney when she was a kitten. A friend who had an apartment downtown had another friend whose cat had kittens. They’d found homes for all the kittens but one they planned to keep. That kitten was Sydney.

It turned out that Sydney and her mom didn’t get along (Sydney difficult to get along with?!), so we took her in.

She was supposed to be my son’s cat, but she attached herself to me. She’d come come greet me in the back yard with a Siamese pride call. She stopped calling after Blackie came because she didn’t want him in her pride; it was supposed to be just her and her people. I missed her calling even before she died.

The good old days, when she and Hobbes were the only cats in the family.

Oddly, she was depressed after Hobbles’ death left her the only kitty in the family. Having Stumpy and Tutone to hate perked her up. Oh, did she hate Tutone. (And Tutone reciprocated.) But they managed to tolerate each other at the end.

While I knew Sydney was getting old, I thought she was so cranky she’d live past the normal cat life expectancy. I thought wrong.

It was one of the few warm days this spring that she went outside to bask on the patio. Her internal organs failed suddenly; she couldn’t make it back to the house on her own. Our regular vet was just getting ready to close and they referred us to Northern California Veterinary Specialists.

Even before we got to the vet, I knew Sydney wasn’t coming home with it. I’d seen Thevenin and Blackie and Hobbes approaching death, and Sydney had that same look. The vet saw Sydney right away, and then she met with us in the comfort room. It was a good place for Sydney to be put to sleep. We got to sit on a couch in a quiet room, Sydney on my lap. I petted her, and she relaxed, and some time later the vet came in and gave her the injection. Sydney died without alarm, peacefully.

A month later, the house still feels empty.

Sydney's gone to the big recycling can.

Thevenin sitting in a basket

Basement Cat (aka Stumpy) takes a break — “Evil-doin’ is hard work! I’m HOHNgry!”

Sydney enjoys a calm 4th of July

One night back in August, my little friend Sydney didn’t come when I called her. Hunting mice on a warm summer night, I thought, and I went to bed. But she wasn’t on the patio in the morning, and she wasn’t anywhere in the backyard. I tried again in midmorning, and she came limping in from the neighbor’s yard.

I scooped her up and took her into the house. She didn’t act like anything was broken, even though she could barely walk; she let me poke and prod her all over without a single wince or growl. A sprain or sore muscle? I took her to the vet.

Nothing was broken, according the x-rays, and the vet didn’t have any suggestions but pain medicine.

I took her home and kept her inside, and a couple of days later she still walked like her hip was broken. She must have put her back out somehow.

Finding an animal chiropractor on the Internet is not as easy as it should be. The first page of my Google search brought up vets in Canada and Colorado, even with “Sacramento” as one of the search terms!

(Part of the blame goes to the lousy Web sites that vets and chiropractors have. That’s a subject for another time, but it really makes me mad that people sell over-priced half-ass Web site services. If people can’t find your Web site, you might as well not have one.)

Finally I found a couple of places. One was a 40-minute drive away. Sydney doesn’t like car rides. Forty minutes of listening to her yowl that she doesn’t want to go to rehab is too long for me. Another place focused on dogs and horses. Horses! My little Sydney is not a horse. I worried her little bones would break.

The American Veterinary Chiropractic Association has an animal chiropractic referral service that is updated three or four times a YEAR. (Can you believe that? What kind of service do they think they are offering to their members? Bah. Spit. Hint: Web sites need to be kept up-to-date at all times.)

I kept searching, going from link to link and adjusting my search terms, till I came across the Integrative Veterinary Center, which is just a 10-minute drive away. I’d driven past them before, even, but thought they were a lab or something.

So I found my kitty chiropractor. Turns out he is the horse chiropractor I found earlier, but he comes in one day a week to the Center near me. He does a wonderful job with cats. Sydney says she doesn’t mind getting a massage from him at all.

After four treatments Sydney is almost as good as new. She can jump up on the picnic table and garbage cans, just like she did before her injury. But her nighttime roaming is over. (The rats are celebrating.) She still has arthritis in one of her back legs; she’s 14 years old.

Oh! I’d forgotten what a pain Sydney is when she feels good. She is such a quiet, pleasant kitty when she’s sick or hurt. Now that she’s back to normal . . .

Stumpy lurks behind a planter. Any resemblance to Basement Cat is purely coincidental.

Stumpy, the cleanest cat in the world (not!) rests on the carpet he has freshly strewn with seeds and stickers while he ponders his next step in achieving world dominion.

Tutone on July 4, 2009

Tutone celebrates the 4th of July from a safe place

The story of Sydney and Tutone.

Tutone -- July 24, 2008

Tutone has been hanging around since 2007. She wouldn’t let us get near her, but she’d wait for us to go inside and then come to the patio to eat from the neighborhood kitty buffet.

Lately Sydney had been noticing that Tutone was looking at us in a way that Sydney thought was too friendly, so she’d sit outside to guard the food dish.

It didn’t seem right to bring in that new cat Stumpy when she’d been here a lot longer, so we got a cat trap and baited it one night. Oops. The first cat belonged to the neighbor. The second cat was the one we wanted.

What a love bunny! If I’d known how tame Tutone would be . . . She loves to wrap around our legs, and she has the softest fur, just like a rabbit.

Stumpy was one of the strays hanging around our place. He’s a pretty big cat, but his legs look stumpy in comparison to the rest of him. He finally decided he would let me get close enough to pet him. Uh oh, what a big swollen cheek he had.

It was late in the afternoon, so into the garage he went until the next day. He let me pick him up and take him inside, and we locked him up until the next morning.

It was a two-person job catching him. One person had to sweep under the car with a broom, and the other had to catch him when he ran out. He was too fast for me, though, and got on the workbench (not behind the dryer, thank goodness).

Between the two of us we cornered him and — literally — scared the shit out of him. But I got him safely into the carrier and to the vet.

Yup, he had an abscess, a nasty one. We had to irrigate under his skin for the next week. Ick! Ick ick! Our hall bathroom turned into a kitty clinic, where he stayed as an inpatient.

I tell you, that boy loves to eat.