Stella

We returned home on Thursday to find a very sick cat. Stella has had her share of health problems the past three years, mainly that she gets very anemic and our vet in Lawrence could never figure out why. Before we moved out here, we came to the consensus along with our vet that she would always go up and down with her health and that she likely wouldn't live to be a very old cat.

Anyway, it was evident that Stella had beeen hiding under the couch for at least a few days before we got home. (Yes, we did have a cat sitter while we were out of town, but I'm not going to go into the details of that here.) She would drink some water and milk, but refused to eat and could not stand or walk to go to the bathroom. After a long weekend of trying to nurse her back to health and realizing she was in obvious pain, we made the hard decision yesterday to let nature take its course. I am very thankful that Ashford took on the brunt of the duties dealing with Stella's end of life care, and also thought it was sweet that he chose to bury her in the backyard underneath the sunny mountain-view window she often slept in during the day.

We are all really going to miss her and her little idiosyncracies. She was a good cat and brought much joy to our lives. She was the only cat I knew that could fetch. She was always very attached to Ashford, too, often sitting in his office chair continuously when he was out of town for a few days until the came back.

R.I.P. Stella. Just think, Dill can't beat you up anymore. :)


-Emily :(