Poor old Tau.
She’s eighteen human years old. That’s 140 cat years old.
Poor old Tau is ready to die, and I’m ready to let her go. She’s been failing for the last two years, and..well, hell, she’s over a hundred years old!
Tau has never been the sharpest crayon in the box, and her very favourite thing in the world (until this week) is food. And socks. Tau is our “MUM! DAD! I BROUGHT YOU SOME SOCKS! AND SOME UNDERPANTS!” cat.
When I first met Tau, she was skinny as a stick, climbing the chicken wire cage at the cat repository at the SPCA in Toon Town. She REALLY wanted to come home with me. She sat on my breast ledge and fell asleep, purring. Tau pretty much loved everyone, and with her big, stupid eyes, it’s pretty tough not to love her back.
Tau used to knock at the back door during Outsides, asking to come in to use the box. Last summer, she spent time on the deck, but didn’t venture very far past it. She also had (until last week) a preternatural sense of when *someone in the neighbourhood* was thinking about eating. She’d be winding around your feet, squeaking, and claiming that she hadn’t been fed in a week.
Once, Tau left a rather nasty note on Uncle Bne’s bedroom door. It said something like “yer dum as a rok dumy”, because Uncle Bne called Tau a dummy once. I don’t think he did that again after The Note.
Tau is a Very Good Hunter, and not just of socks and underpants; the year we had Mice, Leviathan J. would watch them, even play with them, but if one ran under the couch, Leviathan would glare until you either picked up the couch for him, or he’d wander off in a huff. Tau, on the other hand, killed fourteen mice in ten days. She only hunted in the house; she didn’t much care about birds and squirrels Outside.
Anyway, poor old Tau.
We’ll miss her.
As an aside, when I told The Nipper, to prepare him for the event, he said, “okay. So, when do we get the puppy?!” I think he’ll be fine.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.