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Part 2:

Don’t worry I’ll still will continue with my other “epic” series but would like to continue with my tribute to some of my former kitties and this one is in a way a very special one as it involves Whoopi who recently passed on to Rainbow Bridge.

It was a torrential thunderstorm on a Wednesday, June 4, 1992. That whole night my mother and I were aware of what sounded like a little kitten meowing pathetically. The next day, Thursday, the rain hadn’t let up and it was raining buckets again, and again my mother and I could hear this kitten meowing. The two of us decided to try to find the kitten and at least give it something to eat. Going outside, it took us awhile to try and find the kitten, but find it we did. We initially were just going to leave some food for the kitten, but like a mutual and silent agreement, we decided to take her in. She couldn’t have been more than a month old, so very young, and she was so cute, a silver tabby kitten with some white on her face and on her paws, making it look as if she was wearing socks. I named her Whoopi as one of my favorite people was Whoopi Goldberg.

We already had eight cats, but they seemed to welcome her into the apartment without too much fuss the way some older animals will when introducing a newer member of the pet world. When she got to be of age to get her fix, my mother said, “Oh, we’re not going to get anymore cats.” So she didn’t bother. BIG MISTAKE. Sure enough a few months later, in September of 1992, a neighbor rings our bell. He’s holding a large all black cat and saying he found the cat and it seems very friendly, could we take him in. I firmly kept saying no…we have too many cats as it is and couldn’t take anymore in. But they, that is my mother and the neighbor kept saying, “Oh, it’s only one more cat, ” over and over again. So I finally gave in and that’s how Keiko became a member of our household.

Well it didn’t take long to figure out that Keiko also wasn’t fixed, so gee, great a male and female pair of cats not fixed. I begged my mother to take one of them at least to get fixed. I couldn’t due to my disability and couldn’t travel to the vet who was some distance away from us. There was nothing preventing my mother to do so. So you can imagine what happened. Yes, kittens. Whoopi gave birth to six kittens on April 6, 1993. And that my friends, what was to lead to the mess we were to endure…the overpopulation of cats in our apartment that all too quickly got out of hand. I relate a lot of the mess we went through in earlier entries so I don’t think I need to rehash it.

Whoopi was a real sweetie pie though, a real snuggle bug and had this habit of nibbling on either my or my mother’s ears when sitting on one of our laps. She remained a petite thing, never growing very large, and yes, eventually my mother did take her to be fixed so she wouldn’t have anymore kittens, but her children and children’s children…all down the line were to have kittens.

Now if you refer back to my earlier entries you’ll know I had to find new places for the so many cats, or face eviction. According to the rules set by our landlord we couldn’t have anymore than two cats. During the first eviction threat in 2001 we did manage to adopt out a lot of cats but still had a lot, which eventually led to the second eviction issue in 2006. It was heart-breaking to decide which two to keep…if I could have, I would have loved to have kept at least two or three more of my real favorites, Whoopi being one of them. On Monday, May 1st, 2006 a pet rescuer came from upstate New York and agreed to take five cats, Whoopi among them. I all to remember the look on Whoopi’s face as I gently grabbed for her to place her in the traveling case, a look I’ll never forget…it was a look as if to say, “Do you want me anymore? Don’t you love me anymore?” Of COURSE I did, but what could I do? Honestly, I wanted to kick my mother’s butt for creating the whole situation to begin with.

Anyway, from 2006 up til recently, the pet rescuer was taking good care of Whoopi, and even mentioned how Whoopi was nibbling on her ears. On a Friday, January 30 I was thinking to myself, let me contact the rescuer tomorrow, as I hadn’t for awhile, and tell her, if anything should happen to Whoopi, could you please let me know? And one of the things that prompted me to contact the rescuer, was that for that whole week, for some reason I kept thinking of Whoopi, I mean more than usual. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I got an email from her instead, and it said:

Just wanted to let you know we lost Whoopie today
she was happily sleeping on her pad ( which is on a heating pad)
I was scritching her she stretched , let out a sigh and died
I miss her already ;(

I miss you too Whoopi…you were a nice little gal, and I wished I could have somehow kept you.

RIP June 5, 1992~January 31, 2006

WHOOPI AS A KITTEN

Whoopi with her kittens

Whoopi

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

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