01/17/2023
I apologize for the delay in this post. On our last Blue Friday of the year, our beloved Twelfth Cat has passed. We are so sad. I had to go to work directly after, and struggled to do a post then. My thoughts were that the playoff game was the following day so I would give it another day after that. I found it hard to find words even then. so today I am.
It’s been years since we made a scruffy little white furball, a part of our family. He was deaf. That brought a whole new meaning to being a cat owner. He could never go outside as he was a target for predators. Being white and deaf, he was highly visible and couldn’t hear them coming. 
Also, being deaf, he had a few names with the family, because we could never decide what to call him. Mostly he was called Oola, after the character on the movie 50 First Dates (this my good eye). Fluffer Nutter another. My teenage son, being rebellious, called him Coca (“he’s white and fluffy and twice as addictive”…his words 🙄). At any rate, he could never hear any of us call him anyway, so it really didn’t matter what we called him. We all agreed he was the 12th cat. In order to call him we needed to stomp on the floor or go into the other room to get eye contact. His meows were loud, but he had a extremely loud one when he really wanted your attention. It was alarming. It would make our other cat come running in an instant to see what was the matter. Usually it would just make him mad when he realized it was nothing.
Being deaf, he tended to act more like a dog than a cat, and had some unusual likes that most cats with flee from. One of his favorite things was to be vacuumed. He didn’t hear the noise of the vacuum, so it didn’t scare him. In fact, the shop vac was even better. He loved to sit on any foldout stepstool. He would be on it before you could even get on it.  He loved to travel in the car and would do so without a carrier. In fact, our trip back up to Washington, he did just that. he loved to sit in front of the TV, and really loved to watch the Seahawks players as they played.
When he joined our family, we had another cat.  He was a middle-aged, mixed Siamese named KC ( short for Kahlúa and Cream). KC was a father figure to him and looked after him. Or maybe, it’s better to describe them as to juvenile delinquents. Every morning, KC wood bat and scratch onour bedroom door at 6 AM. Finally, I had the idea of getting an auto feeder and putting it just around the corner of our bedroom so it would go off at 5:55 am. Needless to say that solved the problem, however, one morning. I rounded the corner and KC was on his back with his leg all the way up the feeder triggering the mechanism with Oola pertly watching. KC looked at me like “ the jig is up”. And it was because up until then, I couldn’t figure out why they were getting heavier. He mourned a great deal, meowing loudly when KC passed from cancer.
He had a love-hate relationship with our dogs. The dog only wanted to play with him, but he was startled by her. They sometimes would end up sleeping in the vicinity of one another, but it was usually because the dog was asleep when the cat came and laid down. Now the dog is constantly looking for the cat.
We are definitely going to miss our little guy. He was struggling at the end, and I just could not see him in pain. In the end, it’s ironic that he hung on until the end of the season. I know they have great things ahead of them with this team. I’m sure he will be looking over them and rooting them on. 💙💚💙


