Gratitude

As many of you already know, we made the painful decision to euthanize our dear Shelby on June 22.  She was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in January and given 1 - 3 months to live.  We are grateful that with loving care and appropriate medicines, she lived two months longer than expected.  She was with us for six and a half happy years.

My favorite picture of her

I want to express my gratitude to several people, and tell the story of how Shelby came into our life:

• When we lived in Kingsport, we had wonderful neighbors:  Rob and Penny.  Penny loved cats and always had at least three indoor-outdoor cats.  One day at his workplace, Rob encountered a calico kitten that was living in a culvert.  He and the other workers started feeding it, and it would ride around on the equipment with them sometimes. Before long, Rob asked Penny if she wanted to adopt the kitten, and she said yes.  So the calico kitten moved next door to us. Thank you Rob for saving her life and giving her a happy home.
• Penny's son Tim named the kitten Shelby, after a race car driver.  So she became Shelby.  Thank you Tim.

Because our houses were so close, Shelby started hanging out at our house, too, which delighted us.

First picture we have: Spring 2014
My caption is "Neighbor's cat under our dogwood tree."

She would jump from deck to top of fence to top of pergola.

Penny took this great pic of Shelby on our deck.

How Shelby came to be our kitty is an interesting story:  At that time, Alan would smoke a cigar each evening.  Because I wouldn't let him smoke in the house, he would be on our carport, no matter what the weather.  In the winter of 2016, he purchased a propane heater, and he would sit outside in front of the heater each evening to have his smoke.  Of course, kitties love sitting on someone's lap in front of warmth, so Shelby started joining him each evening.  Alan loved cats, so they were a happy pair.  After he finished smoking, he would carry Shelby next door, so she could go in from the cold.  As time went on, she started refusing to go in, wanting to stay with Alan.  This escalated until one sleety, stormy night when she made her decision.  Instead of going in at Penny and Rob's, where she was loved and well cared for, she started crying and clawing on the corner of our house at the windows of the dining room. Alan looked at me and said, "I guess we now have a cat."  Penny reluctantly agreed, and Shelby moved in.  Thank you, Penny.

She was standing on deck railing clawing
 on corner of house the night she chose us, really Alan.

I also want to thank Dr. Rachel Hart at Mountain Empire Small Animal Hospital in Johnson City.  She provided the correct diagnosis when another vet had dismissed Shelby's symptoms as normal.  As a consequence, we were able to immediately begin the prednisone and other drugs that prolonged her life and helped alleviate her pain.  In addition to the office visits, Dr. Hart talked with us on the telephone to help us understand what we needed to do, always being extremely generous with her time. When she saw that Shelby was scheduled for euthanasia at the end of the day yesterday, she made sure that she was available, should we want her to perform the task.  Of course, we did.  Shelby's passing was painless and fast, done with great gentleness and consideration of our needs, as well.  We are so grateful for that. She thanked us for not waiting until Shelby was in horrible pain.  This gave us a lot of comfort, knowing that we had made the right decision.

Finally, I want to thank all of our friends, relatives, and Facebook friends who have written kind condolences in e-mails, texts, and Facebook posts.  Your thoughtfulness means more than we can say.

So now, with great sadness, we move on with our lives.  But we will always remember our sweet kitty.