It's Too Quiet Around Here

For the last post of the year, I need to do a little tribute to my pets.  This isn't quilty at all, so if you want to skip this post, I'll be back later with a quilty post!

We started 2010 with three pets, Tiger (yellow cat), Skittles (calico cat), and Bailey the dog. 

We got Tiger as a kitten, and had him for over 16 years before he died in November.  He grew up with the boys and was always the most tolerant cat.  He just ignored all the running and shrieking around here when the boys were little.  He was a big cat - 18 pounds once he was full grown.  He spent most of his time sitting on someone's lap, purring.  I have yellow and white cat hair embedded in most of my quilting projects, because he was always on my lap at some point during the quilting process.  We miss him.

We had Bailey for over 13 years.  We got her when she was almost a year old.  I think she had a rough start in life - she had been adopted from the Humane Shelter to at least two families before we got her.  She was a little wild at first, and we took a lot of obedience classes the first few months.  But once we got her calmed down, she was a great dog.  She got along fine with the cats, and was a wonderful playmate for the boys.  She was mostly border collie, so she needed a lot of exercise when she was younger.  She loved to go for walks - she and I logged thousands of miles together.  She loved to play in the snow - the boys would take her out for fort-building and snowball fights, and that was absolutely wonderful.  They played a lot of fetch and had a lot of footraces with her over the years.  She was my buddy, following me from room to room.  She was always in the kitchen with me, waiting for any tidbits to fall to the floor (and they usually did). 

About a year and a half ago, she had surgery and the vet told me then it was cancer and would probably come back.  Then in August of this year, she had surgery again and it wasn't very successful.  Since then, she had been in "recovery" mode and hadn't been able to go out for walks or do the fun things we used to.  On December 8, I came home and found her in distress, so I took her to the vet.  There were no good options left, so I made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. 

Needless to say, this December has been a very depressing month.  People who have pets will understand how I feel . We still have Skittles, and she has started sitting on my lap every day, which she never used to do.  Maybe she misses the other pets, too.   I'm used to taking Bailey for a walk every day after dinner, so that's been a big change in my routine.  I may have to get another puppy or dog in the spring.  We had some leftover cans of food, so I asked my husband to take it to the Humane Shelter for me.  I knew that if I went, I'd probably come home with another dog and that probably wouldn't be the best thing just yet. 

So this is my memorial to my pets.  Sorry for the depressing post.  I'll be back later to post about quilts!  Thanks for understanding.