We were really surprised Thursday morning. The Atlanta TV weather forecasters expected us to get around five inches, but we didn’t believe it. Instead we got seven.

The cats all went out in the morning. Mark saw Smokey walking in a crouch across the driveway. The snow wasn’t as deep on the driveway, but it drifted up against the garage door so deep it was hard for the cats to come and go.

He looked like he was stalking something. He was. Rusty was his target.

That’s Rusty, with Chloe standing a little ways off.

Rusty turned to meet him.

He doesn’t scare Rusty.

Zoe used to lie between the sliding glass door and the curtain in our bedroom. Now Chloe has started doing it.

We have insulation in the glass, so there’s no sun where she’s lying. We don’t know why she’s doing it, since the warm spot is in the sun. She was actually there before Zeke laid down.

“My Little Zoe” A Tribute to Zoe

Young Zoe

It all started in 2003. The vets called me and asked if I was ready to get another cat. It had been a year since my Siamese Tabitha lost her life to cancer. She was such a great kitty cat. I got her from my cousin’s husband who owned a pet store in downtown Rome. She was a Blue Point and so special. She would ride in my car with me any time I left in it. She got up in the back behind the seats almost every single time I left. Oh I loved her. There will never be another one like her.

So I went to pick him up. He was the tiniest 8 weeks old kitten. He was just all fur and those eyes were the bluest I had ever seen. The story was that someone found him abandoned in the North Rome Piggy Wiggly parking lot. I lived with my parents and we lived in East Rome. My mother who is a big cat person just thought he was the prettiest she had ever seen. He was too pretty to be a male. At that time my mother had a cat who used a litter box, so Zoe used it too. That was simply horrible.

Then in 2005 Mark and I got married and moved to our present house. As I’m sure y’all know Mark is a dog person and me a cat person. The litter box was always a problem. Zoe was used to a box at my mother’s so I continued to let him use one. Of course I kept it clean but he did not know how to use one. It didn’t seem to be a problem at my mother’s where he went in and out but here it was like he was defiant. I don’t know why I was afraid for him to go outside here, but when he did, he would come in to use the box. It was like I was afraid that someone would pick him up because he was such a pretty cat. It seemed to always be a problem with me and Mark.

I had been taking him to a vet not far from my mother’s, and I continued for about nine or ten years. Our pet sitter, Liz, had been telling us about a vet she loved who was in our neighborhood in West Rome. Zoe had had a problem with vomiting and diarrhea. My first vets said to put him on dry food, and then it was wet food…nothing really seemed to work for him. He was also on medications that didn’t seem to work so we took him to the new vet.

Our visit went great. Mark and I both liked this vet. He seemed to have a rapport with Zoe, or maybe Zoe just put up with it. He put Zoe on a few new prescriptions and they seemed to work better than before.

The new vet did discover that Zoe had glaucoma and it would worsen into blindness eventually. The vet said that eventually he would have to be an indoor kitty with a litter box. Oh boy. He had just begun to go outside to relieve himself and was staying out all of the day and night. He just came in to eat, get his meds, have a little cat nip and rest up.

Zoe wasn’t a happy cat. There just weren’t many things he liked. He did love to eat but he didn’t care much for affection. I never had a cat like that before. Tabitha loved affection.

He didn’t like to be petted. One time I was feeding him and got down on the floor to pet him and he bit me. It’s no fun to be bitten by a cat. I had to have antibiotics in the butt for weeks. There was a second time, too. This time I was put in the hospital and an antibiotic drip for about a week. Maybe it had to do with how he ended up in the parking lot. Did his mommy drop him? Did someone put him out? Did someone lose him? I’ll never know. He just wasn’t happy.

Everything was going good on October 30^th. Zoe had stared staying out at nights not because his sight had worsened but because he wanted to. I put him out around eleven o’clock. He was on the stoop in the garage eating. I told him good night and I would see him in the morning. He looked back and I never saw him again.

The hardest thing about this is not knowing what happened to him. Like anyone else, I have been torturing myself with guilt ever since he disappeared. I love him and miss him!

We tried for a long time to get the mats out of Smokey’s hair but just couldn’t do it, so we took him to the vet’s office for their groomer to work on. He’s not used to a carrier and he complained on the way. He has the saddest, smallest little meow. The groomer groomed and bathed him. It was an all-day affair.

They had to cut out some of the mats, but he still seemed a little matted when we got him home. I decided to comb him again.

As you can see, I got out a good bit of loose fluff right from the start.

He usually loves it when I comb him out.

He’s a good kitty. I really manhandled him, but he just laid there. I was holding him by his rear leg here, and he didn’t really care.

I kept at it for a while.

We couldn’t believe how much fur we got off him, even after the groomer had worked on him.

I think we could have kept combing and getting more and more fur but I finally got tired. I think Smokey did, too, but he didn’t complain much.

This is a pretty common sight in the driveway, Dusty lying in the sun next to the azaleas and Sylvester or Smokey lying under the dogwood keeping an eye on him.

Sylvester acts like he’s just minding his own business, but sooner or later he’ll try to harass poor, old Dusty.