Myrtle

In July of 1998 I decided I wanted a kitten. I combed through the classified and found someone nearby selling them for $5. I took my friend Caren with me and we picked out Myrtle. Most cats march to the beat of their own drummer, but Myrtle took that saying to a whole new level. She was weird, to say the least, but she was a loving cat!! I had to leave Myrtle in California when I moved to Utah, but I loved seeing her every time I went home. No matter how long since my last visit, she always knew who I was. Devon became quite the Myrtle fan, he even wanted to bring her back to Utah with us, but Myrtle was old and set in her ways, so we figured it best to let her stay in the place she knew.

Well, my Myrtle died this week. As a tribute to my kitty, here are some of my favorite memories of her...

* Every time you pet her, she wanted you to pet her, she didn't want you to pet her or just because, she would let out a VERY loud 'RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROW.'
*She always had her spot, a place she would lay all day and all night. Her spot would last for about 3 weeks, then she would choose another spot. Some of these spots included; a chair at the dining room table, the corner of my mom's closet, the rug under the toilet, the bottom of the stairs (this was, by far, the most dangerous spot) and my drawers.
*She had dry patch of skin on her back that she loved to have scratched. When you scratched it she would do this licking/biting thing. One of my favorite things to do was bring her to my mom saying that Myrtle wanted to give her kisses, so my mom would put out her cheek. I, in turn, would scratch her spot and she would start biting my mom's cheek. About the 100th time I did this my mom started to catch on.
*She LOVED to be loved! She would come and sit on your lap and you could squeeze her so hard and she would just sit there loving every second of it.
*Once I realized I hadn't seen her all day. Thinking she was just hanging out somewhere weird, I didn't think much about it. Later that night I was in bed and I kept hearing this faint 'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrow.' I opened my drawer and out she popped. That was her new spot, but I didn't know it and shut the drawer. She had spent most of the day in that drawer.
*She loved to lay on you, no matter how inconvenient it was...

You could move her off 100 times, but she would always come right back. At night she would try to balance on my side (she was pretty big, so this was a difficult task), whenever she lost her balance, she would dig her claws into me. I found it was safer to just sleep on my stomach, so she could sleep on my back.

Going home to California just isn't going to be the same any more. I'm going to miss my little Myrdles!!!