Morning's Minion: Teasel: September 2007, WY--26 August, 2025 KY

We've known this would be Teasel's last summer with us. She had grown thin, less active, no longer leaping gracefully to lie on the foot of my bed, moving more slowly to curl up in her favorite spots.

Always intelligent and with an inner clock that daily told her it was 'time for tea' she made sure to seek me out and remind me that I needed to go to the kitchen, set out the little dishes and pop the top off a tin of 'pate' or 'mixed grill.'

She could be wily, coming to sit prettily by my desk chair an hour early, blue eyes innocent, patting at my leg for attention. 'No, Teasel, you have to wait.'

She would patter off, returning at 10 minute intervals until I gave in and dished out 'tea.'

Conversational, companionable, the dearest of cats.

Fragile as she had become over the past month, she still greeted me each morning, nudged me to lift her and carry her from window to window.

We bought special food for her, doled out in half a dozen tiny meals each day.

Yesterday Teasel stopped eating. She still followed me from room to room, her steps tottering, her voice muted and plaintive.

I drove the short distant to the vet clinic this afternoon, the cat carrier on the seat beside me.

The staff there are kind. A thick fleece blanket was laid on the examining table, tucked around Teasel's frail body. I stroked her as the merciful needle went in.

She lies now in our cat cemetery at the edge of the woods.

Jim helped me arrange moss-covered stones over the grave I prepared several weeks ago.

We named the other grassy mounds there: Mima; Charlie; Edward; Chester; Nellie;

I have buried pets in every place we have lived. It is never easy.

Teasel was truly a darling--18 years is a good life for a cat.

However long they are with us, it is never quite long enough.

We never learned where Teasel came from. She was there, outside a bedroom window on the last weekend of October as a Sabbath sunset flamed down from the Wind River Mountains and the wind blew cold around the house.

She skittered into the garage, hid behind a pile of lumber. The overhead doors had yet to be installed and I knew that I would need careful cunning to capture her.

A saucer of tuna in the hav-a-hart trap lured her from behind the stack of boards. She dashed into the trap, snatched a mouthful, ducked warily out, her tiny body too light to trip the spring and bring down the door of the trap. I crept nearer the trap, made what I hoped were convincing mother cat noises.

She was hungry and the tuna was irresistible.

She darted in and out of the trap several more times, ignoring the fact that each time she retreated to the lumber pile I crept closer to the trap.

I was within arm's reach the last time the kitten approached the saucer of tuna, and I knew I'd have only one chance to spring the door shut before she would flee into the night.

Carried into the warmth of the kitchen she hissed and spat, banged her tiny nose against the bars of the cage.

I called Matt and Devin from next door to see this baby cat we had trapped.

Matt took a pencil, poked the eraser end through the bars, began to rub it around the kitten's ears while making a soft 'tsk-tsk' sound.

The kitten stopped hissing; a tentative purr grew as Jim lifted her from the cage and handed her to me.

When our vet saw her a few days later he determined that she was eight weeks old, born during the early days of September.