Isis

So I promised a post on Isis.

Oh, Isis! She is a very sweet little lammy (yes that's what I call her...bug off).

Isis is 3 1/2 years old (she was born Sept 13th 2002, according to my niece whose cat she used to be).

Isis was given to my niece as a Christmas present and I was home in SLC at the time. I was the one who suggested Isis as a fitting name for her, so I think it's most happy that she ended up being mine.

Last summer when I was home in SLC, I was down at my sister's house. My niece had just found Isis, who had been gone for about a week (she was an outdoor cat), and the poor cat's left eye was covered in pus. We were all horrified. We took her into the bathroom and my mom washed her eye out (my mom has The Touch when it comes to creatures) and we put some Neosporin on her eye. But her iris was all cloudy, so by that time she was already blinded.

This all happened at about 10:30 at night, so they didn't take her to the vet till the next morning. She had a deep puncture wound in her eye that looked like it was made by a BB or something, but there was no BB to be found, so they thought it might just be an extra bad claw wound. The vet said she'd have to have her eye removed. Of course this was going to cost a pretty penny, but my sister loved Isis and didn't want to have her put down. Thus came about Isis's first surgery of the summer.

My sister and her family would be moving to Morocco in August and had wanted to take Isis with them. However, she was not spayed or anything so they took her in to get her globally transportable. When the powers that be were getting ready to spay her, they discovered that she was pregnant and only about a week away from delivery! My sister made the choice to have the litter aborted because of the whole Morocco thing. But it turns out you can't have an abortion and be sterilized at the same time, so a while later Isis had to go back and have yet another medical procedure.

Then my sister decided they were no longer going to take Isis with them. Since I had already said I'd take one of my parents' kittens, I volunteered to foster her for a couple of years. She and my new kitten could keep each other company.

So then my sister and her family left, and poor Isis had to come live at my parents' house, where we had to keep her away from their very protective mama cat (there were a couple of deafening and gravity-defying run-ins). And THEN she had to get put into a traveling crate and flown off to New York City. And THEN her demented owner (me) got really excited one day and picked her up and danced around the room to Paul Simon (she took a very long time to forgive me of this). And THEN, Mr. Burkett arrived with my parents and disrupted her quiet haven. Because of all this chaos she's had to endure and because I adore her, I have determined not to give Isis back to my sister when she returns from Morocco. She just deserves to have a predictable, stable life from now on. I think my sister has gotten wind of this, but I haven't actually told her yet.

My poor sweet Isis. She had such a rough time of it last year. She has just now in the last couple of weeks started to come out of her shell shock.

She is a very tentative, dignified little cat with all black fur and the most amazing green gem of an eye. She is Mr. Burkett's biological grandma, and I think because of this status I hold her in reverence and can't imagine that she isn't ages and ages older than me.

She reminds me every night that it is time for her to be brushed, and I know it is her favorite time of the day. It is fascinating to me that she never asks to be brushed at any other time. It's like she enjoys putting off and then savoring the brushing as a ritual.

She is so very different from Mr. Burkett, who is extremely affectionate and aggressive, that I am often in despair that she will ever love me. She sometimes seems to dread my coming near her. But then every so often she'll creep slowly up to me, crawl onto my lap or chest, and let me pet and massage her. And she'll reward me with her very rare, very quiet purr.