a tail of two kitties

i have been an extreme procrastinator when it has come to writing this particular blog entry. to me, all the thing i want to touch upon and explain have seemed like a daunting task. so in order to begin i find that the best thing to do is break this into two or more entries and  just to start from the beginning.

for my sweet 16^th birthday i gifted myself a kitten. behemoth (hippopotamus is russian)  i called the little black fuzz ball after the character in my (and my mothers) favorite book the master and margarita . he was my littly buddy and came everywhere with me including party’s. 

at six months old my poor kitten drank some antifreeze and his kidneys proceeded to fail. i am to this day unsure if he came across it on his own of was force feed due to the fact that he is a black cat. There was a lot in his system. my mom found him laying on the door mat in a pool of blood and unable to move. we immediately took him to the animal hospital and over night his condition worsened and he started to slip away form us. early in the morning we got a hold of our regular vet and he immediately came and took behemoth under his care. it was a miracle but somehow dr. shaperio  brought him back from the bricks of death.   

almost losing him was one of the hardest things i have ever had to go through in my life. i was overjoyed beyond words that he has made it though and was staying with me. however the experience was extremely traumatizing for him and he was altered. he became skittish and somewhat ornery with a little bit of aggression and very protective of his back side. He would claw and his hiss if you happened to pet him anywhere near his tail. He also become somewhat afraid of his litter box. maybe if reminded him too much of how sick he had been and he just developed a negative association with it.  

while living with my parents this was not much of a problem. for we had just cut a little kitty door for him and he could go out and in as he pleased. it became more of a problem in my various apartments but was under control. he lived with my parents for a while i was living in italy and once again he regained his joy and command of the outdoors.  it must have been quite a shock to him when i moved him to my new home, a studio condo in a high rise in the middle of the city with absolutely  no accesses  to the outdoors for him.

at this time i was a full time student at columbia college chicago  and working various jobs. needless to say i was not home much and my kitty lacked attention and companionship. he had been close with my parents late golden retriever sunny. she passed away two years ago now and i missed her terribly.

i was dating a guy at the time that was out of town on business trip all the time. his roommate and her boyfriend wanted to get a cat and since we has out of town they asked me to come along. we went to kinda of strange place called touched by an animal. i wont get to much into it but it was run by a crazy cat lady who was a nun and wrote high school science books. this is where i meet toreno. 

he was found wondering the streets not far from touched by an animal. his family had been evicted from their apartment and he was abandoned there. when the land lord came he found him alone in the empty apartment and opened the door and shooed him out. the lady at touched by an animal got wind of this and caught him wondering the streets. it was she that named him for he was white as snow and the olympic games were taking place in toreno italy. I found all this fitting and having just moved back from florence myself the name stuck.

the above image was create by my dear talented friend will endelmann

    

i was not intending to get another cat but toreno was so sweet and affectionate he had to come home with me.

both my boys were with me for two years until my health slowly started to decline. my docter informed me that i had developed sever allergies and was starting to do permanent damage to my nasal passages. i could not spend much time within my home until i became puffy and congested. my small studio was not large enough to contain the three of us comfortably. new homes needed to be found for my boys. once again one of the hardest thing i ever had to do.

toreno went to a co-worker of my moms. she has two sons and they all welcomed toreno warmly as a member of their family. he likes loads of attention and much doted on in his new family. they also have a groomer come and pamper him every two weeks or so and have ample outdoor space for him to roam. i have an open invitation to visit and am given photos of him every so offen.

behemoth had liter box issues and aggression issues and was much harder to place. chicago no kill shelters are so over crowded that they only have room for strays, nor did i think his temperament could handle the stress of shelter life. i posted many honest craigs list adds hoping to find someone out in the suburbs with space for him to be outdoors. no such people were found via craigs list.

my deer kind wonderful friends in the giving tree  live out in yorkvill. they have some wonderful neighbors including tom and toby. tom and toby are both vets and have a little farm about ten min form their home. on this farm they have horses, goats, pigs, chickens, donkeys and other wonderful animals i am currently forgetting to mention. these kind hearted people agreed to take in my kitty and give him a home on the farm. i could not have thought of a better outcome for him. i am free to vist him when i am out in yorkvill and have found him adapting to his new life.

i miss them both more then my heart can handle but i am fully convinced that the outcome of their new living situations are better then anything i could have hoped for. in addition i have began to regain my health and am not as chronically ill. hopefull come of the damage that has been done will revert.  

so this is the back story of the renovations that i have been working on in my condo. i temperately lived with k for about 4 months and owe a lot of gratitude to his roommate joe r. it as taken a lot of time, hard work, research and planning to turn my condo back into a wonderful home for me. i will be talking about all this in the blog entries to come. all these remodeling are bitter sweet to me. my home is coming along just as i had wised. however part of me feels trapped now. a lot of money has gone into it and therefore i will not be leaving any time soon. i still daydream about k and i having a small home in the pacific northwest where i can have a garden and a bee hive. however i am yet young and don’t need to rush into such stability.