One of my most vivid mental images of her has her lying on the front porch in the hot part of the summer, sprawled out on her side, eyes just barely slitted open, but the tip of her tail flicking back and forth...back and forth...back and forth...just daring birds or chipmunks to get close to her.
She was a good hunter. Caught a bat once, or at least she puked up a bat wing once. Caught more than her share of chipmunks and once brought a baby rabbit, still hairless and its eyes not open, into the house. I know that's not a great feat of capture, but it's a pretty great feat of discovery, I think. She could fight when she had to and hold her own. We had to take her to the vet once for a swollen paw from which he removed a tooth that was not hers. She liked my chili, even in the last year when I thought she had lost her sense of smell.
There was a while when if she was in the house when you opened the door, she went out -- ZING! And when you opened the door if she was on the porch or patio, she came back in -- GNIZ!
Her favorite vocalization, when she was younger, was "Herrm?" I called her Herm quite a lot. In the last few years, her vocalizations were very seldom but they resembled those of a clutch of crows we raised when I was a kid: "Craawwk. Craawwk. Craawwk."
For last couple of years, I greeted her every morning, expecting her to have died in the night, with a cheery "Arigato, Kitty!" She would lift her head and turn her poor old blind eyes toward me. I scratch her head and she'd go back to sleep. She didn't get up out of her heated bed much, except to go to the litter box but some evenings she would come into the dining room and want some attention.
She never was much of a lap kitty but she was always affectionate with adults. Not always so much with kids but she was already six years old before we had kids around much. She never liked Ojo. She was old when he came to live with us and he was far, far too exuberant for an old lady. She bowled him over with a forepaw slash (no claws, though, she knew he was a puppy) on his first day and then ignored him for the rest of her life.
She was never a clown, always dignified but never a snob. Ariane phographed her a lot and she was the subject of much of Ariane's art. Right now, that stuff is painful to look at but I know I'll be grateful for it later when it will bring her mind.
I loved her and will miss her.
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