Effing Scooter

It feels like it was just a couple of months ago I was saying that with my luck Effing Scooter, the cat that had been peeing on all of my things for sixteen years, would be the one to outlive me. Oh wait, that's because it was just a couple of months ago. Turns out my prognostication skills suck.

Look at this magnificent old dude

When I list it all out, it looks like I've had a run of terrible luck or else I'm a hoarder with a billion cats, but the real problem is that all of my cats were roughly the same age, and that age was "old". In the past year or so, Crow the cat died of lymphoma after briefly being on rabies quarantine, Guido (Crow's littermate) was also diagnosed with lymphoma (he's still doing well!), Ripley had surgery to remove a couple of lung lobes after he inhaled something (he's still doing well!), and...

Yeah, Scooter lost a bunch of weight, and when we started looking for the cause, he had pancreatitis and a mass in his bladder. He was feeling like crap and not eating, and I had to be out of town, so I put him to sleep.

The irony of the mass in his bladder is that if he hadn't been constantly peeing on my stuff (paper! plastic! down comforters!) since he was a six week old kitten, I probably would have caught this a whole lot sooner. Hoisted by your own petard, buddy! Dammit.

Quit bugging me

Anyhow, since he's been gone the house has started to smell a little better. Eventually I'll find all the things he peed on and clean them. I hope. And I can leave packing paper out -- the ferals and Ripley have been enjoying playing with it.

But let's all raise a toast to Effing Scooter, aka Scoo-tay, aka Bubby, aka Bubbaloo, aka Bubbly-do -- he may be gone, but his spirit lingers on. Or else that's the smell of cat urine. Either way, he will be missed.

My favorite Scooter picture of all time