In the coming months, her innate fearfulness toward us moderated just a bit, but not to the extent of wanting to be touched, or—heaven forbid—to sit in a lap. No cuddly companion she. When not eating or using her box, she mostly kept to herself, sleeping at the top of her climbing tree, and having minimal interactions with the household. She was not even companionable with Charlotte, her cage-mate from the shelter, though she tolerated Charlotte’s presence. Almost anything could make her flee in fright to a hiding spot under the bed: the doorbell, an unfamiliar voice in the house, the whine of the vacuum cleaner, you name it. I put a padded basket under the bed to make her a little more comfortable when her terrors were running high.

And then there were the physical ailments. Right from kittenhood she had terrible teeth and required extractions to prevent health-threatening infections. If she tried to eat dry food, which she couldn’t properly chew, she’d swallow it whole and then chuck it up again. In time, even her Friskies pate had to be thinned with water and pureed to a soupy consistency with a blender so that she could lap it up like a drink.

Her respiratory difficulties were beyond the vet’s skills. All her life she constantly sneezed. I knew when she was in the room just from the sound of the frequent sneezes, and these left traces everywhere: on baseboards, walls, upholstery, bedclothes, books, magazines, and so on. Grooming was another trial. She was so ferocious in resisting the trimming of claws and the removal of mats from her fur, that these jobs went largely neglected. And medication? Giving her a pill or an oral dose of antibiotic liquid was an epic battle. The only sure way of giving her the meds she came to need was to crush the pills and stir them into her food.

As time wore on, she began to expand her horizons and would venture upstairs now and again (something Charlotte had done from day one). But those visits halted abruptly in 2000 when Masetto arrived and took up residence with Allen. For Emily, the very sight of Masetto was enough to provoke angry growls, cries, and hisses, and from that point on, for several years, she wouldn’t set foot upstairs and would make scenes when he appeared downstairs. But this slowly moderated, to our great relief. Allen has pictures from 2009 showing Emily, Charlotte, and Masetto curled up in separate sections of George’s bed on Chrismas Day, a wonderful gift for us. And many was the night when we had three kitties to watch movies with us, Emily stretched out along George’s side, sometimes with her head resting in his open hand; Charlotte curled up in the crook of Allen’s left arm; and Masetto sleeping in his lap.

Emily shocked us by appearing at the top of the stairs one afternoon and walking into Allen’s office and jumping up on his desk. A historic occasion, it was; it had been ten hears; see the pictures here. After that she came upstairs more often. As Masetto got older and slept more and more, Emily seems to have felt free to roam; she even took to sleeping under Allen’s bed. In 2013 she was often in the office and in Masetto’s little condo (near the top of that file), which he could no longer jump up to reach. She had no problem doing that kind of thing until the last few days of her life. She was amazingly spritely.

At last, with Charlotte’s passing in 2012 and Masetto’s in 2014, Emily came to enjoy what she had always wanted: a one-cat household. In her final year of life, she mellowed greatly. Increasingly she became tolerant of strangers, less freaked-out by everything, and more companionable than ever before. She took warmly to Sarah, our cat-sitter, and would sit in her lap. When Allen and I would settle on the bed to watch a movie in the evenings, she would regularly take her place between us for the event and even climb into one of our laps on occasion. And at other times, when I was reading, she would come over and lie next to me, accepting pats and head scratches. She developed another endearing trait late in life: when she wanted food, she didn’t meow (she almost never used her voice unless angry or frightened); instead, she would climb up on me where I was reading and repeatedly push her nose against mine. Yes, the people at the shelter were right. With patience and a little time--like 13 or 14 years--she did finally come round! She found her inner kitty and her sweet side and began to bond with us in ways we never expected.

But she was losing ground. Emily had never grown to be a big cat. The highest weight recorded in her available vet bills was 9.44 lbs in February of 2011. Thereafter, she began losing weight, slowly at first and then rapidly. At her annual exam in October 2014, she had lost 23% of her body weight from her previous visit and she was now down to 6.56 lbs. But her blood work provided no obvious explanations. At this point she had been on doxycyline (antibiotic) and methimazole (hyper-thyroid medication) for quite some time.

In December of 2014 (in a repeat of an episode that had happened in April, 2012), she began rejecting her food. She would go through all the behaviors associated with wanting food, following me out to the kitchen, waiting while I prepared the food, and walking over to the dish. But then she’d turn away from it. I tried tempting her with tuna fish and AD prescription food, but nothing worked. When this went on for a few days, we took her to the vet and they kept her overnight, giving her various intravenous injections and appetite stimulants. Remarkably, they worked. On returning home she once again had a robust appetite, and continued that way for 11 weeks. But then in early March of ’15, the food rejection syndrome returned. On the 5th, we took her back to the vet (where they found she’d actually gained a little weight since December), and again they kept her overnight and repeated their ministrations. Things again looked hopeful when she came home and resumed eating. This time, though, the recovery lasted only 2 weeks, and we could see the handwriting on the wall. It seemed foolish and even cruel to subject her to the stresses of repeated trips back to the vet for artificial jump-starts that promised ever-diminishing returns.

What follows are some observations I jotted down in her final days.