Friday Cat Blogging: Memorial Edition

First, apologies for the poor quality of the above picture. It is a digital photo of an actual photo taken twenty (or so) years ago that I cleaned up as much as I could with my poor knowledge of GimpShop (the open source PhotoShopian program). She was actually very much focused.

That is Serena (aka Sméagol (aka Gollum)), who was my kitty for eighteen years and who died eleven years ago. The aka's come from when I first got her - she was the runt of the litter and stayed with her mother long after the other kitties had been sold (pedigreed [if that's the right term for cats] blue point Siamese). As a result of this, momma carried her around by the scruff, not wanting to lose her last baby, for months.

In the pic, she's laying in front of the woodstove in my parents house, which was her almost favorite spot in the winter (the absolute fave was under the woodstove). She's probably six or seven in the pic, I don't really remember.

Serena was seven months old when she joined the Speaks household, small enough to fit in the palm of my fifteen year old self, and had no fur on the back of her neck (from spending all that time in momma's mouth). My sister took one look at her and remarked on how much she (the cat, not the sister) looked like Gollum. I chose, however, to name her Serena (again, the cat, not the sister).

Over the years, "Smee" and I lived in many different places and she had the opportunity to reject several "cousins" (cats are supposedly happier in pairs, but I've rarely had two get along - although I've seen it repeatedly with friends' kitties). Up until the last few months of her life, she loved to chase crumpled up sheets of paper - it was her favoritest pastime.

I’ve been thinking about Serena a lot this week, after reading Fairlane’s Tribute to a Dear Friend.

One morning I awoke and she wasn’t in the bed with me. I went downstairs and found her in the living room, dead. That was truly one of the worst days of my life. She had been with me over half of my life. She had helped me cope with so many disappointments....

Even now, over a decade later, I’m still saddened to the point of tears when I think of that day.