Our Lemon Kitty

I never thought of myself as a cat person.  I've always thought of myself as a dog person, but having a dog just doesn't fit well into a modern professional lifestyle Being stuck at work, we just don't have enough time to take the dog out each day.  In contrast, cats can be more independent and can look after themselves more easily.  Plus, my wife preferred cats, so we decided to look into it.

However, we started doing some research into different cat breeds and Snowshoe cats immediately jumped out at us.  Snowshoes tend to be more sociable and affectionate and "dog-like" than typical cats, so we thought this might combine the best of both worlds.

We visited several local animal shelters and had a chance to visit with different cats.  We quickly saw that each cat had a distinct and unique personality---some were louder and more playful, others were more shy and timid.  And others, like a cat name d Andrea, only tolerated petting for several minutes before turning her back on us and hiding in the corner.  We didn't find any cats that really stood out to us.

The old saying that "you don't choose your pet, your pet chooses you" became true for us.  We browsed Petfinder for a while until we saw a listing for a Snowshoe named Marquis up in LA.  Taking a chance, we drove nearly an hour to visit with him.  He was sitting in his cage, but as soon as he saw us, he perked up.  He immediately started rubbing his head against our fingers and then even grabbed our hands to lick them.  We immediately fell in love and just had to adopt him.

However...the big problem was that Marquis had an eye infection.  In fact, his eye was squeezed shut and oozing .  The shelter had him checked out by a vet who said that it wasn't anything serious.  We just had to treat him with some eye medicine.  This probably should have been sign, but we just couldn't help it---we had to adopt him.

And so that's how we ended up with our "lemon" kitty.  He's always had problems.  He eventually got over his eye infection (although it sometimes crops back up again), but after a few months we had to take him to the vet who diagnoses benign cysts in his ears.  He had bad teeth and we eventually had to take him in to get some teeth extracted after they started getting infected.  That's when we found out from the blood tests that he had early chronic renal failure, which we've been treating for over a year now.

And despite all of this, he's been the most sweet, loving companion we could ask for.  I don't know if anyone else would have picked a cat with an eye infection or could see through all of his health shortcomings, but he chose us and has loved us ever since.  Maybe we could have gotten a younger, healthier cat, but we'll stay with him no matter what.