Weekend Update - Lana

Happily for my overloaded schedule, there are lots of new volunteers active at Maddie’s. Pretty sure I’m missing the kitties more than they’re missing me. I at least take a peak at the website, which features several longer term residents. Sweet cuddly Lana is still looking for a new home. She’s a friendly soft all black 6 year old, who's longing to spend quality time with a new human friend.

But pretty long hair calico Stella has finally been adopted. (I would have thought she’d have gone home sooner – friendly and funny and kind of a goof, in a good way). She spent weeks in what I still think of as Emmy’s condo.

Now that’s an adoption success story. The boyfriend and I toured Maddie’s back in 2001 – I’d visited before but hadn’t started volunteering and he’d never been. We spent a long time there, and met several cats before leaving, undecided. Miss Emily was a strong contender, and I wasn’t surprised when he announced a day later that he had returned and adopted her.

Emmy was perhaps 5 back then, a big boned, playful, super soft gray and white girl with a big loud purr. She had rubbed figure eights between us when we first saw her, and her signature move was a huge long legged stretch at the sight of someone she liked.

A decade later, she still does the stretch every morning. She wakes her man by swatting her tail in his face, and then dances around his legs, with that guttural purr. But she’s slowed down some. She takes a few lurching attempts before jumping up to the table. Instead of dashing up the stairs, she kind of lumbers up one step at a time. She’ll play, but not for more than a minute or two, before flopping onto her side, uninterested.

She gets her exercise, somewhat unwillingly, from the regular pursuit of her smaller younger sister. Her enthusiasm for meals has never dimmed; when it’s time to eat, she’ll pointedly and noisily lick the bottom of her empty bowl. She had favorite places to nap, and to sit, and a few areas that she’s deemed off limits to the other cat (a mere kitten of a 9 year old).

She’s the queen of her castle, no question. I doubt she even remembers that temporary home in hallway 4. And it’s impossible now to imagine this place without her. But in the back of my mind I know she won’t be around forever, and I take spend a little extra time just sitting with the old girl. Appreciating her on a lazy Saturday, and our time here together.