It has been a year on Oct. 31st since my best cat ever, my cat soulmate, Smoky, died at age 12. I still miss him terribly. I meant to do this retrospective post last winter and simply could not. Now, on the anniversary of his death, it seems time, no matter how heart-wrenching it is, to honor him with these photos over the course of four days. Our regular blog topics (Halloween 2018!) will return on November 2.
I know these posts are ridiculously long and may be hard to load, for which I apologize. I need to do this and I need to do it in just this way.
2012
Terry, a Vietnam vet down on his luck, lived in the RV park next door to us in our former house behind the Ilwaco boatyard. He used to walk his two very old dogs by our house. Once we helped him take his young cat, Frosty, to the vet. In January of 2012, he went into a hospital two hours away, with a diagnosis of lung cancer, and asked us to take in his three cats, Mary (the mother, age 10) and her two sons, the brothers Frosty and Smoky, age 7.
Allan and a friend who worked at the humane society went into his old motor home to fetch the cats. They found the cats with no litter box, up on the bed to get away from their droppings. They had rarely been let outside that old, moldy, cigarette smoke filled motor home and quite possibly had lived in there for seven years. Terry had adopted Mary when she had just had the two kittens. They were loved and doted on, but their lives were small.
When they came to us, we had only two cats, the jet black and very shy Calvin, age 7, who we had been caring for since August 2011 and who had then became ours, and Maddy, an old and cranky black and white cat who I’d had for years. My beloved Dumbles had died early in the winter of some sort of brain seizure.
At our house, we kept Frosty, Smoky, and Mary in the big bathroom for a week to acclimate them to their new home.
I did not quite know what to make of Smoky. He was so quiet and looked so plain to me, and he did not purr when petted. On the phone, Terry told us “Smoky never purrs, Frosty is the lover.”
The cats seemed to love running through the house, so much larger than their motor home. One scary afternoon early on, they got out of an accidentally opened window and I thought they would have hightailed it the ten blocks back to the RV park, but they were waiting outside and agreed to be picked up and brought back in. Soon, we let them go outside. They had to use the back cat door because Maddy guarded the front one for her own exclusive use. Maddy hated all other cats. She was with us for the first year that we added this new batch, and she died at about age 15 late in the year.
Soon after going outside, Smoky began sitting on my lap and he began to purr. We just had time to tell Terry on the phone that Smoky was purring before Terry died.
Smoky had the softest fur I have ever felt on a cat, even softer than soft cats of my memory.

Mary and Smoky, 6-17-12
I have only one more photo for 2012 due to a computer crash.
Sometime over the course of the year, Smoky bonded with me more than the other three also very sweet and affectionate cats.
2013
Imagine enjoying the garden life after having been indoors in a small space for 7 years.
2014
When I would come home from work and go out into the garden, I’d hear a distinctive series of little meows and Smoky would emerge from a garden bed to greet me.
Staycation with Smoky was heavenly. He appeared to sit on my lap the moment I would sit down and he settled in with no squirming or fussing.
So very sweetie! In several of the photos, I can see the love emanating from Smoky’s eyes. It’s also wonderful that you took all three cats on at one time in their mature life. Some folks will only take puppies or kittens and forego the deep love of an adult animal. I also know what you mean when you say Smoky was your soulmate. You can love an animal and he/she can love you, but they still aren’t your soulmate. Then,a very special animal comes into your life and you just “know”. You just fit each other perfectly. I currently have my soulmate, Elly, my lab, but I also live with two other dogs who love me to death, but who aren’t my soulmate.
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Exactly. The other cats and I love each other but Smoky and I were madly in love.
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PS I would like to adopt another little cat family once Frosty passes on. He seems ageless though, wish Smoky had his longevity. Frosty has a different dad, a Siamese mix, we think. He has blue eyes and the Siamese talkativeness.
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Mary, Smoky and Frosty certainly had the best home and life with you! Love the photos. Smoky sure bonded with mama Mary and with mama Skyler!
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Thank you.
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You actually chose, probably unknowingly, the perfect time of the year to celebrate Smoky. Halloween, or Samhain, is more than just a festival of the dead, it’s also a time to celebrate the lives of ancestors and lost loved ones, and Smoky fits that bill. I love the shot of you with Smoky draped on your shoulders like a furry scarf.
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Thank you. It is the perfect time.
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A beautiful tribute to Smoky, Skyler. These are beautiful photos. Your dear Smoky seems like a quiet intellectual.
I too, am glad you took on adult cats. The oldest cat I have taken on was in the neighborhood of 16, a stray found in the yard in 2012, down to 6 lbs and dying from infection. Her eyes were full of age spots then, and the vet tech was guessing about 18 years old, although we will never know for sure. She is now close to 22 years old. We’ve had her 6 years.
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Wow six years is a good long time. That’s as long as I had Smoky. Did the pics load ok for you? So many. Thanks for saving the old gal. Quiet intellectual is just what Smoky was. Perfect.
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The photos loaded OK for me, no problems noted.
The vet told us the old kitty had some kind of congenital defect where the neck of her bladder doesn’t close. She tends to get urinary tract infections periodically because of that, and we are pulling her through another one now. Her kidneys are going at this point, so we are trying to keep her clean and comfortable, and well fed. She is on mirtazapine now, a feeding stimulant, which works well, and getting subcutaneous fluids at home. She leaks urine, and I do a lot of laundry for her, washing her special towels.
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Lovely. Kind of hard to look at with tears in my own eyes for missing Moz. These special ones stay in our hearts forever.
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Of course I know how you feel. Miz was extra special.
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What a wonderful retrospective. You didn’t need words to show the love you had/have for all of them, the lens captured it all.
I fully understand how you can love your companions, but the connection can be so much stronger for one of them. You simply “get” each other.
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Thank you. We liked the same kind of life. Just wish I could have been home with him all the time.
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I love this.It made me think about all my dear feline friends that have come and gone over the years. I can fully appreciate the bond that may be stronger with some than others, and most of the time they choose us rather than the reverse.
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Thank you.
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