In the year 2000 Kari and Chris made a trip to Costa Rica. We had been there in February the year before, using my 50th birthday the previous July as the excuse. This was pre-A&R and they only had Harley and Max to board in a kennel while they were gone. After the trip Kari was on her way to pick up Harley and Max from the kennel which is why she was driving down Mockingbird Lane in Dallas and thus chanced to see a very small kitten trying to climb the curb to get out of the street. She stopped and I remember her telling me she blocked traffic so she could corral the kitten before it got mashed.
That’s how Sydney came to join our clan and ultimately become the Inspector General of Six Acres. When we first moved back to Amarillo we housed all the animals in the barn. Genna and I put chicken wire around the corral to keep the dogs and cats confined. Kari took advantage of the change in accommodations to divest their home of the two cats, Sydney and Elmo, they had allowed in the house in Garland. We did the same with our two, Cotton and Chloe. The dogs were banished as well, although they were occasionally allowed in the house.
Sydney was more athletic than the other cats and was able to get over the chicken wire to roam around the place. Joyce said Grady Howard across the street found her in his trap one day. He was trying to reduce the overabundance of stray cats in the neighborhood but, since Sydney had collar on, he let her go. That was the last time she left SA, I think. However, she made full use of the place and became the IG with her daily inspection routine to just about every nook and cranny. If someone was outside doing something on the place, they would be visited by Sydney to see what they were up to.
By and by when the shop was built, the four cats would be closed up in it at night. There was strife between the two toms, Cotton and Elmo, eunuchs though they were, which led to some marking inside the shop which gave me the fantods and all four were given the boot. We had a doghouse up by the house and one outside of the shop and for a long time that’s where the cats stayed. One cold winter night some canine thugs came into our yard at 1911 where Elmo and Cotton were sleeping in the doghouse and killed them both. Chole had died from natural causes by then and that just left Sydney.
Sydney always stayed around the shop at night, probably in the doghouse there. Every morning when I went to work she would intercept me between the house and the shop and we would have a brief communion. Since Sydney never was the problem with the cats in the shop, I told Joyce it would be alright with me if she spent the night in there, and so she did for the last eight years. Especially in cold weather she would go downstairs with me when I got there in the morning and we would hang out until she was ready to go outside and make her rounds. On a cold morning she might spend an hour or two sitting on my desk while I worked. When she was ready, she would go sit on the stairs or just go out with me when I took a bathroom break.
This winter she was less active. She would come down to the office sometimes but others she preferred to just sleep in. Cookie and she became friends, I think, at least as friendly as two cats are likely to be that didn’t grow up together. Cookie was half her age or less and feisty like young cats usually are. They would squabble some but nothing serious. Cookie is always ready to get out of the shop as soon as I unlock the door but Sydney would stay in until it warmed up good, if it was going to. Since Thanksgiving she slept more and more and got out less and less even on mild days.
Recently she lost the use of her hind legs. There is no telling what happened. Maybe it was a case of a hip giving out on her. One morning last week when I came in she wasn’t in her bed. She uttered a plaintive meow to let me know she was under the Pathfinder and in trouble. She couldn’t get around except by dragging herself with her front legs. She didn’t seem to be in pain when we put her in her bed. She had no interest in food but hadn’t been eating much for awhile anyway. Since she didn’t seem to be in any pain and slept most of the time, we felt there was no need to put her down. Rather than take her to a vet, which she wouldn’t have liked at all, we kept her as comfortable as we could to let nature take its course.
Yesterday dawned cold but sunny and the sky room was a pleasant place in the morning with the sun pouring in. Joyce brought Sydney there and they spent a lot of time just rocking and sunning. Li’l r joined them. Sydney hadn’t wanted any water since Friday morning and she hadn’t had any interest in food for longer than that. Joyce got up with her a couple of times in the night. This morning at 6 AM when she checked on her, Sydney was dead.
We didn’t want to toss the dirt in her face when we buried Sydney so we wrapped her in Dad’s old shirt he had all his friends sign when he retired from Amarillo Right Angle Pump Drive in 1976. It had been in the back of my closet all this time and would probably have been tossed out at some point by someone who didn’t know the story behind it. We gathered up all the flint that had been collected over the years and piled it up around a solar yard light in the front yard where we buried Sydney. I had used some of the flint for a ring around a place to plant wildflowers. Last year I tried to raise antelope horn milkweed without success and was planning on doing something like that anyway.
Sydney was a well-respected member of our little clan here on SA and we feel fortunate to have had her with us for the past 17 years.