Yesterday we had to say goodbye to our little boy-cat, Tuscan. He was diagnosed with Mycoplasma haemofelis (formerly Haemobartonella felis), and despite the vet’s efforts, Tuscan succumbed yesterday morning.
Tuscan was friendly with all of our cats, and a buddy to Leila often:
He was a biggie, checking in at 17 lbs, and we usually knew where he was because his purr matched his extra size in extra decibels. 😀
He just showed up a little over 7 1/2 years ago and started hanging out, we took him in, and he’s lived here ever since. 🙂
The animals have often been inspirations to me for musical melodies, and Tuscan wasn’t any different, and his melody I found some lyrics for, and put together a hymn called “I Long for God, the Living God“:
Lastly….please bare with me….the Lord never granted us children. Tuscan though would lay in my lap at times and look at me right in the eyes. It was the closest thing I ever felt to what I imagine would be the feeling of a father looking into his son’s eyes as his son looked up at him. I will miss that. I don’t know if his eyes were open in this picture, but it was a time like this:
And we will miss him. 🙁 We do thank the Lord for granting us the time with him, and in the end not a long, lingering farewell:
Well, one evening a stray cat was found on our porch, with our cat Tuscan interested. While the stray was skittish, as soon as we put a little food out, it voraciously started eating. Poor thing was famished.
The next day, the little stray was around, and when we opened the door and invited it in, it came on in and basically adopted us that day, much like Tuscan and our latest other cat Leila. 🙂 We figure it was not a feral cat as it seemed quite comfortable being inside.
Since, we’ve discovered it’s a girl, and we’ve been trying to catch her up on food. It took about a week, but she finally settled in and is less starving acting and more relaxed during the day now. She also hasn’t left the house since that first day here. 🙂 And thankfully, the other cats haven’t seemed to have any problem with her at all, and vice-versa, basically anyway…a hiss here and there if someone gets too close to the other. 🙂
Sue thought she looked “sophisticated”, and I thought, how about then calling her “Sophie”, and so it was. 🙂
Here are some other pictures of her:
Ahhh….so glad she feels safe now…
And our introduction video of her. She does let us know when it’s time for the next round of food! 😀
We’re thankful to the Lord we have the resources to care for the little, probably throw-away, stray, and we’re glad she has a place to be cared for now. 🙂
This one hurts a little more because he’s been part of our lives for so long…13 years…
We had to say goodbye to William, our first cat. He’d been having some health issues for some time, some of it respiratory, although we found it appeared he had a food allergy to rice that is in most cat food — the Lord graciously granted Sue think of this…feeding him only food with no rice (and we tried to keep wheat away too) seemed to really help him not have any more sinus problems.
Recently though, he started losing weight. But, he was eating fairly normally, and drinking and excreting nicely. With the extreme heat here, we both figured it was related to that, and never really thought to research it. He also seemed very sensitive to the heat but figured it was his age (he was probably around 14 years old), and just kept him laying on ice under dish towels with blue ice bags around, which seemed to help. Well, for whatever reason, I did research last week, and it appears he had all the classic signs of hyperthyroidism — weight loss even with appetite, drinking a lot and peeing a lot, sensitive to heat, panting, etc. Upon further research, there were various things to try naturally, and so we had shipped to us some L-Carnitine, which is one thing that is potentially lacking in this type of situation. But the day it arrived, even though he seemed not that bad in the morning, by late evening, he was gone. 🙁 Thankfully, we were with him as he was going, and Sue was able to be there right at the end.
William, who was named after William III, also known as William of Orange, Protestant king of England, and because our William was the color…wait for it…orange :D, had been rummaging around our neighbor’s garbage, and they were going to permanently “remove” him, but offered him to us in case we wanted him. We had never had a cat before, I used to be allergic to them, but I went there, and the neighbor girl was holding him, and I looked at him, and said we’d take him. There’s more detail in the original post we did on him.
One thing he will be remembered for is how he would almost always join Sue and me for Psalm singing time during our little family worship time. Here’s a little more detail, but I am including the video here again of him doing that:
He was also the inspiration for the first lullaby I wrote, “Hey You Sleepy Head” (I didn’t write it for or to him…it was meant for humans 🙂 )
One time William was chasing around a stray cat, and had it cornered around our camper, but to keep William from the other cat in case it had diseases, I reached down to grab William to take him away. Note, do not do that when a cat is in that mode. William turned and bit the back of my hand. Well, if you know anything about cat bites, it swelled really badly, I had to do I think at least a couple rounds of antibiotics plus soaking my hand in Epsom salts before it went away. But, now I also have a permanent reminder of William as the ring finger on that hand will not straighten as high as the other fingers:
Anyway, we’ll miss him a lot.
Finally, here’s his little grave site in the tree grove which is our little pet cemetery:
Goodbye William…we thank the Lord for the time He granted us to have you.
Here’s a little around our homestead at the beginning and end of Texas’ 2021 arctic blast!
This was after the first main night — snow and cold, with forecasted windchills down to -18F. These were I believe our worst temperatures we’ve experienced here, even after the 2011 freeze. The thermometer says about 4F:
Here’s the homestead:
I was a little worried about the cattle, given there are some young ones, but thanks to the Lord, they all made it through ok!
During the week, Sue’s “onesy” (coveralls) in front of the wood burning stove was the favorite for the domestics:
On the first day after a week of these freezing temperatures, things started getting back to normal. Here’s our resident stray hanging out on the cistern spigot, which we had double wrapped with blankets the whole time, allowing us to use it too whenever we needed:
And here are all the goat accoutrements hanging on the fence after Sue took them off:
Those were just a few pictures, but we show a lot more in this video, which has the day after the first main night as above, and then after coming out of it 5 days later (including a surpise from a momma cow!):
All throughout, the Lord was merciful in granting all the animals come through (yes, that missing rooster from the video showed up!), and helping Sue and me with strength to do all the care-taking!
We have no grid electric or water, which actually worked to our advantage, as we always had electric and good water as needed. We pray for those still suffering from the effects, but also hope people might consider their situation and on whom or what they depend for life sustenance.
We also saw how we believe God pre-set up provision before we really knew what was coming, even though they seemed a little “cross” to us at the time: the boy goats had knocked off the top of their hay bale, but Sue just took that hay into the barn, and it ended up being their main food for the week; and I had pre-put out hay bales for the cows, and one had been eaten down a lot and spread out by the time the cold hit, and another spread around some, but those also afforded bedding for the cattle. Also, both the tractor and truck starters went out at the same time a few weeks ago, we needed both for this cold front, and so they were ready to go.
Once again, we are very thankful for God’s help through 2021’s arctic blast, and for the gift of the new little heifer calf!
Once again, we had a little visitor show up and start hanging around the homestead, like she always lived here…
A very friendly one, she hung around me while I put up chickens at night, let us pick her up almost immediately, and it wasn’t too many days and she had moved in already. 🙂
In deciding what to call her, “Leila” popped in my head, and what do you know but that means “night” in Arabic — perfect given her black coloring! And so Leila it was!
She’s like a little monkey at times, crawling up and down the sides of the bed, or up one of our legs. 🙂
And, she and Tuscan get along well and play. Mimi’s starting to warm up to her, and William, our king cat, puts up with her, kind of like he does all of them. 🙂
And here’s her introductory video:
We thank the Lord for the new little gift, and for the resources to care for this little stray. We pray God might use us to care for and help His “strays” in some way, spiritually and/or temporily.
1 Pet 2:25 – “For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.“
We recently had another little stray show up around here…just started hanging out like he always belonged. 🙂
He showed himself to be a very friendly one, and was almost certainly a domestic for someone at some point.
We decided to take him in and call him Tuscan, because of his yellow coloring:
True cat form:
He’s all boy-cat, follows me around a lot, and pretty much runs the outside. 🙂 He and William don’t quite get along yet, and Mimi is still afraid of him, and he chases her, but they all do appear to be getting a little used to each other. We put him in the barn at night, and he actually doesn’t seem to mind, and I really think he’s helping keep down the mice population in there, earning his keep! 🙂
He sometimes likes to join Sue in the goat field while she is milking…we think he might have ulterior motives… 🙂
And here he is camped out on the cistern roof!
And here is a quick video of him, including a few moments of he and William around each other:
We’re thankful for the little addition to the homestead, and for the help in mice catching the Lord has granted us through him!
This past Lord’s Day we were able to meet to record the next set of Psalms from the psalter we use! It is always our prayer God glorify Himself in these things, and through us in whatever way He may!
(If you would like to save any of the files locally to your computer, you can right click on Download and click Save As in the popup menu.)
Sue and I sing a Psalm each evening as part of our family worship. Interestingly, William our cat almost every single time if he is around, once we start singing, comes over to us from wherever he is and hops up onto the couch or Sue’s lap while we sing and just hangs out with us. It is near 100% that he joins us like this, so we thought we’d show you that fun nightly event!
We are always thankful to the Lord for granting us His word, and the opportunity to learn the Psalms in this manner! May these always be praises and prayers from our hearts, and we ask and thank Him for His condescending ear to hear them!
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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