Bella...

It's been a few days since I had to let Bella go to the Rainbow Bridge... I wanted to spend some time reminiscing about her so that when memories start to fade, I can come back and remind myself how special she was.

I brought Bella and her sister, Pearl, home in early September of 2008.  Their mama had been a stray that wandered up to Liane's house very pregnant and she had 3 kitties on July 4th.  Since she only had 3, I have to assume from experience that she was a young cat, presumably well less than a year old.  I took the two we called "cow kitties" for the black spots on white fur.  Bella had short hair, Pearl long.  I actually thought Pearl was a boy initially (it's hard to tell at that age..) so I started out with the name Butch until I got them to the vet the next week.  Pearl was like the beauty queen where Bella was kind of the plain Jane, which is why I wanted her to have the special name, after one of my beloved Hoyas (a species I don't grow but admire from afar...)  I say she was more of a plain Jane because her facial markings were kind of uneven, and she had one eye that appeared smaller than the other.  As she grew, they eye became less obvious.  Here's a photo from the day I brought them home:

I should digress just a little...  When I got the sisters, it had been 3 years since I'd lost Samantha, who I held up as the sweetest cat I'd ever encountered.  Sammy used to let me carry her around like a baby on her back.  It was probably her willingness to be my "baby" that got me through what most people would say were my maternal years without jumping into parenthood.  When I lost her, I was convinced that she would be a hard act to follow, so I decided to wait some time before getting another cat to avoid making comparisons.  I didn't think I'd ever get that lucky again!

Back to the sisters... I always felt that Bella had a bit of Sammy in her.  She would never let me hold her on her back, mind you, and didn't even really want to be picked up, but she was very affectionate and loved to sleep on my boobs!  Silly girl!  That had to stop as she got bigger and heavier!  Here are some photos of Bella as a kitten:

Ah, this gets harder as I look at these photos... Had to take a break.  

Lucy, our 120 lb. German Shepherd, was our only pet when I brought the sisters home.  We got her in late November 2006 after we lost Remo, another Shepherd who was the light of our lives.  I probably would have waited to find another dog after Remo if it hadn't been for the fact that we had NO pets other than Remo when he passed...  I have never lived a moment of my life without a pet and I couldn't bear the thought of being even one night pet-less!!  Anyway, I brought the sisters home and set them on the living room floor...  Lucy rushed up to them and sniffed... licked or maybe tasted!... the kitties.  At first, they turned into fluff balls and hissed teeny kitty hisses.  But after a few minutes with Lucy's nose and tongue assaulting them, they settled down and started following her around like she was the Pied Piper!  She was their new Mommy!!!  If she laid down, they were all over her.  If it was time for her to eat, the kitties would be right there, acting like they were interested in her food, though they would never eat more than a single kibble.  But anyone who knows dogs knows that they can often be very territorial about their food, so it was kind of comical to see this giant dog looking on as a little kitty stuck its curious head into her giant dish!  It was adorable!

They grew and were best friends:

 

 

After some years, they became more independent of each other and Bella kind of became Mark's kitty.  She slept with him almost every night (he sleeps in a recliner in the basement), curling up on top of him always on his right side.  I remember one day when she'd been doing this for awhile Mark came up one morning and said, "I hate to break it to you honey, but I'm sleeping with another woman..."  I  said, "Oh really?  Does her name happen to be Bella?"   A woman always knows, LOL!

The last few years, her favorite spot to sleep during the day in winter was on the heat register in the bathroom.  This is the only floor register in the house - the rest of them are all the old big metal ones that were from the days of gravity furnaces.  When she got sick (with whatever it was...we never figured that out), she spent all her time on that register.  It was just so sad to see her decline so quickly.  But I'm trying to just think of the good times, so I'm going to end this with one of my favorite pics of the girls together:

 R.I.P. my sweet Bella!  I hope you're romping with Lucy and getting to know all my other beloved pets I will be joining when I'm done here.  See you in the blink of an eye!