Happy 20th Birthday, Emily!

A 20th birthday may not sound like that big of a deal, but for Emily it sure is. Well, maybe not for her, but certainly for us. Emily has been around for 20 years now and, in early October will also celebrate 20 years of living with us. She's not our daughter, cousin, sister, or for that matter, any kind of blood relative - we don't share the same DNA in any way. She's not even the same species...

Emily, you see, is our cat, our first cat, and we also call her our first born since we took her in after being married less than a month.

Emily's story:

One of Karen's brothers found her in a parking lot while working on a construction site in southern Ohio. It was a cold, rainy early October evening when he saw her brutally ejected from the parking lot's guard shack by the foot of the lot's attendant. He went over and picked up the little kitten, barely a month old as far as he could tell, cold and shivering and hungry. He brought her to his car, so she could stay dry and wrapped her so she could warm up. After he got off work, he brought her home to his mom's house. Karen arrived the next day and took her to the vet, who gave her a shot of something, cleaned her eyes and ears (both were badly infected) and gave her a positive prognosis, given continued care. Her sense of smell worked fine as she was easily ab;e to sniff out her food bowl and munched down with great gusto. As she began to regain her sight (rather quickly after the vet visit), one of the first things she seemed to see clearly was Karen. Munch, munch, look - ok, good, she's still there watching me eat...munch, minch look- ok, good, she's still there watching me eat...

Karen brought her right home after that and the two have been inseparable ever since.

This is Emily at what we think is about 6 weeks old , shortly after we brought her home in early October, 1987

About a year later we brought home Gretchen, a "sister" for Emily.

Emily was NOT pleased, and though the two occasionally got along, Emily was usually pretty indifferent to Gretchen.
The above photo was in August of 1988, when we brought little 6 week old Gretchen home. Emily made sure to eat all of Gretchen's food -as you can tell Emily was already very skilled at eating all of her OWN food. This was also just before Emily tried to eat Gretchen's head...

Gretchen left us in April, 2003 after losing her long battle with irritable bowel and diabetes, but Emily pushed on, doing just as well as ever, and as the years past, continuing to impress her vet, Dr. Seimer, of Suburban Animal Clinic, even rebounding well from her recent diagnosis of high blood pressure...

(Suburban Animal Clinic, Wilson Road, Columbus, Oh)

Dr. Seimer is a wonderful vet, and has been Emily's vet almost from the start - of course there was that first visit in Huber Heights, then her first routine shots were administered by a friend of mine, Cheryl Burger, who was a vet student at O.S.U. at the time (and is now a vet in Beavercreek). Emily has on occasion also seen some of the other doctors at Suburban, like Dr Weale, and we like them all. I can't say enough good things about the staff at Suburban; they're all wonderful and have treated us and our feline family with great care and kindness over the years.

And today we saw this as we drove past:

So, Happy Birthday, Emily, with hopefully many more to come.

(Emily today)

(Emily's little Birthday cake)

(Emily licking her slice of cake)

And thanks to Suburban for the great care, support, and birthday wishes.

For more cat blogging, take a look at Weekend Cat Blogging...

Enjoy,
Lorence

UPDATE: 12/28/2007
It is with deep sadness that I pass along the news that our beloved feline family member, Emily, died the morning of December 26th, 2007. Her death came quite suddenly, but she died in the arms of her "mom", Karen. Her vet, Dr. Siemer was also present. We will miss her very much.

Again, we'd like to thank the entire staff of Suburban Animal Clinic for the wonderful care they provided to Emily and to us.