Calli Picasso
During my first year at Trinity, a parent approached me on the playground and asked if I was interested in a kitten she had bought for her daughter. She told me the kitten had peed on the floor so the dad wanted to make it an outdoor cat but she thought she would ask me first. I said yes and the next afternoon she brought the kitten with her at the end of the school day. She was a cute little thing but I will be honest in saying my very first thought was, "Oh my, I hope she grows into those ears!" I had already decided to name her Calli since she was a calico and I already had a C-named cat at home - Christopher. When the mom told me her daughter had named her Picasso, I started calling her by the two names or, for short, Calli P.
Calli was a handful right from the start! I had never seen a kitten with more spunk in my life, she was a riot! She and Christopher became friends and and we were a happy little family of 3. It didn't take long to notice that Calli had some bladder issues, although at first I thought she was just being a punk by peeing on the carpet while looking me in the eye. After hearing that cats pee in unusual places when they have bladder infections, I took Calli to the vet and sure enough, she had a UTI. The vet put her on antibiotics but the bladder issues continued on and off throughout the years. The vet could never find a physiological reason for her UTIs and recently diagnosed it as a mental issue where Calli had bladder problems when she got stressed or nervous. We tried an antidepressant and some new cat food but neither seemed to be making a difference and I made the decision this morning to have her put down. Even though she was only about 8 years old, I realized living a life with the side effects of medications were no way for a once 'high-spirited' cat to live.
Here are some of my favorite memories of my time with Calli P:
- During her first Christmas with me, I came home one day after school to find she had pulled my little Christmas tree off it's stand and drug it across the apartments to the kitchen. Every year after that, I had to anchor the tree to the wall with fishing line.
- That same Christmas, I was talking on the phone and started hearing this strange noise. After searching for the source I found it was Calli laying on the floor under the tree gnawing on presents. All my gifts that year had tiny chew marks on them. :-)
- Calli had a serious foot/shoe fetish and would spend countless hours in my closet rolling all over my shoes and rubbing her face on them. That led her to getting a case of giardia off the bottom of a pair of shoes I had wore camping in the mountains. The giardia got passed back and forth between Calli and Christopher a few times before the vet actually prescribed some horse medication that cleared it up!
- Our first home was an apartment and although Christopher when outside often, Calli was terrified of the great outdoors. So she would want me to stand with the screen door open while she s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d as far as she could out the door while keeping one back paw inside. She eventually got over her fear of the outdoors and especially loved to roll around freshly fallen snow.
- Calli was a very petite cat and always had a bit of a Napoleon complex. She would instigate fights with other cats and often come home with all kinds of scars and scratches. Once she even came inside with her little tuffs of fur sticking out all over her body after a fight with another cat, and gave me this look that clearly said, "You should see the other guy!"
Calli wasn't much of a cuddler, her idea of love was to let me hold her over my shoulder like a baby for a total of about 10 seconds. She was a fun cat though and I loved her to pieces. My life was better because of a little spaz named Calli Picasso.
Calli was a handful right from the start! I had never seen a kitten with more spunk in my life, she was a riot! She and Christopher became friends and and we were a happy little family of 3. It didn't take long to notice that Calli had some bladder issues, although at first I thought she was just being a punk by peeing on the carpet while looking me in the eye. After hearing that cats pee in unusual places when they have bladder infections, I took Calli to the vet and sure enough, she had a UTI. The vet put her on antibiotics but the bladder issues continued on and off throughout the years. The vet could never find a physiological reason for her UTIs and recently diagnosed it as a mental issue where Calli had bladder problems when she got stressed or nervous. We tried an antidepressant and some new cat food but neither seemed to be making a difference and I made the decision this morning to have her put down. Even though she was only about 8 years old, I realized living a life with the side effects of medications were no way for a once 'high-spirited' cat to live.
Here are some of my favorite memories of my time with Calli P:
- During her first Christmas with me, I came home one day after school to find she had pulled my little Christmas tree off it's stand and drug it across the apartments to the kitchen. Every year after that, I had to anchor the tree to the wall with fishing line.
- That same Christmas, I was talking on the phone and started hearing this strange noise. After searching for the source I found it was Calli laying on the floor under the tree gnawing on presents. All my gifts that year had tiny chew marks on them. :-)
- Calli had a serious foot/shoe fetish and would spend countless hours in my closet rolling all over my shoes and rubbing her face on them. That led her to getting a case of giardia off the bottom of a pair of shoes I had wore camping in the mountains. The giardia got passed back and forth between Calli and Christopher a few times before the vet actually prescribed some horse medication that cleared it up!
- Our first home was an apartment and although Christopher when outside often, Calli was terrified of the great outdoors. So she would want me to stand with the screen door open while she s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d as far as she could out the door while keeping one back paw inside. She eventually got over her fear of the outdoors and especially loved to roll around freshly fallen snow.
- Calli was a very petite cat and always had a bit of a Napoleon complex. She would instigate fights with other cats and often come home with all kinds of scars and scratches. Once she even came inside with her little tuffs of fur sticking out all over her body after a fight with another cat, and gave me this look that clearly said, "You should see the other guy!"
Calli wasn't much of a cuddler, her idea of love was to let me hold her over my shoulder like a baby for a total of about 10 seconds. She was a fun cat though and I loved her to pieces. My life was better because of a little spaz named Calli Picasso.
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