Katie

When Rob and I move to Mexico, one of our biggest considerations is going to be our cat, Katie.

We've had Katie for just about three years now. We adopted her and her brother when they were 6 months old, from a local cat shelter. I saw them about a week after we had to euthanize Splitz, my companion of 18 years, and my emotions were still raw. There they were, two orange balls of fur, one the adventurer and the other the nurturer. They were in our house within 24 hours.

We named them Spencer and Kate, after the famous Hollywood actors, since they were redheads, and because we thought the names were somehow clever. It took us about 3 weeks to recognize that they should have been named Bart and Lisa, their more appropriate models, but by then they had learned their names, and the die was cast. Spencer/Bart remained the adventurer: within 6 months Rob had retrieved him from several trees (loved going up; could never figure out getting down), a raccoon trap, from underneath a verandah, and the neighbour's roof. That spirit of adventure got him in trouble, though. Although the vet pronounced him healthy when we got him, she neglected to test him for and give him the FLV vaccine, and just after a year of living with us, he died from Feline Leukemia. We still miss him dearly. Although Rob and I have each had several pets, he was by far the cat with the most personality of any we've shared our lives with and, as Rob puts it, he fully lived his nine lives in his one short, eventful career. His ashes are currently resting beside Splitz's in our yard.

Our Katie, (Kate didn't last long) on the other hand, is very much Lisa. I've never known a cat with so many opinions, and with such a vocal range to express them. As a kitten, she would often come through the living room towards the food bowl, meowing whole paragraphs as she walked, almost all of them, we felt, tales told on her brother. Now her stories are about moths she has nearly caught, or birds at the bird feeder, or other tales told about her adventures looking through the window. Katie is an indoor cat. From the moment of her brother's diagnosis (and her own positive test for FLV as a result) she has stayed indoors, for her own protection against disease, and to protect other cats from being infected.

FLV is actually misnamed, I've learned. It was discovered when a high number of cats seemed to be dying of Leukemia, but the disease itself is not leukemia. It is actually a weakening of the immune system, which seems to allow Leukemia (along with other possible viruses) into the system. Cats like Katie can be otherwise healthy, and as long as their immune system isn't attacked, can live normal, and sometimes long, lives. Katie is now 3 1/2, the average age for cats with FLV to survive, but her care is better than lots, we give her immunity-boosting vitamins, and our hope is that she'll be healthy and happy when the big move to Mexico will take place in just under four years.

Getting her moved will be another matter. I can't imagine her anything like silent for a 8 hour series of plane rides, and I don't know how she'd handle a 4 day car trip. This cat talks, and unlike a child in the backseat, won't be bribed with McDonald's, or mesmerized by a gameboy.

She is a cutie, though, and if there's a way under heaven to get her down behind the walls of our house in Mexico, where she could safely laze in the sun, we'll get her there.