Pets: Novella

Last week, I started a Friday Flashbacks series on the pets that have been a part of our family. This week, I wanted to talk about our sweet but feisty calico, Novella.

Mom and Dad were living in northern Ohio for a summer internship. They had already adopted our first cat, Newton and were living in an apartment building. Mom used to throw out Newton’s old food over the deck. One day a little calico kitten showed up and started eating the food. Mom and Dad tried to catch the elusive kitty, but she always got away.

Finally they tried using a live trap to catch her. Once they finally caught her, she was NOT happy about it. She was quite wild and threw herself all over the cage, to the point where she injured her eye.

As Mom retells the story, the next morning Dad went into the room where they had kept her overnight. As he opened the door, Mom heard a loud “Hiss!” followed by a soft “Meow!” Daddy the cat-tamer had calmed this feisty kitten and found that she was a very sweet cat at heart.

When they took her to the vet, they found out that she was older than they had originally thought. She just looked younger because she was so undernourished. They decided to name her “Novella” since my Mom was studying literature at the time. The name also went quite well with our other cat’s name, Newton.

Novella when Mom and Dad first found her. Isn’t she tiny?

When we kids were younger, we didn’t really know Novella that well because she was a very timid and shy cat. The only times I remember seeing her were at night when we kids were getting ready to go to bed. She would come upstairs from the basement (where she spent most of the day) and she would “visit” with Mom and Dad once the house was quiet.

Novella with our cat, Panther. You’ll hear his story next week!

Novella moved with our family many times and was still alive when we moved into our current home. She was the only remaining pet we had of our “original” bunch.

As we kids grew older, and after all the other pets were gone, Novella became much more social. She absolutely adored the twins and could often be found snoozing on their bed.

We found out that Novella was terminally ill about 3 months before her death. She hadn’t been acting like herself for awhile, and when we took her to the vet they said that she had cancer in her jaw. We were very saddened to hear that she would soon be gone, but were so thankful to have a bit of warning. We made her as comfortable as possible and watched her closely. We wanted to make sure that she wasn’t in any pain; and when she was, it would be time to put her down.

She lived on for 3 more months with lots of loving. Eventually her mouth swelled up from the tumors and her tongue started hanging out. When she wasn’t able to eat, we knew it was time. Novella lived a long life; she was about 16 years old when she died. We loved our sweet kitty very much!

It was rather strange having no pets in the house for awhile. But it didn’t remain that way for very long! We eventually added more pets to the family, but that’s a blog post for another time.

Next week I’ll share the story of Mom and Dad’s 3^rd pet, Panther, the cat-who-thought-he-was-a-dog.