Miss Sadie Sue Smith

For anyone who looks to my blog for levity... sorry. Tonight's not your night.

When Mr. Smith and I decided to get married I had one, ONE, pre-nuptial agreement. I had all my life wanted a cat and he had lived all his life with cats. I wanted a cat. I told him if we got a cat I would assume the role of primary custodian.

He agreed.

So, newly-married at 23, I went looking for a cat - having never tried to pick out a cat before in my life. I ended up volunteering at the Humane Society of Sarasota County for the next four years. Here is where Miss Sadie Sue Smith (the shelter had named her Lydia) and I met:

here i am in one of the kitten cages right before we left sarasota. i hope the dogs and cats i helped match up all those years work out half as good as me and miss sadie did.

me and miss nancy. my fave volunteer.

here she is on our stairs in our townhouse in sarasota. i think she's eyeing a gecko to munch. she loved to eat geckos, cockroaches, salamanders, moths and mice. she also liked to puke up gecko, cockroach, salamander, moth and mouse guts. she's a good girl to have around.

here's sadie sue on our bed in sarasota!

look at how little we are! mr. smith, me and my huge hips and sadie, and dipsey doodle outside our pepto-bismol pink townhouse, spanish oaks!

my parents always came down for thanksgiving to sarasota. here's mama feeding sadie some turkey. MAMA.

because we always went to knoxville for christmas, we always got and celebrated a bit of christmas at thanksgiving with my folks in sarasota. here's me and dipsey and sadie in front of our inappropriately timed christmas tree!

A year later we got Loki from the same shelter. They hated the camera, so this is a rare pic of the two:

tommy and i estimate it was 90 degrees in the room at this moment which would explain their lethargy. actually - they loved it and hated when we moved north. both kitties still do things like get in steamy showers or lie on hot vents when it's cold. whoops! florida kitties!

here's sadie and loki at my parent's house for christmas one year. make yourself at home, whydon'tcha? ha ha, loki is using sadie's butt as a pillow.

here's my dipsey doodle, a dog man, lovin' on miss sadie. she was that sweet.

for some reason, miss sadie loved baskets. laundry, woven - she was equal opportunity. we called her 'basketity-cat'. we had a lullaby and everything for our basketity-cat.

when we moved to atlanta we had carpet! sadie loved it!

say wha? i don't love no carpet! i miss me some GECKO!

A few months ago, Sadie got sick. We took her to the vet and we gave her medicine. She was getting better... until last night. Really bad night. We took her to the vet and weighed our options.

Tommy and I were both there and we both got to cry and kiss on her and hold her.

Top four most horrible moment of my life. No joke. (Great vet. Great, loving vet. Just horrible moment.)

We took her to my parent's house and buried her next to my old dog Goldie. I would like to think the two of them are creating quite a ruckus up in The Great Beyond. (I think they would have HATED each other. But I loved them both.)

I end with this: I posted this picture before. When this picture was taken, Sadie was already sick, and when the digital shutter clicked a few weeks ago I thought about how sad I would be if Sadie died - and how much I loved her.

Update: my phone was acting wonky yesterday so I didn't get to upload these two pictures. Here is Sadie sitting on my lap this summer:

a little less photographing, a little more petting, plzkthanks.....

And here's Mr. Smith giving Sadie Sue some love:

she hated to be hugged. too bad, because she was just so huggable!

Thanks for the love, peeps. We're hanging in there.