R.I.P Kayleb

Kayleb sitting in the window of my bedroom in our old house.

So here I sit today saddened by the fact that my kitty cat died. He was just a bit older then my youngest son. And he's been with us through three moves, five other cats, two dogs, several fish and even a bird or two...

It was in February 2001, I was immensely pregnant with the youngest of the menchildren... the man and I had two cats. Aries and Sylver. But every time we went outside for something we'd see these three cats out on our neighbours balcony. We lived in a quad and he was the other second floor apartment. It was very cold out and there was at least three feet of snow on our balconies that we had to shovel just to get to the stairs.
Cliff (the neighbour) had asked us a couple weeks previous if we'd like to have a kitten. Well with our two already we said no, of course. Our apartment was fairly small already didn't need more cats. So it had been a few weeks of really cold when we started to see these three furballs out on his balcony.
One night the man came in the house and said the were there when he got home from work (he had been working straight midnights) and that they were still out there. If any of you truly know me at all you know what happened next...
The man and I looked at each other with the same look the "they can't stay out in the cold and freeze to death, but we really can't afford to take care of them" look... most of my friends know that look, they've used it themselves.
For the next couple hours he tried to catch the three cats who of course were very wary of people. After much running around and almost freezing he managed, much to the chagrin of Aries and Sylver, to finally catch all three of them.
And thus Scarlett, Demona and Kayleb all came to live with us. Scarlett got her name because she was the mama cat with an attitude that matched Scarlett O'Hara's, she never really did warm up to people much. Demona, got her name... hmm... I'm trying to remember where she got her name, I think it was from Gargoyles...
Kayleb, he got his name because I had gone back to school after giving birth to the oldest boychild, even though I was a grade 12 I ended up in two grade ten classes. I only needed two electives to graduate. So all these friggin grade tens thought I was some transfer student since I started halfway through the year. As we all know highschool is not really great, this proved it to me, I loved high school until taking a year off and went back. Anyway, this kid Caleb, was pretty nice to me even when the others weren't. I took the boy to a highschool hockey game with me and Caleb came over to say hi to me. Cutest thing, he looks at me and says "Oh hey, you babysitting?" to which I replied "Well, if you consider taking care of your own baby as babysitting" and laughed. Well you could have picked his jaw up off the floor. He asked how old I was, when he found out I was 19 and actually a grade 12, he realized that the others had been such idiots. He just gave me a smile, nodded and said "Cool, you two want to come sit with me?"
I don't know why when we got the cats Caleb had come to mind, but he did and thats how Kayleb got his name.
Years went on, Sylver and Aries died shortly after we moved into the house of some rare cat disease. Since it didn't affect the other three the vet thought that maybe they had been carriers. So we said no more cats for us.
Well life happens and Scarlett and Demona went to go live with the mans mom, the man and I were going through some real tough shit and I was leaving and it was just yucky... he gave them to her and was going to keep Kayleb. She didn't think he'd fit in up there (read that as: I have uncut males who would try to kill him)
So I wised up came back, missed the others and convinced the man that I wanted another cat, one that actually shows affection and such. Kayleb was never one that got too affection with people. Thats when Skeezix came along, we got him while a friend was visiting.
Kayleb's attitude started changing, he would watch how the kitten interacted with us, and started to come out of his shell. He would rub up against us and come on the bed looking for pets and such. He was much more lovable.
Well, not thinking, Skeezix got sick. It had been six years we hadn't thought about how he could have gotten sick.
Then Kayleb got sick. So it would seem he was a carrier, and when he got older he succumbed to the sickness as well.

So the man and I have decided, no more cats, for a long while.

I'll miss him