R.I.P. Athena

Back in September, I wrote about the passing of my big white cat named Orion, aka “Big Boy.”  This past Friday, we said goodbye to our other cat Athena.  She was 16.  Since I wrote a post about Big Boy, I think it’s only fair that I write one about Athena as well.

Athena came along before Big Boy as a stray and just a few months after my husband and I had gotten married.  I had stopped at the front of our neighborhood in the parking lot of a gas station trying to woo a kitten.  Turns out the cat was feral, but while I was out there, the attendant came out for a smoke and noticed what I was doing.  She asked if I wanted a kitten, and I said yes.  Her boyfriend had found one in the parking lot of an auto parts store, and she already had six cats of her own and couldn’t afford another one.  I met her at 11pm after she finished her shift, and she handed her over to me.

I named Athena after my hometown of Athens, GA before my Clemson grad of a husband realized it.  In fact, someone at his work pointed it out to him.  Too late!  She’d already been named.  Heh.

The attendant told us how sweet and affectionate this kitten was, and she couldn’t have been more right.  Athena was an instant lap cat, and even though she wasn’t nearly as vocal as Big Boy, she loved attention.  She was usually right there when you sat or laid down on the couch.

In fact, a few years later, we got a third cat named Andie (short for Andromeda), and Athena never ever took to her.  She was extremely jealous and peed everywhere.  I dealt with it for 7 years, but eventually with two children,  I couldn’t deal with the peeing anymore.  We gave Andie to my mother-in-law who tried to steal her anyway every time she came to visit.  We visit Andie often, and I still miss her very much.

Big Boy loved to wrestle with Athena.  They wrestled so often when they were kittens that we called it Kitty Smackdown! time.  Even as older cats, Big Boy would bump his head into Athena enough times to annoy her, and he’d flop down on his back and paw at her until she finally jumped on him to wrestle.

During the winter, Athena would always snuggle on my left side while Big Boy snuggled on the right sandwiching me in between.  If you’re a fellow cat owner, you know that means you can’t move lest one of them get up and leave, and we wouldn’t want that!  Sometimes I’d wake up sweating from my little “heaters.”

She was definitely a cat that preferred routines.  Like clockwork, she’d follow my husband into the bathroom in the mornings while he got ready for work and meowed at him while he was in the shower.  Then she’d follow him downstairs for breakfast.  I always knew it was close to 5pm because she’d come meowing at me for dinnertime.  At night, she’d stay with me downstairs if I stayed up late and then would join me in the bathroom hoping for a late night treat from the treat bag stashed away on the shelves.  On the weekends, she let you know it was time to get up with a Prrrrtht! noise every 30 seconds until you finally did so.  She was definitely persistent.  You would have thought Athena was the fat one since she was the one that always begged for food and not Big Boy!

While I worked in the office, Big Boy would always park himself underneath the desk in his little bed and saw away.  Athena usually stayed on our bed upstairs.  After Big Boy died, Athena would stay with me in the office in the other chair.  It’s funny how pets know when we need company.

These two were our first “babies,” and having to say goodbye to a best friend and a family member is always so painful.  My heart is very heavy, and our house feels empty without our cats.

We’ll eventually get two more kittens, but right now we just want to remember Athena and Orion.