Remembering Cleo

My beautiful girl.

I think I need a teddy bear. My sweet kitty, Cleo had to be put to sleep early Monday morning and I miss her like crazy. I keep hearing things and thinking I see her out of the corner of my eye.

In my mind, I know she's gone. But, whenever I start missing her, I automatically reach over to where her bed was next to me. And that's when I really miss her. So, I think if I had a super plush stuffed animal, I might feel better having something soft to pet whenever I need comfort. What really worries me is that I wonder if I might just carry it around all day.

To retrain myself, I've purposely been doing things I couldn't before. I leave the closet door open all night, piles of laundry on the carpet, and just now put my lunch plate on the floor. It's a reflex to resist all these things.

My, what big ears you have!

I would love to have another kitten, but I'm in major work/life reboot and not having a pet will make the transition easier (logistically, anyway). So as I launch into my second start on life, I know I can't take on the responsibility of a pet, but I sure would love to foster shelter pets temporarily. 

I write the following facts for the reader, because knowing them doesn't make it any easier on me, anyway. But telling the funny stories might.

Cleo had been sick on and off for a couple of weeks and had stopped eating, drinking, and pooping. She had an extremely tender spot in her abdomen, and had already experienced a lot of muscle loss. I couldn't afford to run the tests that might pinpoint her illness, and I wasn't going to keep her hanging on through months or years of continuous treatment. So let's call it cancer.

Cleo was 15 years old. Yep, that's getting up there for a cat. I got her when I first started teaching in Las Vegas. A cat show lady on the airplane once told me she thought we was part Egyptian Mau. She was the most gorgeous spotted tabby with a raccoon tail that I've ever seen. She was a big girl, and at her heaviest, my mom said she looked like a beaver. When I picked her up to go to the vet, she felt like a rag doll.

She loved only me. She tolerated a couple of people but actively hated everyone else. I knew I was doing the right thing when she didn't even hiss as they took her temperature at the vet. She was really practiced in the art of showing off all her teeth to friends, relatives, and strangers. People wanted to love her with her pretty eyes and baby kitten meow. I felt sorry for them, because it'd kill me if she wouldn't let me pick her up and love on her.

This is as close as Cleo got to enjoying the outdoors.

I don't think she was very smart. Some of her nine lives were spent early on. She constantly got herself stuck behind the washer/dryer combo in my Las Vegas apartment. One time I thought I'd take her outside on a leash, she couldn't navigate stairs and fell through the cracks while I was locking the door. As she dangled on the end of her leash, essentially strangling herself, I was so stunned it took me a moment to let go of my end, dropping her into the shrubbery. Every time she'd attempt an escape after that, I'd find her at the base of the stairwell, paralyzed in fear of the great outdoors and neighbor cats.

Love that fuzzy, spotted tummy!

She loved playing with a knotted rope, feather on a string, milk jug pull tabs, and a mouse hanging on an elastic string. She loved being brushed. As a kitten, she'd jump at least three feet in the air and perform back twists. She had no interest in laser pointers.

As she grew out of kittenhood, I thought she was depressed, so I got her what I thought she needed: a kitty. Josie was never really my cat, she was Cleo's. She'd groom her, worry about her when she got her head stuck in a kleenex box, and take a back seat to her play. She didn't seem cheered up, so when I moved to Portland I gave her away. Other than a disastrous experiment with a roommate and her cat, it's been just the two of us ever since.

Enjoying a drink a water from the window.

It's been a really challenging year for me with my back surgery, and then quitting my job, but I'm so glad that meant we had a lot of time together. I think I'd feel really guilty if I'd been too busy to spend time with my Cleo this last year. 

How to make filters for pet drinking fountains

I've had the Cat Mate Pet Fountain for almost a year now and I love it. My cat won't drink from anything else. It is much easier to keep clean than the PetMate Fresh Flow model it replaced. One of my favorite features is that the water goes through the filter before it goes through the pump. Ya think?

My least favorite feature is the filter itself. It's a blue plastic cartridge filled with carbon gravel and layers of polyester-type filter. It works great, but needs cleaned about once a week to keep the slime away. The main problem with the filter is that when you need a new one, you have to replace the entire plastic assembly! What an unnecessarily wasteful expense. 

I tried squeezing my leftover PetMate filters into the plastic case until I ran out of them. Then I Googled in vain for a filter hack. I found a few discontinued products people had tried, but that wasn't going to help me. 

At some point in my search I came across aquarium and pond filter supplies. It was worth a risk. These seemed to be the same basic materials, designed to keep water clean enough to keep fish alive: It ought to be good enough for my cat.

Amazingly, I hit the jackpot on my first trial! I ordered cut-to-fit polyester and carbon filter pads from Amazon.com, thinking I'd find a way to squeeze them into the leftover blue cartridge. The carbon sheet is actually much thicker and more rigid than I expected, and can be used without the plastic case! Because it's cut-to-fit, this should work for a wide variety of pet fountains.

How to make filters for pet drinking fountains

You will need: 

empty Cat Mate filter cartridge

Acurel Carbon Infused Pollutant Reducing Media Pad 

Coralife 05134 Pure-Flo Polyester Filter Pad

rotary cutter and self-healing mat

straight edge

scissors 

Fold the polyester pad in half lengthwise, or as we teachers say, "hot dog" style. Use the empty cartridge to measure and mark a strip the width of the filter. Cut through both layers with your rotary cutter. Measure and mark the lengths, and cut.

Use a couple of the polyester pieces to measure a strip of the carbon fiber. This material is much thicker than the rotary cutter blade, so it didn't cut all the way through. I finished the job with my scissors. 

Layer one white pad on top of the black filter and place in the cartridge slot. It fits perfectly and holds itself in place. During my first weekly cleaning, I noticed the polyester pad was sagging a bit and there was a lot of black sand in the water. I decided to sandwich the charcoal with another layer of polyester and bind all three together with a rubber band.

The 18x30" polyester pad is much larger than the 10x18 carbon filter, so you'll end up with a lot more of the white pads. As the first layer of filter, this pad will pick up most of the gunk and need to be cleaned and replaced more frequently. 

The polyester pad is machine washable and can even be bleached if you then treat it with a dechlorinator. Most manufacturers recommend using vinegar to clean pet fountains and cycle through your pump. 

And there we have yet another amazing use for vinegar! Can I buy stock in the stuff?

Update: I noticed the filter was working so well, by the time it needed cleaning, the pump was actually struggling to find water. I think I'll take out the second layer of polyester after all. It'd be better to let a little gunk go through the pump than burn it up completely.