Memories--a walk down that lane

My DH and I were eating lunch today at a local chinese restaurant.  I was mentiong that some people were teasing me about testing so much and asking if Webber still had any ears.  LOL  This got my husband to thinking and to say that he is such a trooper.  He has always been a really good boy and a super trooper with all he has been through is his short life of 4 years.

I still remember the day I saw him for the first time.  We were looking for a kitten and had been looking at petsmart off and on.  There was local animal protection team that fostered and set up adoptions at our local petsmart every week.  I walked into Petsmart and from across the store I saw this little grey/smokey kitten playing with another kitten in those little pens they have behind glass at the adoption center. I locked eyes on him and told DH that was him.  I wanted to see HIM!  I walked as fast as I could over to the area and asked to see this playful kitten.  The foster mommy Melinda took us over to him and let me pick him up.  He immediately felt comfortable in peoples arms.  I was them told that he was a bottle fed baby, so very used to people and being held.  Matter of fact, he loved being held.  I told DH that this is one I wanted.  He really like him too and we filled out the necessary paperwork.  We were not going to be able to pick him up for another day or two.  I filled in our apt complex that we were getting another cat, bought all the stuff that we would need for the kitten.  We even built a screen door for our spare room closet.  It was a large walk in closet and we planned on keeping him in there until Chloe and he got used to seeing each other.  We picked him up on my DH's birthday in 2005.  Webber was only about 7 weeks old.  I took him to the vet to get a check up and bath before brining him home.  When I went to pick him up at the vet later that day, they had him out playing and had put a tiny bandana around his neck.  I wish I had gotten a pic of that day.  He was precious.  We decided to go with the name Webber because DH loved to BBQ with this Webber grill and the kitten's color was very luch like ashes left over in the grill.

I had read all that I could find on how to intoduce cats and followed as closely as I could.  However, Webber would cry in the spare room at night and it literally broke my heart and brought me to tears to hear him.  At the time Chloe only slept in her condo at night, so after a few days I decided to let Webber out and onto the bed with us.  He would curl up at my neck and fall asleep.  He snored too. LOL  Well needless to say he didn't spend much more time in that closet.  I think we kept Chloe and he separated for a few days and then it was just too hard.  He was all alone in that room.

Two years later we found two kittens adandoned at about 3-4 weeks old and decided to raise them for adoption.  Long story short we bottle fed them, litter box trained them and taught them to walk and eat solid food.  I was mommy totally!  Webber took to these two kittens right away and would run and play around the house once they were big enough that I did not fear he would eat them (lol).  Shortly thereafter, he started to get reallt grumpy and lay around.  We ended up getting a referral to a surgeon and they determined that his femoral head was fractured.  They also noticed that even at 2 years old, Webbers growth plates were still open.  This usually happens in the cats first year of life.  We later found out that some research has shown that neutering at a very early age can affect the growth hormones and effect the rate at which the growth plates close.  We did get Webber neutered at a very early age.  Our vet at that point had told me they would neuter at either 4 pounds or 4 months (whichever came first).  The 4 pounds came before the 4 months.  I still to this day blame myself for all of his problems.  Four weeks after surgery to correct the fractured femur he fractured his other femoral head and had to have surgery on the other leg.  But after all of this he was never in poor spirits or ever showed any signs of pain.  He was a real trooper.  Just last year (summer 2009) he had to have another surgery to repair a torn ACL ligament.  Then again he was wonderful.  I got to work from home that week and slept upstairs with him all week.  We had a matress on the floor with pet stairs that he used to walk up to the mattress. We got very close during that week, and he got very very spoiled.  He has always been a lap cat, but til this day he and I are still close.