In Honor of Our Dear Princess Sonia


Our beautiful 16-year old cat Princess Sonia just died. She’d become lighter in weight this last year as well as older looking. Yesterday I felt bad for her when I saw her and realize she wasn’t doing good, but she did rally quite a bit and looked like she might just be dehydrated … but that was only the rally before death. This morning she had eaten and drank water, my 10-year old daughter said, then later she checked up on her and found her not able to move, and from there it all when downhill until finally around 1pm she started having difficulty breathing in a different sort of way from before and slowed down from there and was dead around 1:10pm to 1:15pm.

She wasn’t conscious much since my daughter brought her to me later this morning. But we did have some eye connecting moments, and some purring here and there as she and we waited for the last to come.

She was my dear kitty. In 1992 we saw a litter of about 4-week old kittens near our apartment in S. Florida. She was part of that litter that had been born of a mother cat under the pool deck of our neighbors. No one could catch those kittens, so wild, until finally in March 1993 this cute bi-color black and white girl kitten was caught by someone else and we said we’d take her.

We got her inside and after some days she calmed down and became our 3rd cat. Bleu and Samantha were 1 & 2 cats. Bubba being what we called Bleu a lot, was about 4, and Sammy as we called Samantha a lot, was a kitten born in April 1992. I got her as a wild little thing who took to me like nothing ever before or since. Bubba I had since he was born in our house from a stray I picked up who just happened to have a litter of kittens 9 weeks later, and he was a big blue gray kitten, first born. He was mine from that instant.

I love all cats and these three were our cats for the first several years of our marriage. We were married in August of 1992, and Bubba and Sammy came to live with us right away, from where I lived with them, my parents house, they were mine though.

Princess was added then in 1993 and they all loved each other, and me them.

We had a baby finally in April 1996 and then in November of that year we all moved to the Atlanta area, me with the two girls Sammy & Princess in the back seat of my Honda Civic, and the baby there too, and Bleu was with Frank in the moving van.

We lived in an apartment for a year, then moved into this house and those three cats were happy here. Then we had another baby, but had added a 4th cat to the mix while I was pregnant, Cinnamon, who was nearly 2-years old, and was very high strung and didn’t last for long, dying at 7 years of age (that was awful for me) … when our second baby was about 18 months old we went out and when we came back found the back door not closed all the way, and Bubba was gone. Never saw him again. Then we had another baby and after a time added Strider and Dixie, 7-month old kitties. Later we added Scarlet as a 3-month old kitten. Then I was pregnant again, but lost the baby, and my Sammy also died. So we added two blue kittens that we found later, and they are Blueberry Bear and Bluebell Spitfire. Last year or so we found a kitten running in our yard that didn’t seem to belong to anyone and brought here in and she stayed, she is Clementine.

So we had 7 cats for awhile, if you have done the math. Now we have 6 again. Our eldest cat lived for 16+ with us, and was nearly just about 16-1/2 year old, with 15 of those years spritely and the last year or so declining. I was happy she lived as long as she did and so greived that she has gone on already. I really thought yesterday she might die then, but she didn’t and seemed alive enough, but old and declining. Good news this morning from my daughter, but then, it happened and we won’t ever have that beautiful tuxedo cat rubbing our legs like only she could do. Her distinctive meow, her majestic aura. She loved to play with the rings of plastic that come off a gallon bottle of water or milk. You could chirp to her to get her attention, and pretend to throw them into the air a few times, and she’d track and track until you’d let go and she’d jump sky high to get them. She’s play on the floor with them, put them on the rails of the bottoms of the kitchen chairs and … I could go on and on, she was so playful as a kitten and kept up with it long into adulthood. She didn’t play as much these last few years, but she did play atimes. We had 6 other much younger cats this whole time, so we didn’t try to get her to play as much as we should have probably.

Well, she’s gone now and that’s something that we have to deal with and move on. We’ll bury here in the back yard by my Sammy, and I’ll put wild flower seed there to grow over them.

My dear Princess Sonia is gone and my children are missing her as much as I am. It’s a sad day, this Mother’s Day. My dear friend of 16 years is gone.

See her photos on my Flickr account: Princess Sonia (Set). I only have four there now, I’ll be finding all my digitals and putting the best of her up soon, and then from my film collection once I get a scanner again (I don’t currently have one.)


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