Wow.... 10 years......

Ten years ago today, Britain lost "The People's Princess" and the world lost a beautiful person and humanitarian.


On that same day, I put down *my* first cat, Sandi. (Not a family cat, but *mine*)


All the hoopla about Princess Di every year always reminds me. Because Europe is half a day ahead of us, August 31 there was still August 30 here and Sandi and I sat up on the couch late into the night watching the news coverage of the accident, me knowing what I was going to be doing the next day.


I wish we'd had digital cameras then, because while I have a lot of photos of Sandi, they are not as accessible as the digitals I have of Taz and Aspen. I have to find which storage box they are in, sort thru them, warm up the scanner, pre-scan them, crop and adjust colors or lighting, scan them, then open them in my photo software and save a second, smaller version for uploading. The whole process takes about 3-7 minutes PER PICTURE, so I don't have many of Sandi on my computer, but I do have a couple....




Wasn't she a PRETTY girl?

Let me tell you, she did not have a sunny disposition..... Stacy and I gave her the middle name of "Christine" in reference to the possessed car in the Stephen King novel! Her nickname was "The Bitch". It was earned. She was actually Stacy's cat. He got her just as we started dating, so she bonded with me from just about day one. He made the decision to have her declawed on all 4 feet (NOT something I would have done, but she wasn't MINE yet). With her, it may have been a good decision as that cat was 15 lbs of MUSCLE. She had a powerful right hook and if she smacked you, YOU KNEW IT. I can only imagine the damage she would have done with claws!


In the first photo she is sitting next to her food dishes on TOP of our refrigerator. Stacy and I had a bad time with ants in our apartment on Royal Oaks and that was the one place we found we could put the cat food without the ants getting it and since Sandi and our other cat, Torti, would not stay off the kitchen counter anyway, it was really easy to teach them to jump up there for their food. Sandi also LOVED high places. She would look down at you like the "Church Lady" as if to say, "I'm superior! I'm Superior!". Like all my girls, she was also an indoor only cat. I did try leash training with her, but that did not go well.

Sandi was NOT amused the day we brought Taz and Aspen home! First of all, it was the day we moved. I figured if all 3 cats came into the apartment without any of them having lived there before it would help. I'm sure it did, a little, but that was a rough couple of months at the beginning and I think it was a year before Taz and Aspen had run of the house at bedtime. Sandi and Aspen NEVER got along.... Aspen wanted to be "Top Cat" something fierce, but that position was held by Sandi and enforced by me! Taz and Sandi tolerated each other.

Taz reminds me of Sandi in many ways, she probably learned from her.... Sandi was NEVER a lap cat. She MIGHT sit beside you, but NEVER on you. She hated to be held. She would wait till I fell asleep at night and THEN come sleep right next to me, but down by my knees where I couldn't easily reach her. Taz is a LITTLE better about that - she sleeps by my waist!


So now you've met my first little fuzzy SUNSHINE.... the cat that was the inspiration for most of my screen names and e-mail addresses as well as the license plate on my car, SNDIMOM.