Rascal's Spot

 Rascal has been a very big part of Our Little World.

She was snuggly and funny (yes, I said funny) and happy and loyal and so many other wonderful things.

Over the course of her 16 (human) years of life, she brought us so much joy, a little frustration, and tons and tons of cat hair! She was always a feisty, social and snuggly little kitty, and even though we saw signs of her aging every day (I liked to call her grandma kitty), she still surprised us quite often with playful nips and running around the house.

Yesterday (September 27, 2013) we said goodbye to our sweet girl (see HERE). We spent the afternoon looking at pictures and videos and reminiscing about our time with her, so I thought that I'd create this page so that we can share those memories with those of you who loved her too!

On the night that Rascal got her angel wings I couldn't sleep so I wrote her the letter that you see when you click on the 'see here' above. I learned that writing to her was therapeutic and helped me cope a little better - here are the links to the other letters that I have written her:

Letter 2
Letter 3
Letter 4
Letter 5
Letter 6
Letter 7
Letter 8

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About Rascal - The Facts:

Rascal came into our lives during the Summer of 1997. My mom was shopping at Wal-Mart one day and couldn't resist looking at the brand new, super adorable kittens that were being given away. She saw our Rascal and noted how adorable she was - she also noted a little (bratty) girl who had her eye on Rascal as well. In a part thoughtful/part vengeful gesture, my mom decided to bring Rascal home ... the story from here gets a little dicey depending on who you talk to - my mom claims that she brought Rascal home for my brother, Blake, but I'm pretty sure I remember her telling me that Rascal was meant for me because I had never had my own pet before ... either way, Rascal was welcomed happily by most of us (it took my dad a little time to warm to the idea of yet another cat in the family after we had so many who had gone on before her time), although it was he who told us that Rascal was actually a girl, not a boy!!

 

Rascal has been a part of our lives almost as long as Nate & I have been together (just one year shy). She grew up with us and loved us and was loved in return by (almost) everyone who met her. Over the course of her life, Rascal lived in 8 different homes and 2 different States. She hated traveling in the car and when we moved to Oregon we had to sedate her so that we would survive the move - and we worried about her every single second that she was knocked out!

Over the years she went by many names: Rascal, Rascky, Rascal Face, 'The Fuzz,' Red Headed Step Child, Baby, Sweetie, Sher, Racsal and she even had a name sign (a name in sign language). 

She was a good little kitty and we will be forever grateful for the joy and happiness that she brought into our lives during our years together.

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When Rascal was still pretty new to our family (just a few weeks after we got her) we took her to a Curtis Family Reunion at Beaver Mountain. She was still such a tiny thing that she fit not only in the palm of my hands, but in the front pocket of my overalls (that apparently were in style at the time). I wish, I wish, I wish that I had a picture of her sitting in my overalls - from what I can remember, she really didn't seem to mind that spot - maybe that's why she always felt like she had to lay right on my chest with her head near my heart ...

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The Purr

Rascal was not much of a loud 'purrer' until the last few years of her life. She had a funny habit of trying to nuzzle her way onto our chests  and before she even got comfortable we could hear her purring. If you listen closely to this video, you can her sweet little purr as she was trying to nuzzle her way in. You'll also hear me blowing at her - which is what we did when she got too close!!

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Funny things about Rascal:

- The drool. Oh that drooling, silly cat. After we got married and moved into our garage turned into apartment on 18th North, Rascal came back to live with us after her short stay with my parents while we were getting settled. It was after this transition in her life that she started drooling. The drool came whenever she was getting petted, whenever she tried to nuzzle our necks and chest, and whenever she seemed content. It worried me when it started so I called the Vet. The Vet told me that cats tend to drool when they are happy. She wasn't showing any other symptoms or doing anything weird - just drooling when she was getting love - she drooled for the rest of her life. We went through piles and piles of laundry because there was nothing that we could do to stop her from drooling on us as gross as it was ... Looking back at all this drool comforts me because it helps me realize that we did give her a good life and that she knew that she was loved.

- One time, she 'got lost' in our chest of drawers. We could not find her and looked for her all night long - we looked outside we looked inside and we were so devastated when we couldn't find her. I was sitting in our closet, heartbroken, when all the sudden I heard her meow. We looked and looked and we found her in our dresser drawers - she fell asleep in there and apparently was quite comfortable because she didn't make a peep when we were looking for her earlier. From that point on, we were pretty careful about closing our drawers, although when she did see them open, she did everything she could to get in to them!

 

- There were a couple of other times when Rascal got lost outside of the house and both times I was completely terrified for her! The first time was when she was just a baby, not quite a year after we got her. When I lived on the Island in Logan we let her out during the day because she loved to be outside - she was usually really good to stay around our house and we were very careful about watching her. The night that she got lost (luckily it was in May/June so it wasn't super cold out) I was a wreck. We looked for her for several hours outside - walking around the neighborhood, waiting for her on the porch and I even slept in the front room with the door open all night so that she could come back ... the next morning, our very kind neighbor (Susan) knocked on the door and in her hands was my Rascal! She said that she had wandered on to their back porch late the night before and she didn't want to wake us, so she let her sleep at their house for the night! I was so happy to see our girl and I was so grateful that Susan knew where she belonged! The other time Rascal got lost was when we lived up on Cliffside with Nate's parents! At that point, Rascal had not been outdoors for literally years! She was de-clawed and so used to being pampered that my fear for her at that point was just not being able to defend herself against other bigger animals that had 'street smarts.' Luckily she wandered into the back yard after just a short time and I was able to calm down! 

- Rascal was really, really good at playing fetch with us for the first several years of her life. We are so sad that we don't have any videos of her when she was small and feisty, but oh she was feisty! She would catch the balls and carry them back to us with her front teeth and it was so adorable!

- Another game that Rascal really liked to play (even up until the last few months) was 'Hide & Seek.' She would chase me around the house and then when we would turn around and chase her, she would hide - under beds, behind the couch, around the corner ... whenever we would get close, she would tear out of her hiding place and find somewhere else to hide behind. If we ever got distracted and stopped looking for her, she would meow loudly until we went and found her.

- Rascal LOVED when we had live plants in the house because she would try to eat them. Over the course of the years Nate has only been able to bring home flowers a few times because we had no where to keep them where she couldn't reach them ...

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Rascal LOVED wrestling with Nate & with my dad. For the first several years of her life, both men would have super scratched up arms because she loved to play, which included holding on to them as tightly as she could. She was a tough little kitty and could give them a run for their money! If Nate walked away before she was done playing, she would follow behind him and nip at his heels. She would also follow him around the bed trying to get him to play with her - we got a lot of entertainment out of seeing how many times he could get her to walk around the bed before he started playing with her! This video was taken several months ago and is a very short representation of all of the wrestling that she undertook over her life!
(Sorry it's sideways)

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- When our nephew, Sam, was trying to learn the 'him/her/she' speech rule, he would look at Rascal and say things like, 'What's Sher doing?' We still quote him often, and most of the time it was in reference to what Rascal was doing! She was adored by most of our nephews and nieces. 

- For some Reason, Rascal LOVED Icy Hot! Anytime we would use it for any reason she would come around ... I once read that Icy Hot was good for helping with colds and fevers if you put it on your feet and whenever we did that and covered it with socks, Rascal would try to lick our feet through our socks! She would dig and sniff and try to find wherever it was and a few times we would pull it out just to see what she did!

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Rascal was notorious for wanting to be involved in anything that I was working on when it was down on the ground. Whether it was homework, crafting, scrapbooking - if I sat down and pulled it out, she would come and sit right in the middle of it:

 

She was also really good at stealing your spot on a couch or a chair - especially if you've been sitting there long enough to make it warm:

 

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- When Rascal was a kitten and into her 'middle years' she loved to pounce. We spent many mornings playing the pounce game before I got out of bed. I would hide my fingers under our bed spread and pull one out and move it around a little. She would stand at the end of the bed, watch for my finger, spring for the attack and pounce on it. This also worked with the ties on our blankets or by scratching the sheet under the blanket - she would cock her head, listen for the sound, the pounce or try to dig under the blanket to get my hand. She was really good at it and it didn't take very many times before I learned to hide my fingers before she would get to them because she was attacking to win!!

- When Rascal was a baby we fed her milk and it made her sick, so as a rule we never gave her any human food (including milk but excluding Tuna when we forgot to make a cat food run, but that only happened one or two times in her whole life). The funny thing about this is that any time we had a bowl of cereal that we sat down to eat (usually on the couch), Rascal would be hovering the whole time and trying to get her head in the bowl! She didn't show much interest in any other foods (except yogurt and sour cream and onion potato chips), but we could always count on her coming around when there was cereal!!

- Rascal LOVED to be warm. Throughout her whole life if she wasn't waiting for us at the front door when we got home we could find her snuggled up in a blanket, in her cat bed or nestled underneath the bedspread on our bed (her favorite place to hide whenever kids came around). When she was under the bedspread, there was usually a tunnel from the top of the bed between our pillows to the middle of the bed ... it was pretty cute!

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For some reason, when we lived on our apartment on the Island before we moved to Oregon, Rascal loved to get into the cupboard under the sink, coincidentally, where we kept our garbage. Because it was an older apartment, the cupboard door didn't stick very well so we came up with a genius idea to keep her out of it - which of course, she didn't like:

 

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Life in Oregon:

Rascal transitioned pretty well to our new house in Oregon. She was super happy to be out of her carrier when we pulled her out and she spent her sweet time exploring our new home ... she did seem to have a little bit of post traumatic stress though - as we were all relaxing from our long drive for the move she hissed at my dad when he tried to pet her, which never happened before and never happened again ... silly girl ...

 Another thing that was new with Rascal after our move to Oregon is that we started hearing her snoring on occasion - usually she was a pretty quiet sleeper, but every once in a while we'd catch her snoring and/or twitching ... we didn't get any videos of her twitching, which is a shame because it was adorable, but here is a video of her snoring ...

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- Rascal turned out to be a possessive little kitty.  Whenever she was napping on the couch with either or both of us, she would always have to be touching us in some way and ended up sleeping like this a lot of the time:

 

She also LOVED to catch US napping on the couch:

 

   

Or just taking naps in general - we often found her in funny positions:

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All Paws!!

Rascal had cute little paws! These are two of my FAVORITE pictures of her:

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A few weeks after Rascal left us we received a card from her Vet with a poem called "The Rainbow Bridge." As I opened up the poem and read it tears came to my eyes as I pictured our girl running and playing and healthy and strong - I have believed my whole life that animals who are family members definitely have a special spot in Heaven and this poem brought me so much comfort ...

 

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September 27, 2014

Dear Rascal,

I have been dreading this day for the last year. It has been exactly one year since we said goodbye to you. I don't know why I place such importance on anniversaries - when they are happy things it seems appropriate, but when we lost you my heart was broken and to be quite frank, it still kind of is.

I think about you every day, sweet girl. Our lives have changed drastically in the last year - we have had a lot going on, but that doesn't mean that we don't miss you. Your picture is still in our living room and your ashes are still tucked inside your box. We talk about you often and we laugh about the silly things you used to do, but as much as we miss you, we are so relieved that you are not in pain anymore. The last day of your life was so hard for us because you just looked so miserable. Looking back, we can say that we knew that it was coming, but that didn't make it any easier for us.

When we moved out of our apartment a few months ago, we were hit with sadness because it was the last home that you lived in - and even though it had been several months that you had been there, there was still evidence that you were there. When we moved the fridge, there were piles of paper towel rings that you had "lost" to the bottom of the fridge. It made us sad, and then we smiled and I didn't get a chance to take a picture of them before one of our friends cleaned them all up, but it was a wonderful reminder that you will always be with us even though we can't see you or hold you.

We love you, Rascal! We miss you and we hope that you're happy up there, pouncing around in kitty heaven.

Love,

Mommy