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| Tiny and scared the day I brought her home at five weeks old |
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| With her twin brother, Clive, as little kittens |
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| Under the lemongrass bush in the front yard |
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| Clive, lazy and happy as always, and Betsy, working hard to be a good sister, as always |
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| Showing off her ability to flatten her hips and hyper-extend her arms |
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| Adorable and having sweet dreams while slowly falling off the back of the couch |
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| Getting her required solar charge |
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| The last picture we have of her - enjoying her favorite spot being rubbed |
Beautiful little Betsy died today, Saturday, April 28, and we will greatly miss her. She very suddenly got very ill on Wednesday morning and never recovered. We don't know what happened, but our best guess is that she ate a poisoned mouse while out hunting Tuesday evening. The neighbors might have set out poison or traps for rodents and we know she caught and ate some critter Tuesday right before coming in that night. But really, we don't know and never will. Instead of remembering her last few days of increasing weakness and seizures, we'll remember her life of five years before that.
I got her and her twin brother, Clive (who died six months ago), on April 4, 2007, just a month after I moved to Musoma. Clive was the type who took all the attention he could, but Betsy was always quietly in the background, bathing herself and him regularly, hunting everything that moved - geckos, cockroaches, mice, snakes, birds, hedgehogs, bats - and being a faithful sister to her crazy brother. Betsy, more frequently called Little B or Baby B, would patiently stalk a gecko for an hour as it skittered around up by the ceiling, and as soon as it dared to venture within her leaping range, she would launch herself straight up on the wall about five feet high and snag it. If she saw a cockroach run under a cabinet, she would sit by that cabinet until it came back out again, and that was the end of that. Also, she once rescued our neighbor Holly from a bat swooping around her house. Our house has always been very clean, thanks to Betsy.
She had to have been the cleanest, silkiest cat in all of Tanzania. She spent hours and hours every day bathing herself and Clive. Her fur was gorgeous, as you can see in the pictures. She had stripes on her face, legs, and tail, and spots on her sides and tiny tummy. She sparkled with gold highlights in the sunshine, which she sought out whenever possible. She was a total girly girl, clean as can be and adoring purses, bags, and shoes (sleeping on them, not using them!). Never weighing over six pounds and usually checking in at five, despite being a relatively tall cat, Betsy was leggy, blonde, and thin as a model. If she had been a human, she could have made a fortune off her looks. And she would have loved actually getting to use her favorite accessories!
Betsy was rather selective when it came to people she liked, and only the chosen few guests even saw her, much less coaxed her to sit on their laps. Since I had the privilege of being her favorite person, she'd let me scoop her up and hold her, and she loved to sit on my lap every evening while watching something or reading. We'd call out to her, "TV time, Little B!" and she'd come trotting over to the couch for some love. Her other favorite time of day was morning exercises with me. Every weekday morning, after getting a little breakfast and a good morning scratch from Andrew, she and I would go in the bedroom and spread out my exercise mat. While I stretched (and petted her) and/or did aerobics, she laid on the mat and kept me company the whole time. She wasn't much for exercising herself (sleeping in the sunshine was her primary specialty in life), but she did a great job of encouraging me to limber up and work out, because she gave me a hard time if I ever skipped our routine or cut it short!
We loved you very much, Little B, and we'll miss you! Whatever will we do now with all the critters in our house and yard?!
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