Long live the King!

I adopted our cat, Ingmar, his brother and his mother 16 years ago in early October 1991. I has been looking for ONE cat and had offered to help at a "no-kill" cat shelter in Denver where we were living at the time. This is a type of shelter that does not euthanize the cats so they can essentially live there forever if they are not adopted.

One day about a month after my visit, I received a phone call from the woman who ran the shelter informing me that they had just found a mother cat and her two kittens who were barely a couple of weeks old. At the shelter there were several very sick cats and she did not want the very young kittens to be there until the danger had passed of them contracting the illness which would have been lethal to their undeveloped immune systems. She asked if I could foster them for a few weeks. Well, I hadn't been expecting to have three cats in my house, much less, three feral cats, but having a very large bathroom at the time where I could put them in while I was away at work during the day, and with Steve's encouragement I decided to take them all in.

The mother, I named her Jarboe, was a very petite tortoiseshell cat with the sweetest disposition in the world. She immediately melted my cynical heart. Her two little fluff balls were a grey extremely affectionate kitten with white paws (and at the time) blue eyes whom I named Ingmar. The little black kitten, I named Gysin, was a bit more resistant to affection and was always a bit spooked by everyone.

I was only supposed to watch over them for 3 weeks, but 3 weeks turned into the rest of their lives. Sadly, both Jarboe and Gysin are no longer with us. Jarboe dying unexpectedly of a congenital heart defect and Gysin of a heart infection.

Ingmar is the last of the most beautiful, gentle, sweet and affectionate trio of cats I had the immense great fortune to love and have in my life. Ingmar is now 16 years old and I'm very happy that for these past years he has spent them as The Beehive's official mascot. This has been an ideal place for him - an environment where he gets much attention, affection from both staff and guests and after many, many years of cooped up apartment living, he finally has an outdoor garden to soak up the sun and experience a tiny bit of nature these last years of his life. Long live the King!