chateau aux deux chats

Harriet May 24, 1998 - January 19, 2017 (photo dmg)

The grande dame of the chateau has departed. What can I possibly say? What a beautiful queen of a cat. (Someone else said that, but it’s true.) (Another someone else said “looks like Jabba the Hut”, which may also have been true, but it didn’t sum up her beauty, intelligence, and kindness in quite the same way.)

photo dmg

Harriet, Miss H, get-down-from-the-counter-you-bad-girl, Sweetness, Baby, Princess.

The evening I brought Ozzie and Harriet home from the Pet-Valu where they’d been in the Humane Society’s adoption display (“brother and sister, will do best together”), I let them loose to explore the house, and then lay back on my sofa to watch the fun. Harriet came straight over, jumped up on the sofa and climbed onto my head. And the rest is history. Harriet. Loved. Me.

Best selfie I've ever taken. January 2014

Her one-person-cat-ness caused some to find her aloof, but then again, the comparator was Ozzie-the-slut. We all seem aloof on that scale. Any vet that ever dealt with Miss H was charmed by her calm, sweet disposition, and her self-possession. Just a few weeks ago, a (new to Harriet) vet’s assistant said, “I like you. I think I’d like you as a person. And I don’t like many people.” And H softened a lot in her old age, in particular developing companionable relationships with Mum and the geek. The latter was not a given! When the geek and I first started dating and he came over to visit, Harriet would burrow under the area rug in the living room in protest. Neither of them wanted to share. But in recent years they fell into a comfortable routine of hanging out together in the geek’s study as he worked into the wee small hours, taking breaks to go to the kitchen for their respective snacks.

Audio I wish I’d recorded: lying in bed listening to the geek snoring on one side of me and Harriet snoring on the other.

"Aloof? Me?" July 2010

Harriet was a cat of comfortable proportions. As I patiently explained to guffawing non-believers for years, she had big bones. She really did! She had great big paddle-sized paws and a barrel chest that became all too obvious as her appetite waned over the last few months. But she did experience the world through her mouth. And she knew that people-food was infinitely interesting; she would do pretty much anything to get at it. She had a particular fondness for baked goods. And so, the belly…what a belly!

May 2004

May 2009

May 2011

May 2013

Harriet had the softest coat you could imagine, and the most beautiful tabby stripes – fashion designers should do so well. And magnificent whiskers.

February 2016

2003 (photo dmg)

May 2011

July 2012

February 2016

She was a little bit clumsy, which hampered her alpha-cat determination to get to the highest spot possible. Big claw marks down the wall under the very high window ledge in the kitchen in Winnipeg, and more here under the bedroom window. When I first started letting the cats outdoors, in little harnesses tied to the back door, she headed straight for the neighbour’s tall fence and promptly fell over the other side of it, dangling and swinging, and had to be rescued.

Harriet loved to be held (by me, anyway). I always thought of her as a “rubber chicken” cat. You know, floppy and relaxed and unconcerned by dancing, squeezing, nuzzling, or just being carried around all over the place. Sometimes she would even ride on my shoulders. (I had to hunch over a bit, and move very carefully - see "clumsy" above.)

April 2014

Video I wish I’d recorded: the beautiful dexterity of Harriet drinking out of the water dish using her paw as a ladle. Here you can see said dexterity applied to holding catmint for chewing. (You may need to click to see the photo bigger.)

July 2009

H was dominant (she got into terrible through-the-window fights with intruders) but didn’t range far. She let Oz do the perimeter prowls while she snoozed on the deck or hung out somewhere close to her beloved catmint, or anyplace with warm stones and sun.