Remembering Margaret

Margaret was a good cat. She was sick and today we made the hardest decision that pet owners have to make. She will be missed.

In her memory I will tell you 10 things that you may not have known about our cat Margaret:

1. Margaret's full name was Margaret the Log Lady. Our previous cat's name was Deputy Andy and he was Margaret's litter mate. (Do I know how to name a cat or what?!)


2. Margaret was a boy cat but by the time I realized that the name had stuck. In my defense she was VERY young when I got her and to that point I had been a life-long city girl. I just referred to her as being transgendered and that we were okay with her decisions. I have been openly mocked by every vet who has seen her for the past 14 years. I'm still okay with that. (Although we have wisely sought sober second opinions on gender assignment on every cat owned since.)


3. Margaret and Andy were gifts from one of my previous co-workers. I had casually mentioned one day that I was contemplating getting a cat because Scott didn't like dogs and I wanted a pet. He brought me two the very next day. Um... thanks. Now what?


4. Margaret was also known as Margaret the Bad Cat as she was a very mischievous kitten and young cat. She liked to ride on the dashboard of my Neon while I drove (I guess she liked to go fast.). She stole entire loaves of bread that were way bigger than her, took pieces of ham right off the Easter dinner platter left briefly unattended, somehow managed to eat the rubber handles off an exercise bike and knocked a light fixture off the ceiling at my house in Pierson. She ate every single house plant I have ever owned and knocked the ones she didn't like to eat off the shelf or table as a sign of her displeasure.


5. I once found Margaret tied to a couch. Oh I wish I'd had a camera that day!She had been playing with a ball of my knitting yarn and obviously had a great time rolling the ball under the couch and back up over the other side- many times. She had created a tangled spider-web up, over and around the couch and then proceeded to play inside the web- until she got stuck. I found her with her back leg hopelessly tied and her trying to act all casual. I stopped knitting for those years as I recognized that this might have been a first but it would not have been the last time I found her like this. I did a lot of reading in those years.


6. Margaret was a fierce fighter: she believed her tail was actually something scary lurking behind her and attacked it bravely and regularly. She also kept Scott and my bed free from bed mice. (Bed mice are anything that happened to move under the covers.) She hated shower curtains, especially the ones with magnets in them. And she ran around the house every night at 10:30pm patrolling the house and ringing out the cat alarm for other lazier cats who will remain nameless to get off their butts and to help her out on patrol. She routinely killed the kids' slippers. She would leave these now-dead offerings on Scott's pillow...which, now that I think about it may have been a thinly disguised threat.


7. Margaret was possessive. I belonged to her and her alone. She got slightly more social as she got older but not by so much as that she wanted to be touched by anyone just to be in the same room to supervise you. She gave the best purr therapy.


8. Margaret always slept with Scott and I and was very snugly. She liked to sleep curled up in my arm crook under the covers or right on my hip as I slept on my side.


9. Margaret woke me every day by butting her head into my open palm and demanded being petting RIGHT NOW. She would lick my hand or inner elbow if I didn't wake up fast enough to please her. Sometimes she would switch it up and sneeze in my face if I was being persistent about wanting to be asleep. I would have to pet her until she was satisfied and then she would walk away and go back to sleep- we called this "loving the Margaret".


10. Although quite anti-social she was quite patient with the kids and was a very good family pet.

Thank you Margaret for being part of our family. XOXOXOXO