The day I hoped would never arrive came yesterday. I had my beloved Sorcha put to sleep and I’m heartbroken. She was only a month away from her 15th birthday and I really just cannot explain how I feel, except empty.
This morning is the first morning that I can remember waking up without her in bed beside me, getting up without her following me or sitting here at my computer without her on my knee or lying on the bed watching me and at the moment it’s physically painful.
She joined our family in July 2000 as our first breeding queen. At that time we had Pasht, our Abyssinian, Merlin, our first Somali and Briagha, our Havana, all long gone now. As we drove home, with her sitting on my lap, we had high hopes of her future, but little did we even begin to suspect just how successful she would be for us, both as a breeding queen and a show cat.
She walked into our house as the most confident kitten we had ever introduced and from the day she arrived she proved to be the most intelligent of all our cats. She hadn’t been in the house long before she fell in love with Leo, our German Shepherd and she soon decided it wasn’t fair that he was left alone in the living room at night. So, taking matters into her own hands (or should I say paws) she worked out how to open the door and let him out! It was a few weeks before Barry realised that he wasn’t losing his marbles and forgetting to shut the door. To this day every door from our hallway has a lock on it, because she simply would not be locked out of a room!
As a breeding queen she truly excelled. In her breeding career she had five litters from three different studs and there were show winners in every litter. Her first litter of three produced for us Gr Ch & Gr Pr Feorag Bohemian Rhapsody, (Leyla) who was actually her first born kitten (and if Freddy Mercury hadn’t died three weeks after they were born, she would have been registered as Feorag First Born!). Leyla was our first home bred Champion and Grand Champion, the first Somali to achieve a double Grand title and the top winning Somali in 1997 and for that alone Sorcha exceeded any of our expectations. Her second litter produced Ch & Pr Feorag Cracklin’ Rosie and her sister Feorag Sweet Caroline, who was only shown once but won her PC and BOB. Her third litter was Gr Pr Feorag Happy Harry - what can I say? If ever I should be grateful to Sorcha for anything at all, it is for Harry! Not because he is a show winner, just because he is - well, Harry! Although, strangely, he was the one kitten she never appeared to like at all. Of course he was her first singleton and somewhat boring after litters of three, so she decided to share his upbringing with us and brought him into our bed each night from the day he was born - maybe that is why he is the way he is?
As a show cat again she excelled. Knowing that we intended to show her, her breeder entered her in the Pick of Litter Competition and she finished only one point behind the Top Ten table - six shows, six 1sts and six BOB’s and we were so proud. She won her IC’s and when Somalis gained Championship status, became the first female Somali Champion in the country and we celebrated by putting her on the front cover of “Cats”. Unfortunately after she had her first litter we realised we were going to have a constant struggle to keep her weight up to show standard - it was a losing battle and so she was retired. In the next five years she was shown only twice (both times a show fell just after her kittens were 12 weeks old and she bloomed in pregnancy and lactation) and on both occasions she won the Reserve Grand. After she reared her last litter, she returned to the showbench, in March 1998 at eight-years-old. In that year she gained her Grand Champion title. She was entered in ten Grand classes and won four Grands and five Reserves, culminating in winning Best of Breed at the Supreme. She was then neutered and came back out on the showbench as a neuter in 1999. She gained her Premier and Grand Premier title each in three straight shows. In that year she was entered in eight Grand Classes and won seven Grands and one Reserve - all at the “Grand” age of nine. She was the Somali Cat Club’s second highest scoring cat in 1998 and the top winning cat in 1999.
However, for all her success as a breeding queen and a show cat, for me her main quality was her endearing affectionate personality. She was an incurable “kneader” and would spend hours on our chests kneading away, purring constantly. When we first brought her home our son Iain was on school holiday and he formed a wonderful relationship with her. Every night when I came home, he would be sitting on the settee watching TV with Sorcha flat on her back while he rubbed her stomach. She would lie there for hours, toes curled, tail curled in an arch over her stomach in ecstasy - that was when I first thought “squirrel”. Just the week before she died he came home overnight and she was, as always, delighted to see him. He flipped her over for a tummy rub and she was putty in his hands within minutes! It never failed to amaze me that she could see him so rarely during the last 12 years, yet could turn the clock back to when she was a kitten as soon as she saw him.
On her first Christmas she delighted in playing with hazelnuts, which she helped herself to from the bowl on the Dresser. She played for hours and only had to lose a couple under the furniture before she worked it out and thereafter whenever a nut got near a “danger zone”, she would pick it up in her paws, put it in her mouth and carry it away to get on with her game. Again I thought “squirrel” and that was why I chose Feorag as my prefix, as it is gaelic for squirrel and I hoped that Sorcha would provide me with lots of little squirrels in the years to come.
She always reacted to catnip, but strangely her main passion was for peppermints. One day when she was very young I was eating a mint when she came onto my lap. When I spoke to her she literally shot forward and tried to push her head in my mouth. I took the mint out and held it to her and she began licking it and drooling everywhere. This obsession stayed with her all her life and she appears to have handed it down to all her descendants. We have to be very wary of speaking closely to any of our Somalis after we have cleaned our teeth, otherwise we risk having a head forced into our mouth! She was also an incurable head-butter. I only had to bend my face towards her and her head instantly dropped to the side ready to give me an affectionate head butt. My youngest grand-daughter particularly loved this trait and was constantly to be found telling Sorcha she loved her and receiving the acknowledgment! This is another characteristic which she has passed down to many of her descendants. In fact her grand-daughter, Purrdy, carries it to an extreme whereby she tilts her head as soon as she sees us looking at her and often by the time we reach her she has bent so far that she actually falls over.
One day I lost her in a bag of polystyrene beads! I was filling beanbags for the club stall from a very large, newly opened and extremely full sack of beads and she was sitting on my shoulders, acting supervisor as usual, watching intently. Finally she could stand it no longer - it needed further investigation and so she jumped off my shoulder into the bag. It was as though she had jumped into quicksand. She vanished instantly and I literally threw myself into the bag after her in an almost blind panic, thinking ‘suffocation’, while almost all of my bulk of polystyrene beads flew out into the living room. I found her almost at the bottom, grabbed her and pulled her out. She came out in as big a panic as I was and flew round the room scattering polystyrene beads all over the living room - it looked like we’d just been hit by a severe hailstorm.
Her most disconcerting trick (to visitors) was to rush to the bottom of the stairs as soon as she realised they were leaving. As they opened the front door, she would leap from the banister onto their shoulder to be carried out of the house, which caused many a near heart attack! Once outside she made a dash for the two houses next to us and headed down the gap between. Barry or I would follow her, walk to the gap, call her and she would walk back to us, tail in the air, proud as a peacock as if to say “See, I can get out any time I like!”
The strangest thing I found about life with Sorcha, which I think was a strange quirk on my part not hers, is that because of her intelligence and attitude I very often found myself putting human emotions and reactions to her. For instance, when a cat did something naughty, I would naturally scold it, but I found it very difficult to do this to her. Instead I usually found myself expressing disappointment, because she should have known better! Occasionally I heard something break or fall over and arrived on the scene to see a pair of apricot breeches scuttling away and shouted a verbal rebuke, assuming it was Harry or Purrdy, only to find that it was actually Sorcha. Then I had an overwhelming urge to apologise to her for shouting at her. I think the “problem” was that I just didn’t expect her to do naughty things like the other cats, because she was so intelligent, she was just above all that - it’s very difficult to explain.
She began to lose weight last autumn and blood tests revealed the beginning of kidney disease. At the beginning of this month she had a very sudden decline. She was rather quiet one day, but nothing that worried me particularly, but when I woke up the following morning I knew something was dreadfully wrong, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t move and she was very dehydrated - to tell the truth I thought she was dying. I took her to the vet and he said her kidneys were on the way out, but he could try anti-biotic and anabolic steroid injections, which might buy us some time. I begged her not to leave me (emotional blackmail, I know!) and prayed and watched and tried to get her to eat that day, but she wouldn’t. That night I went to bed and I prayed that I would wake up in the morning and find her dead beside me so that I would know she died peacefully in her sleep where she was happy. However, in the morning she was still there, but not showing any improvement. Then she started kneading me and purring and got up with me, so that was the very tiniest of improvements. She voluntarily ate about half a teaspoon of her most favourite ‘Hi-Life Seafood Platter’ and throughout that day she made very small improvements, but she was still dehydrated and I decided that if she still appeared to be as dehydrated the following morning that I would take her to the vet. However, the next day she was definitely better and so I thought ‘a stay of execution’. She picked up a little each day, put on a small amount of weight and, although she was quieter than her usual self, she was not in any obvious pain.
Twelve days later however, I knew before I even got out of bed that she had suffered a setback, I just recognised the smallest of signs. Thankfully I was off work myself which meant that I could be with her all the time to watch for any signs of a relapse and also, more importantly, to enjoy our last days together. For the last two weeks I have agonised over what to do, I have analysed my feelings as to what was right for her, frightened to give in too soon, but frightened to hang on too long. The one thing I was desperate to avoid was to be in the situation where she was in pain and frightened and I would have to rush her to the vet to have her put to sleep.
I rang the vet to ask if it was too soon for her to have another steroid and he said she could have one more, thereafter she could only have them a minimum of one month apart. However, this time she didn’t pick up like the last time. We tried every one of her favourite foods, but she didn’t have any appetite. She was hungry, but when offered the food just didn’t seem to want to eat it, so she wasn’t eating enough to sustain her weight.
I knew then that the time had come and I asked the vet to come to the house, as I didn’t want to take her to the surgery. He was very good and understanding. He gave her a sedative and she sat on my lap and fell asleep. After he left, I put her back on my knee and sobbed my grief out, then I took her upstairs and laid her on Iain’s bed until Barry came home. I have always believed that to put a pet to sleep is the final gift we can give them - a death free from pain. Yet even though I know it is the right thing to do my feelings vary between guilt, grief, pain, regret and great sorrow, but somewhere in a remote area of my brain, there is a feeling of comfort that my beloved Sorcha is in a better place and is no longer in any pain, but it is never an easy decision to make.
She looked so peaceful, as if she was asleep and for the first time in my life I understood what drives people to want to stuff an animal. I’ve always thought it was quite a macabre and unhealthy thing to do, but I confess the thought came into my head more than once yesterday as I looked at her lying there. We buried her in the garden last night beside Pasht and I cried because I had to lay her in cold wet snowridden ground! I wished it could have been summer and the ground was warm for her.
I loved her so much and I will always be eternally grateful for her. She gave me so much, materially and emotionally. She was my foundation queen and that alone made her special, but she made it quite obvious from the very beginning that I was her world and I returned that feeling unequivocally. She always slept in bed with me and always followed me, but the last few month, she was literally by my side constantly!
I never ever tired of looking at her, I thought she was the most perfect and beautiful cat in the world. I chose for her the gaelic name Sorcha, because I had read somewhere that it loosely translated from the gaelic to ‘bright eyes’ and if ever there was a bright eyed and bushy tailed kitten it was her! Since then I’ve discovered that it also means ‘radiant’. When I read that I felt so very pleased that I had chosen that name because to me she truly was radiant! If I had £1 for every time I said to her “I love you Sorcha Welsh” I would be a millionairess - instead she gave me riches beyond compare and her radiance will live on in my memory. I still have Leyla and Harry (who strangely has taken to sitting on my knee every evening since she went, as if he knows somehow) and three of her grandchildren. Also there are a lot of ‘little squirrels’ out there who have brought great joy to their owners, so she has left her own legacy.
I like to think that I gave her the best life I could and the best end I could, because I felt she so surely deserved it. She truly was my animal soul mate and I’m bereft without her.
By Eilen Welsh
