(July 2002 – August 20, 2018)
Brought into our home in September 2002, SeQueL was an unintentional outcome of our initial attempts at animal rescue. For nearly a year, we had been seeing a beautiful feral cat in the neighborhood. We assumed she was an abandoned house cat, and therefore spayed. Until one day, we saw that cat with a little ball of black fur wobbling behind her. So we set out a trap to catch her and get her spayed. What did we catch instead? The furball. (The mom is still running loose to this day, and now we leave all feral cat trapping to our friends at Thundering Paws animal sanctuary.)
She was very thin with a tummy distended from worms. We took care of her health and vaccinations, and soon enough she was healthy and gradually recovering from malnutrition. The furball became a furry tummy with huge ears, then the gremlin’s legs stabilized, and she morphed into a playful kitten, and eventually into a sizeable and Rubenesque cat. In short, she was a hairy potato whose parts gradually grew out to make Mrs. Potato Head.
Even though she was only a few weeks old when we found her, we’ve never been able to tame out the feral fearfulness in her. SeQueL is afraid of everything. She spends most of her days hiding under our bed or behind the toilet in our master bathroom. She’s so adept at hiding that in fact, most of our friends and houseguests don’t even know that we still have a cat living in our house.
Fortunately, one thing she isn’t afraid of is…her hairbrush. Just dangling her hairbrush in front of her will often bring her out for an ecstatic session of brushing and purring – until it ends, and she scurries back to her hiding spot.
Getting to Know SeQueL
- She eats: Hills Science Diet cat food – because everything else results in bad digestion.
- She reads: survival manuals and the Twilight series. (She just starts over again when she’s done because she’s forgotten the plot by the time she finishes.)
- She has an animal spirit guide in the form of a: hermit crab.
- She secretly longs to be: invisible.
- She is a celebrity doppelganger for: the frightened Halloween cat.
- She could be an amalgamation of the following fictional characters: the cowardly lion from Oz, Brittany S. Pierce from Glee, and Tweek Tweak from South Park.
- Random factoid: We once left a fish taco dinner unattended to answer a joint phone call and came back to find SeQueL guility jumping off the table. Expecting to find all the fish devoured, we found instead that SeQueL had consumed all of…the cheese.
SeQueL’s Obituary
What we learned from SeQueL was the value of quietness and resilience. She was terribly shy and, to be honest, unremarkable compared to the rest of the computer cat trio. Pascal was demanding and feisty, and Perl was so perfect that Texas A&M literally cloned her. SeQueL was mainly known for being good at hiding and being the only cat brave/stupid enough to catch scorpions. She also had a special bond with Toli – they shared a elusive mix of love, respect, obstinacy, and feral instinct…
Even though SeQueL wasn’t the brightest star in our constellation, she certainly shined the longest. We trapped her as a kitten just after our wedding in 2002 and had to transport her to her first vet visit in one of our wedding gift boxes because we didn’t have a proper carrier. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with kidney disease. We’ve calculated that we’ve given her close to 500 subcutaneous infusions (so much for her being our most low maintenance cat), but she far outlived the prognosis of 6-months-to-2-years she received.
For the first time in 17+ years, it’s just two humans in the Lerios household. It’s sad and a little weird, but we’ll keep it this way while we travel a bit. Thanks to everyone for the hugs and love. Don’t feel like you need to leave a sympathy note or anything – SeQueL didn’t really like a lot of attention, and she left the world as gracefully and quietly as she lived in it.
A Day in the Life of SeQueL
Below is a collection of images that we used to have running as a narrative SeQueL on our old website. Christine has ported them to a gallery and preserved the commentary. Just click on one of the thumbnails to enlarge the picture, read the commentary, and navigate through the gallery.
