I love and worship cats, particularly my cat Hilary. Being of the silly persuasion, we have skillfully translated some common songs in order to capture their true meaning more clearly. Here are some favorites from our collection of Tuna songs thus far. Here is a list of basic rules for cats. Here are some "Laws of Physics" for cats. If you think those are funny, check out this collection of Cat Haiku!

Hilary was born in the early summer of 1988. My dad found her and her brother Moose-Moose on the side of the highway in an unlabelled box. Being a kind fellow, he took them in and, after a long conversation on the phone with my mom, I took them home to live with us. They were probably about 6-7 weeks old - very tiny, and were covered with fleas. From their swollen bellies, it was pretty obvious that they had worms, too. We brought them to the vet, and after a few shots, de-wormings, and flea dips, they were in good shape. We named Hilary after Sir Hillary, the man who climbed Mount Everest. We thought she was a boy at the time. We named Moose-Moose because.. well, we just called him that. He was a Moose, compared to Hilary (he was almost twice her size in the beginning). A soft, cuddly, beautiful steel blue statue of a cat, Moose-Moose was killed by a car just before we moved to Vermont.

Hilary came with us. When I went to college at UVM, she lived with my mom and little sister, Rachel. When I graduated, she came to live with me and Mike, and we haven't been apart since. Though Hilary was an indoor/outdoor cat when she lived with my mom, Mike and I decided to keep her indoors when she moved in with us, because we lived in Burlington on a busy street. Since then, we've moved out to Jericho. Although we live "out in the country" and the danger of getting hit by a car is fairly low, there are many other dangers, and we decided that we'd rather have her live a long, healthy, safe life than let her outside and worry about her constantly. I used to strongly believe that all cats should be allowed out, but as I've lived with Hilary, remembered Moose-Moose, and thought more about it, I've changed my mind completely. Write to me if you want to know more.

We took a digital camera home from work in the summer of 1998 and took quite a few pictures of her. In some of the pictures, you may be able to notice that her left eye looks different from her right. She's had a problem with her left eye for about two years now. It has been diagnosed as "uveitis". We first noticed that she had a very small discharge from that eye - goopy stuff, but not much of it.. this went on with no other signs for almost a year. Her vet looked at her at her yearly physical, and said that it was probably allergies, although it was odd that it was only happening in one eye. Over the next several months, her iris changed. The normally green area became more orange/red in color, and we could see that it was richly supplied with blood vessels - as if her iris had become inflamed. Again, the vet didn't know what to think. He gave us some drops to put in her eye, which we gave her 3 times a day, but she absolutely hated them. The blood vessels seemed to shrink when she was on the drops, and her eye looked more normal, but as soon as we ran out, the eye looked worse again.

She didn't seem to be in any pain, and seemed to be seeing just fine, so we weren't sure what to do. For other independant reasons, we started seeing another vet. She took a good look at the eye. Hilary could still see fine. She put some sort of glowing fluid into the eye, and it quickly dribbled out of Hilary's nose (ick!), which told her that her tears were draining properly.. She gave us some ointment to put in the eye (which Hilary didn't mind nearly as much as the drops, although I'm sure the ointment obscured her vision), which we put in for a while. Then we stopped it, and brought her back for a re-check. It might have improved a bit, but we weren't sure. The vet suggested that we bring her to an animal opthamologist. The nearest ones were 1 1/2 or 4 hours away. They did come to our area every few months for two days though, and we could schedule an appointment.. Unfortunately, the fee was $100 just to see her, plus whatever else they recommended. It was a difficult decision, but we decided to wait, since Hilary seemed to have fine vision, and seemed to be experiencing no discomfort. If it ever gets worse or her vision starts to suffer (or she's in pain), we would certainly persue treatment.

Here is a picture of her showing the difference in color between her two eyes (taken in winter of 1998). If you look carefully, the left iris seemed inflamed. Her eyes do tend to reflect slightly differently in pictures. I'm not sure whether that is normal or not. Also, we have noticed that there seems to be a small, elliptical mark within her eye - perhaps this is what is left of her original injury. I can't tell whether it's on the surface, or whether it's a problem with her retina - but it seems as if that area is truly "black", rather than reflective. Because the silly digital camera that we've been using doesn't take close up pictures well, we haven't managed to get a good shot of this part of her eye.

Through the winter of 1998/1999, her eye has mysteriously improved (superficially anyway). The irises are almost identical, although the black spot hasn't changed. We'll continue to watch her.

Hilary mysteriously developed an aggressive squamous cell carcinoma in her lower left jaw in the spring of 1999. We had it a biopsy done, hoping it was benign or slow growing, and it turned to be an advanced, aggressive terrible cancer. Nobody wanted to operate, and the veterinary surgeons we talked to insisted that they would have to remove 1/2 of her jaw to give her a chance, and cats don't recover well from that kind of surgery.. and the chance of recurrances are significant. We fed her turkey and chicken baby food, tuna that we put in a blender, and anything else she'd eat, until the tumor became too far advanced. She looked like she was in a lot of pain, and drooled mucous and blood constantly. We had her put to sleep in April. It was horrible.