Pickle is gone.

My cat died today. Sad.

She had FIV from getting into fights with neighborhood cats and her health was in decline. There were a lot of trips to the vet over the past year. She became lethargic and incontinent for the last few months and we put her in a cage outside with a litterbox (which she had never seen before but instantly took to) at night. We fed her rich foods she wasn’t used to having like mackerel and chicken liver to supplement her normal meals. Basically, we tried to make her life very nice, because her mouser days were kind of over (although I found the remains of a pokey pokey dude near my charcoal grill and Wave 100s as recently as two weeks ago).

Pickle was the runt of her litter, and that’s why she outlived all the others — she stayed close to the house and out of the road when she was young. Her father or granddaddy (we forgot the exact lineage over time) was the spookiest cat we ever kind-of-owned and had a huge head and broad shoulders, so we called him Pumpkinhead. Her mother was either Donut or Mommy Cat. It’s amazing how little these things matter to cats. Her son was Marmalade, and he passed this year, too, back around June, also from FIV. Our gardener buried him in Nam’s mom’s garden next to where the water buffalo graze, so I took Pickle there today as well so they could rest together.

Luckily, she did not suffer too much and I was there petting her neck when she took her last breath.

Goodbye, Pickle.

Assekoeken

Couque d’Asse is a popular Korean-made cookie featuring a delicate, crisp biscuit with a creamy white chocolate or coffee filling, often sold individually wrapped. The name is a nod to the French word “couque,” meaning “cake,” and “d’Asse,” which refers to the Belgian city of Asse, although the cookie itself is a modern snack from Korea.

To add a bit more to the cultural mix, this is a Japanese cookie being sold in a Thai department store.

Why did they make the “D’asses” plural if it refers to a singular Belgian town? Because they love couques?

Pickle is Old

She’s been getting sick a lot and has skin lesions since she has FIV and is over 10 years old now. Sad.

I’ve been taking her to the vet pretty often for over a month and she has had a fever on and off for a few weeks. I kept taking her to the vet for antipyretic shots and antibiotics and various boosters, and then out to various parks and ponds for fresh air. The fever finally broke today and she is meowing again.