Bron and Sheba (GA)
Member Since 2015
As I have been sitting down writing this tribute to Sheba over the last week, I have been remembering all the happy and fun times she had with her soul mate Maxie and with her human family. She grew from being a very scared little cat to an extremely laidback, happy, contented girl.
This video was made for me by my 11 year old granddaughter Millie and she has done a wonderful job putting it together for me.
I had a photo of Sheba which I used as the front photo of the video, but when it went on Utube, one of both the cats went as the front and I couldn't change it.
I had trouble uploading the video onto FDMB and was helped by @Marje and Gracie …....who has a great deal of patience!! Thanks Marje.
I found Sheba at a rescue shelter in 2003. In the previous 9 months I had lost my 21 year old Burmese and 22 year old Tonkinese cats and thought I could never love another cat as much as I had loved Ming and Duchy. Sheba was hiding at the very back of a large open ended box which was in an area with several other cats. She was terrified, poor thing. While I was collecting her from deep within the box, Maxie, another cat, jumped up into my carrier which I had put up high on a shelf in the room. So one cat chose me and I chose one cat!
Sheba was about 18 months old and had been surrendered by a young family because the 2 year old boy kept poking her in the eyes….so they decided to give away their cat, instead of disciplining the child!
Their loss…my gain!
For the first week Sheba hid in a room and only came out to race through the house and to jump on DH’s chest when he was sitting down in the evening. Maxie, on the other hand, was very laidback about the whole deal so I am sure that helped Sheba settle. She gradually started to trust us and come out of hiding, but for years would hide when the front doorbell rang. Eventually she became very laidback and relaxed and nothing bothered her.
Sheba was an Australian Mist, a relatively new breed of cat, first bred in the 1970s here in Australia. The breed is strictly regulated and there are not a lot of people breeding them and they are rarely seen in shelters. They are a mix of half Burmese, quarter Abyssinian and quarter domestic cat. They are quite large muscular cats who love people and love to sit on laps. They come in 6 colours… blue, chocolate, peach, brown, lilac and gold and are either spotted or marbled. Sheba was a spotted blue with cream coloured fur on her belly with blue spots. I called her my snow leopard.
Sheba and Maxie soon became good friends and finally soul mates. They slept together, ate together and cleaned each other. Like all families they had their little differences of opinion……These little altercations always started the same way. Maxie would be cleaning Sheba when suddenly she would sit up and give Maxie a death stare…….she never looked away and it was a stare that could kill! Poor Maxie would sit up and put his paw up in front of him (as protection)….he knew what was coming! Suddenly Sheba would jump at him and tackle him around the neck with both paws and flip him right over. This would go on for maybe five minutes and then suddenly stop; then they would carry on as if nothing had happened. It was hilarious to watch as the same thing happened every time. Poor Maxie never won a battle. I took photos of these battles, but I have looked everywhere and can’t find them.
Many times I thought I had a herd of baby elephants thundering through the house. They would race up and down the stairs chasing each other and up and over the baby gates we had at doorways for the children. We have had 7 grandchildren come here as babies and spend 5 days a week here, and neither of the cats ever scratched any of the children. Both cats loved the children, particularly Maxie who is in most of the kids’ photos because he was always there. After Maxie died, Sheba became much closer to the kids and would seek them out and sit on their laps.
When they were younger, Maxie and Sheba would come up to the bedroom early in the mornings to try and get me to get up and feed them. In those days I worked shift work and often got home late at night, so didn’t take kindly to being woken early. No point in shutting my door as they just scratched at it. So I shut them in a room downstairs at night to sleep. Sheba used to hate to be shut in and would jump up and open the door by putting her paw on the handle and pushing down. It took several jumps but she always succeeded. Finally we had to change the door handle to a round handle so she couldn’t open the door and I could get some sleep. Over the years she learnt not to wake me in the mornings....she would come into the bedroom but would lie patiently beside the bed until the alarm went off before uttering a murmur. Such a sweetheart.
In the evenings while I was getting dinner, Sheba loved to sit on DH's lap. Many times she found one or two of the grandchildren sitting in her spot on his lap. She would look very put out and circle around and do her best to get up there too!
I was unable to have any flowers in the house once Sheba came to live with us. She had a passion for flowers and it didn’t matter where I put them, she would find them and eat them. I soon learnt there are many poisonous flowers…I was forever looking them up on google to see if they were poisonous… so it was easier to just not put flowers in the house. She also loved any outdoor plants she could get hold of. She was never an outdoor cat and did not really like to venture out the door, but if she could see a tender tasty leaf she would race out and eat it. I lost count of the number of times I got her to eat grass so she would vomit and bring up the leaves. She always seemed to choose leaves which were poisonous. I ended up moving any poisonous plants away from the house.
We had an outdoor enclosed area for them which was accessed through the dining room window catdoor and Sheba and Maxie spent many happy hours out there in the sun most days, watching the lizards and birds in the garden. After Maxie died in 2013, Sheba never went out there again. I would try and get her to go out there but she refused, so I gave up trying. She also stopped playing and racing around the house..…so sad.
One of my DGDs is gluten free and one day late in the afternoon I took a GF cupcake covered with thick chocolate icing out of the freezer for her and put it on the table to defrost. We went outside in the garden for quite a while and when we came back in, the cake had gone. I found it under the table more than half eaten and Sheba in her bed looking very sick and sorry for herself. I knew that chocolate could be poisonous to cats and, as always, it was after hours when I found she had eaten it. I rang the emergency vet who said it was too late to make her vomit. He said if she hadn’t eaten too much chocolate she would probably just have vomiting and diarrhea in about 2 hours’ time; otherwise if she had eaten a lot of chocolate it could give her heart arrhythmias.
Two hours later she had vomiting and diarrhea. I had an anxious night sitting up with her all night. After that, I was very careful not to leave anything tempting out on the bench.When the cats were about 4 or 5 Maxie got a bladder blockage and ended up in emergency overnight. We were told the best food for him was special urinary dry food and this should stop the blockages happening again. So, in my ignorance, I bought the dry food and fed it to them both for years. Sheba always loved her food and put on weight. In early 2011 she got very thin and she was diagnosed with diabetes. In those days I did not know FDMB existed. I did test her BSLs but was much more casual about it, only jotting down occasional BSLs in my diary. After three months she went OTJ and stayed off until Nov 2013…..2 ½ years. A bout of diarrhea and pancreatitis tipped her back over the edge. I had high hopes of another remission in the early days of the second round, but it was not to be. Sheba became a diving and trampoline champion during her second round of FD and after more than a year of trying to regulate her I joined FDMB….the best thing I could have done. Soon after joining I got wonderful advice from @Wendy&Neko @julie & punkin (ga) and @Chris & China and was welcomed by @Critter Mom; and I had great support from so many of you.
FDMB is a wonderful, supportive network of amazing people who love their furry babies and who give up their time to help others. Thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart for helping and supporting me over the time I was here. I feel I have made so many wonderful friends on FDMB from around the world.
Sheba was a very talkative girl who loved to sit in the kitchen with me and talk. She had many different meows. Some of them just an acknowledgment that she had heard me…. it was as if she was saying ‘mmmmm’ or ‘yes’. I miss those conversations a lot. She had a lovely nature and was very placid. Quite demanding at meal times…..once she was fed she was satisfied but until that happened she stayed beside me telling me to hurry up! Every night after dinner she would wait for me to sit down and she would be straight up onto my lap and she would stay there until I got up to go to bed. I used to look forward to our after dinner time together. She purred a lot and loudly which was always lovely to hear.
There is no doubt that having FD made us much closer. I have loved all my cats dearly and was shattered when they died, but I have never been as mentally/emotionally close to any of them as I was with Sheba. I feel I have lost a really close friend. She taught me a lot about myself and a lot about FD. Her passing has left a huge hole in my life and the daily routine I had has just disappeared.
But we all know the price for loving like that is grief when they pass, and I am willing (even though it hurts so much) to pay that price, for having been able to have had my beautiful beloved Sheba in my life for all those years. I was truly blessed the day I found her.
How lucky she was to find a home with you. 
