Sam & Tootsie
We adopted Sami, a tiny orange kitten, from Marsha at Humane Animal Care Coalition on October 15, 2004 in Key Largo. I could hold him in the palm of my hand and he could go under every door in the house which he had to himself as an only cat. We had a large sliding glass door that led from our living room out onto the front deck where many of the feral cats ate and napped so Sam had plenty of company…sort of.
When Sam was about 6 months old we had trapped several of “Momma Cat’s” kittens who were about Sam’s age. Two of them were girl cats and we kept them in the carriers for several days after being spayed per Marsha’s instruction letting the stitches heal some. When I opened the carrier doors one of them took off like a rocket and the other one stayed on the deck and started kneading otherwise known as making bread. She allowed me to pet her and then she went over to the sliding door and went nose to nose with Sam through the glass. She stayed around and began to play with Sam through the slider. Curiously I opened the slider and in she went and Sam had his first friend, a cute tiger striped feral kitten who kept kneading so much we named her “Tootsie”. She spent the night in our house playing with Sam and the next morning she acted like she wanted out so I let her out. Several hours later she was at the slider and I let her back in for the last time. She never went out again and Tootsie and Sam became inseparable. When Sam was crashed, Tootsie would follow me around. When I was at the computer, she was on a stool right behind me. When I would go refill my coffee she would follow me, and then back at the computer she was back on the stool.
She and Sam were bug hunters and the Florida Keys has lots of bugs. Crickets, cockroaches, scorpions and lizards were regular visitors in our house now at their peril. In the middle of the night we would hear a chase and attack and in the morning we would find bug legs and scorpion stingers so they were also eating them. It wasn’t long before we were almost bug free. One night I heard a loud crash and found one of the lights in the bathroom broken and dangling by its wires. Hopefully that attempt to catch that bug wasn’t in vain. 
Sam and Tootsie played together until they were tired and then would curl up next to one another and sleep. True buddies. Tootsie was very particular in covering up her poop and pee. She took a long time scraping at the clumping litter until she was satisfied. We thought it was cute. One day she started coughing a little. After it got worse we took her in to the vet. She received a shot and the diagnosis she may have a touch of asthma and gave us meds to give her. She started hanging over the air conditioning vents and when we realized it was to help her breathe back to the vet and again we were told it was asthma and given a mask to put on her and force air into her lungs. Right! She wanted no part of that. Two days later I was holding Tootsie as she died in my arms with Sam off in the corner watching. We realized it was the clumping litter dust that congealed in her lungs causing them to fail. She died a terrible death. I wrapped her in a cloth and preserved her in the freezer until my next trip up here to Ocklawaha where I buried her and put one of Sam’s favorite toys on her cross and an orange plaster cat on top of her grave to watch over her. Immediately after that, we researched cat litters and switched to a safe brand we continue to use.
Sam never made friends with another cat and we have 4 other cats living in our house with Sam and assorted cats that come in and out. One day Sam will be with Tootsie again chasing bugs.