janestarz | RIP Vlekje

This morning my mom's cat Vlekje has died. The vet said her kidneys were failing so they decided with pain in their hearts to let her go quietly into the Hunt Beyond.

Vlekje and her human slave Luc in 2005

Vlekje came to us not long after my parents got divorced. She used to live with the daughter of a friend of my mother, but this woman lived in an apartment and Vlekje needed to go outside. She was crazy, scaling the walls and tall furniture trying to get out. So we took her in and offered her a home.
Because she was at first left in the attic to acclimatise before meeting the other cats (Neil and Doris) the attic became hers. It was only fitting my brother Jos who had that room became her first human slave -- and it was a fitting room for Vlek, who turned out to be a real climber.

She used to sleep in the attic and chew on the cardboard boxes up there; it drove my mother crazy. Because she was rather peculiar in her ways, she ate her kibble on top of the kitchen cupboards and she always climbed up there by way of the countertops. But her human slaves adapted and gave her food. On days she was really restless, right before a storm, she'd even jump up on the cooking ventilator or on top of grandmom's cupboard by way of the television.

When Jos moved out and I moved into his room, I was deemed a suitable human slave as well and I slept with my face in her fur. Some nights I'd wake up to find Vlekje had pushed me off my pillow completely and miss Princess was sleeping soundly while I had a crick in my neck. She also loved sleeping in the linen cupboard and would walk down with her back pressed against one of the sliding doors, waking me up at night.

She was one hell of a hunter and far too restless to be petted (see picture above) but after my mom moved to Houten she calmed down. You could tell she was getting older, and though she still loved to eat at cardboard boxes and lick the insides of plastic bags, she was now content to lie on top of the cupboard and watch the outdoors for hours.
Lately, she had been sleeping in an iglo: mom had put a little electric blanket in a box, and attached a towel overhead to keep her warm and snuggly. She had her bouts of not eating well, of meowing loudly at the top of the stairs, and she slept more and more.

Even though we didn't see her very often in the last few years, she always came down to greet me (or I went up to find her) when we visited, and often she lay with her paws up on my chest if she was lying in my lap, the ultimate cuddle she very rarely displayed in earlier years but she seemed to need and cling to this human contact in later years. She happily adopted Luc as her new human slave and sometimes still preferred him above me when we came to visit.

I believe Vlekje has reached the ripe old age of seventeen years old.
She was one hell of a cat, and will be dearly missed by us all: mom, Luc, Jos, Neil, Doris, Rakker, Sterling and me.