Sugarfoot [a.k.a. Sugar-dumpling, Sugar-precious, Sugar-bump, Sugar-lump, Sugar-bitch]
She was brought to me starving and badly injured. Something had ripped
open her shoulder and exposed the bone. The wound was left untreated and
had gotten infected. She had abscesses erupting all over her body. She
had been abandoned in the basement of an unoccupied building and had not
had food or water for almost ten days. Hers was a heartbreaking existence
until I took her, starving and injured, to the vet. She needed a week or
more of intensive care to begin recovering. The vet guessed her to be about
6 to 8 years old. There were indications that she had had at least one,
and probably more, litters of kittens. She'd never been spayed.
She was the first cat that Simon decided to take care of. She always
had the cleanest ears of any cat I've ever known because Simon (who was
twice a big as she) would pin her down and clean her ears whether she liked
it or not. She didn't seem to mind too much, though. They were always the
most cuddlesome pair of cats I've ever seen.
The story behind her "Sugar-bump" and "Sugar-lump" nicknames is as follows: After getting up in the morning
I'd make my bed. Later I'd come back into the bedroom and notice that my bed cover was flat and smooth except
for an object making a bump in the very center of the bed. So, I walked over and touched it and it moved!
Sugar had nuzzled her way under the top blanket and then crawled to the center of the bed. This is where
she liked to sleep, and she'd do this all the time. So, she bacame the Sugar-bump in the middle of my bed.
She was with me for a little over eight years. There were a lot of good
times and she got a lot of love during those years, but chronic health
problems that were likely the result of her earlier mistreatment took a
heavy toll on her fuzzy, little body.
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