Olivia

June 1, 2005 - July 10, 2024

The sweet and spicy furry queen of our household has gone to curl up in the cardboard boxes of the ever after.

Olivia was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in June of 2005. She was adopted into her primary human’s household at the age of three months, where she quickly became the little queen of the apartment. After a year together, they moved to another large apartment with multiple other roommates of both the human and feline variety, much to her dismay. When her primary human started spending a lot of time with a new human, she was initially extremely displeased with the development of needing to accommodate yet another interloper in her life. She could identify the sound of his specific footstep on the bottom stair of the staircase up to her human’s room, at which point she would disappear. Fortunately, within a month, Olivia decided that he was worthy, and she appointed him as one of her humans.

Once the humans found an apartment of their own, Olivia was much happier. When strange humans entered the apartment she would hide but had plenty of space to do so. Unfortunately on one fateful day, her first human’s parents came to stay overnight, and her humans offered up their bed since they did not have a spare bedroom. Used to sleeping on the bed with her humans, Olivia became highly distressed, and hissed ferociously at her grandhumans. This started a fierce grudge which she would hold on to for over 10 years.

After moving to another apartment for a couple of years and then to a house, when Olivia was five her humans inexplicably decided that they wanted to add to their family, and they adopted her a three-month old brother, Chairman Meow. The humans had assumed that she was lonely when she had the house to herself, however this was foolish. She loved to sing the songs of her people but it was for her humans’ enjoyment, and not out of loneliness. Chairman quickly fell into the role of little brother and knew exactly how to push Olivia’s buttons. On occasion Olivia would begin grooming Chairman, but would always end up hissing at him and giving him a hearty smack across the face. He was never fazed for long and they remained frenemies until nearly the end of her life. One of the most telling features of her decline was that she completely stopped hissing at Chairman, even when he accidentally jumped (or fell) on top of her.

For many years, like any good queen, Olivia had only a tiny handful of people that she would tolerate having near her. She rarely allowed additional humans to dote upon her, so it made them feel very special when it happened. She went completely deaf around age 15, the main effect of which was that she became much more sociable, even letting go of her grudge against her first human’s family. She would accept head and chin scratches from anyone, and saved all of her hissing for Chairman. The other effect of her deafness was that she began to regularly sing the songs of her people with increasing vigor and volume at varying times throughout the night and day. During each performance, her humans would be required to stop what they were doing, go find her to show her they were still around, and try to figure out what she wanted. She trained the humans well enough so that it only took two or three arias to get them to attend to her, since if they didn’t come, she would just keep singing until they did.

Olivia had a few quirks that stuck with her throughout her life, such as her habit of scooping food out of the bowl and onto the floor with her front paws, and then eating the food off of the floor instead. This was generally fine when she was served dry food, but she continued the habit when she switched to wet food. Sometimes she would successfully eat the food directly from her paw, but more often the food would end up on the floor. She would usually eat at least some of what she dropped on the floor, but there were always leftovers. Often Olivia would also dislike the feeling of the food stuck in her paw so she’d shake it, spraying food bits across the nearby wall and floor. This worsened exponentially in the last days of her life as she had also suddenly lost her eyesight, and she couldn’t always find the food that fell off her paw, resulting in her leaving many large chunks of cat food all around the food dish.

Olivia’s favourite things were hissing at Chairman, boxes, crumpled paper, smelly shoes, sleeping on her heating pad, sleeping on her humans’ laptops, sleeping on her humans’ laps, throwing up on the carpet, cat treats, marshmallows, hitting the ‘nip, and singing at the top of her lungs.

Olivia’s least favourite things were Chairman, car rides, being brushed, having her nails clipped, throwing up anywhere other than the carpet, half-empty food bowls, and empty food bowls. In the last months of her life, Olivia’s crying became even more insistent, and she would look at her humans very expectantly. As by this point, she had lost most of her teeth, had mostly stopped grooming herself, was totally deaf, stopped hissing at Chairman, and then lost her eyesight, her humans started joking that she was probably begging for the sweet release of death. Eventually her humans realized it was time to say goodbye and granted her wish. Her humans will miss her terribly; however, they are also looking forward to being able to sleep through the night, and not having to scrape half-dried cat food off every surface in a 5 foot radius of the food dish.

Olivia is survived by her humans, and her little brother, Chairman Meow, as well as many other family and friends. At her request, there will be no formal service. In lieu of flowers, please give your favourite feline friends an extra chin scratch, sprinkle some catnip on their favourite toy, and give them some extra treats, just because.