August 14, 2002:

Dear diary....again I must bow my head in shame for not writing in this column for SO LOOONG! There have just been so many tough times, and life has thrown us some curve balls that have taken us a while to catch our breath from.
But I wanted to write something here before the year comes to an end.

First of all, 2002 did not start out on a happy note here for our family.
We lost our precious Cookie to a ruptured blood clot near her heart.
It's hard to write in words about the shock I got when I went into the cat's bedroom on a Sunday morning in January, 2000, to find Cookie dead and cold on the floor. I just couldn't believe it - it didn't seem real at all, as I had had an extra check and brush on every one of our cats the evening before, and she was fine. So she must have died fast, which in some way is a comfort, though I miss her terribly!!

Then, just about a month after I lost my chocolate sweetheart, Willow was expecting babies (we knew there were 4 from taking an x-ray). The birth started out fine. She delivered her first kitten, but then the process stopped. Willow was not interested in her baby at all, either. After a while with a growing feeling that something was wrong, we took her into our vet, where they did a c-section. 3 dead babies were taken out. They also sterilised her at the same time.
After a c-section or any type of operation, the cat is always "out of it" for a little while. I had been trying to take care of the one living kitten, but Willow showed absolutely no interest in it at all. We thought it she needed some time to recover and to get back to senses, as they usually do. But after 1 1/2 days she suddenly took an unexpected turn for the worse. It happened so fast that there was no time to call the vet, and she died in ther "daddy's" arms.
Maybe we should have reacted to the fact that she wasn't herself after a few hours, but the first days after such operations can be difficult. After a dissection is was clear that Willow died from an acute liver failure. There were speculations around the possibility that her system couldn't take the anesthetic used, but we'll  never really know what caused her liver to stop functioning.
Just as a precaution, to rule out any problems here in our cattery, we did a full check for all diseases and viruses when we had Willow dissected. There was nothing wrong, but at least we could show our clean bill of health to any nosy people who "wondered" if there was something wrong here because of the deaths (we all know these kind of people are out there!!).

....then we were left with sadness, and I just didn't know if I could continue breeding. Too much pain!!!
After a little while, we lifted our heads and decided to continue on with our plans and passion for Birmans and breeding. We decided to look for a chocolate girl, which brought us to find Cajsa. She melted Bjornar's heart totally, and is very much daddy's chocolate girl, though she does have a soft spot for me as well (at least I hope so!!).

And a few weeks later our SECOND chocolate torbie arrived - Hally...and we were "NEVER" (!!) going to have torties or torbies here :-)). So the year started looking brighter, with new life and playmates to take some of the gloom away from our family.

But we will NEVER forget our precious ones who have left us. They are and always will be part of our family and in our hearts!!

Luckily, memories don't die!!