I was thunderstruck. She was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. All alone in a small cage, she stared hard and rattled the door as I passed by, begging to be let out. We were dropping off our three foster kittens for an adoption fair at Pet Food Express, and she was there for the same reason.

At the time, Penny was a lone foster kitten with a single working mom; so when we returned later in the day to pick up our unadopted kittens, Lisa of Unconditional Love Rescue asked us to take Penny home with us where she would get socialization with both people and cats. Once she was in our house, I couldn't let her go.

Since I had already decided to keep Max, to me it made perfect sense to keep Penny as his companion. Of course, Mike probably thought nothing made sense about having four cats. Another foster-fail under our belts.

There was something unusual about Penny’s eyes I never figured out. Because of the slant, or because her pupils were always somewhat dilated, or both, she had this wide-eyed, almost manaical stare, and she would often fix it on me. I remember seeing it that first day in the cage. It made her look fiercely alive and interested.

Her name reminded me of the bit in "The Big Bang Theory" where Sheldon knocks on neighber Penny's door and says her name repeatedly. (Knock-knock-knock-"Penny". Knock-knock-knock-"Penny".) So I started calling her "Penny-penny-penny-penny" in a partial whisper. She knew I was talking to HER and her head would whip around to my voice.

Her lean frame and the extended white coloring on her chest and front legs made her look tall and slim. I gave her the nickname "Penny Longstocking". She had one other unusual feature: a heart-shaped orange mustache surrounding her cute little mouth.

As a kitten, Penny seemed to enjoy cuddling; I have the pictures to prove it. She even favored my mom with a cuddle during one of mom's visits. But somewhere along the way, she grew out of it and became more aloof. Sadly, I was reduced to enjoying her presence from afar.

Once they were about three years old, some problems developed. Max would chase Penny and jump on her, almost like he was trying to mate with her. She would hiss and growl and scream to warn him off, but he was almost twice her size and would not be deterred. We had to become vigilant in preventing these attacks, because we were concerned Max might injure her. We even had the vet check Max for testosterone, to see if possibly they had missed a internal testicle when he was neutered; but no cigar.

Penny was Daddy's girl, always preferring Mike's company. She spent hours sleeping on the window platform in his office. At night, she slept with Mike but never me. She would wake him up in the middle of the night "making biscuits". He tried mightily to teach her Max's trick of shoulder-riding, but she was having none of it.

Penny had many eccentricities. After she grew up, she was never a lap cat. She wouldn't let you pet her just anywhere; she had several different "petting stations" around the house. There was the extra desk in Mike's office, and "Pet Rock" that she climbed in the back yard. She would see you approaching and present herself, demanding a pet with her squeaky little miao. The funniest of these occurences was what I called "naked petting"; she would ambush me just as I exited the shower, and she wasn't about to wait for me to dress or even get fully dry. She especially liked getting "gloved" with these nubby blue gloves that groomed shedding hair.

As a younger cat, Penny was full of energy. She had frequent attacks of the zoomies; we'd be watching TV in the den and she would charge into the room like a tiny horse at full gallop. She liked to chase rattle mice that I would throw down the hallway. We'd work our way around to the bedroom, then all the way back to the den. She had a special fondness for these pink puffballs that I stored in a bag of catnip. She would bat one around on the hardwood and bite it for the 'nip high.

And also like every cat ever born, there was no place -- or position -- she wouldn't sleep in. One of her favorite places was on top of the warm satellite receiver.

Penny loved the outdoors. We would never endanger our cats by letting them roam freely, but we wanted them to have our yard. There are large bushes - trees, almost - ringing our back yard fence and young Penny was a skilled climber. So we rigged up an elaborate combination of hog wire on the fence tops, chicken wire around the bush trunks, and bird netting over the tops to foil a clever escapee. Or so we thought. After the FIRST time we noticed Penny missing and found her on the other side of the fence, Mike set up one of our security cameras to point into the bushes to find out her escape path, and after several modifications we were able to plug the holes.

Eventually, when we'd had a few weeks of no escapes by Penny (or Max, who wasn't quite as lithe or determined), we felt confident in giving all the cats free access to the back yard. They all enjoyed prowling among the plants and chasing bugs in the lawn.

Since climbing the fence-adjacent bushes was cordoned off, they would climb the mulberry tree instead. Mike even made them a ramp consisting of an AstroTurf-covered board slanted up to the main crook in the limbs.

Penny especially loved the waterfall area (when the water wasn't running). Often she'd hide underneath the dwarf maple at its top.

Another favorite hiding place was underneath the hydrangea.

Another thing Penny loved about the yard was the feel of the warm pavers on a sunny day.

Penny had a curious relationship with Peanut. She would creep up slowly on him, staring intently, seemingly hoping for some interaction, but he would hiss and run away as if afraid of her. At other times, they would appear to have a friendly sparring and play session.

Because Penny was a single kitten without a litter, I always wondered if she was never properly socialized in cat behavior and this affected her relationships with our other cats. It might also help explain her out-of-litter-box behavior, which started early in her life and unfortunately spread to the other cats. Behind the stove was an early favorite place. Eventually we had to hang incontinence pads low on the walls all over the house.

She was always a small cat, hovering around 7 pounds. It didn't help that she was a picky eater and only liked two of the many canned foods that we fed the others. We learned that we could get her to eat more by putting treats on top of her food. Later, I starting grinding up the treats and sprinkling the powder into her dish. I called it "pixie dust".

At one time we found a dry food she liked, but we couldn't let the other cats get to it; Peanut would get fat and Max had a urinary-blockage problem. So Mike rigged up an "extension" to the laundry room door where he installed a keyed cat door that only opened when Penny and her RFID chip came close. We trained her to use it and the laundry room became "her" room, where she would go and graze on her protected food. For a while she ballooned up to a whopping 9 pounds!

Her room was also a place where she could escape cat-drama. She liked to meat-loaf on top of the freezer and survey her limited queendom of the laundry.

In January 2023 Penny developed continous diarrhea. Our vet diagnosed an intestinal disorder, which could be either inflammatory bowel disease (treatable with medication), or it could be the dreaded intestinal lymphoma, a cancerous condition. There was no way to determine the exact cause without takng an endoscopic sample. The vet suggested that rather than putting her through an invasive procedure, we first try the appropriate medication and see if she responded.

I was in a quandary. For months I had been planning an extensive RV trip across the country. We were scheduled to leave in early February, headed for Florida by March. In the few weeks left before our start date, Penny seemed to be responding to the meds. Her appetite picked up again and the diarrhea lessened, so I (selfishly) decided to roll the dice and continue with the planned trip. We pulled out on Februay 11, three cats in tow.

By mid-March, Penny wasn't doing very well. Her stubborn diarrhea had returned and she was lethargic. We took her to a local vet near our RV park in the Florida keys, who could only recommend that we try some Pepcid on her. Didn't help.

We went on with our trip until we reached Jacksonville in early April. I had planned for us to continue up the east coast to Washington D.C. But we'd reached our two-month "fed up with travel" point, and Penny had become very sick. She had explosive diarrhea multiple times a day and was losing weight rapidly. So we turned for home. I could only hope that she would make it.

After three days on the road, we were only halfway home and I was terrified we were losing Penny. In Amarillo, Texas, we found a great local vet at the Swann Animal Clinic who told us to increase her steroid intake to the maximum for her weight, five times more than our conservative vet had recommended. I'll never forget something else she said, though: that we can only do for our pets what they will let us do.

It was three more days of hard driving to get home by April 14. Penny made it, and over the next few weeks she slowly improved with more meds. We did everything we could to get her to eat more. It became a bedtime ritual that I gave her as many treats as she could eat. Strangely, she dropped as much as she swallowed, leaving a pile of crumbs on my nightstand.

But all our efforts were just a delaying tactic. By the fall she was steadily losing weight and looking sicker each day. Her ear tips were drooping from cartilage deterioration caused by the steroids. She doggedly continued to eat, but it was hard work for her. I had to wipe her mouth after every meal; she seemed unable to clean it herself. Finally, when her weight dipped below five pounds, I knew it was time. She was suffering. We had to do the hard thing, for her sake.

When we took our first cat Chelsea to the vet's office to do the deed, it was a terrible, clinical experience, and I didn't want to do that again. I located and contacted Dr. Maria Kuty, a vet who does in-home pet euthanasia.

On Penny's last full day, I accompanied her outside to visit her favorite spots. She even popped into hunting mode when something -- a lizard or a bug -- caught her attention in the bushes.

On November 9, 2023, Dr. Kuty came and sat with us in our back yard; I didn't want to remember it happening in the house, and anyway the yard was Penny's favorite place. It was fast and painless, and Dr. Kuty was very kind. Penny's suffering was over. She had just turned twelve.

I miss her every day. Like all our cats, she was unique and can never be replaced. All that remains is a special little spirit haunting all the rooms of our house, a vague presence glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. The laundry room door stands open; no need for a safe room anymore. Only boys left now -- I wonder if they miss her too.