Today we had to say goodbye to our beloved Ted, calico queen of our household. Ted was Dave's special cat and they had been friends for Ted's entire 19 years. Ted lived a long, happy and adventurous life and lived it well. She was much loved by not only us, but by her original people and many human friends.

We are both very upset and have been sad for a few weeks as it became apparent that the end was approaching. There is never a good time to say goodbye and taking her to the vet this final time was one of the most difficult things we have ever had to do. We took her to the vet yesterday to see if there was anything that could be done and was told that treatment would only prolong her life by a few days. She was weak, very uncomfortable and was suffering, so we knew we owed it to her to do the merciful thing, even if it was painful for us.

Ted came into Dave's life at 3 weeks old when Jonno picked her out at an animal shelter. Jonno and Dave were undergraduate Uni students at the time and Ted quickly came to dominate their household of rowdy bachelors. She is the source of many legends. She had a finely-tuned sense of justice and was very creative in exacting revenge if she felt that she had been done wrong. Once, for example, she peed in Jonno's very favourite hat after Jonno had ignored her after a big night out. She also used to chaperone her lads to the local, just a few doors down the street, and guide them home at the end of the evening. She was confident and familiar in the area and ruled the whole street with an iron paw.

She lived with Jonno until Jonno got married and moved in with Mrs Jonno and her cat. Ted and Mrs Jonno's cat did not get along, and it was decided it would be kindest to rehome Ted with members of her fan club, i.e. Dave, me and his flatmate Steve. Ted was about 6 at the time and settled in right away, re-arranging us to suit herself.

Ted had a way about her and whenever someone was sad, or ill, she knew how best to make them feel better, even if it was only curling up next to them in bed and purring for as long as necessary, sometimes for hours on end. It felt very special to be looked after so nicely and patiently.

From the time she moved in with us, she chose Dave as her person and bullied him until he did what she asked - letting her in and out, sharing his tinned corn or beans, making his lap available for her repose. Dave was a willing slave and it was a wonderful relationship, such that when the household broke up there was no doubt that Ted would come with us so that she and Dave need not be parted.

Over the next 13 years Ted moved with us from Melbourne to Wollongong, from Wollongong to Armidale, from Armidale to Sydney. She was an excellent car traveller, settling in right away and making herself at home on the rear parcel shelf of the car. She also moved house very easily - settling in within a day and never making a fuss.

When she was about 12 or 13 she was diagnosed with diabetes and we were made aware that her life would be attenuated. As always, she defied the Vets and lived to a ripe old age.

She lived a good life and was much loved. We, and all her fan club, will miss her terribly.

Please raise a glass to a grand old lady. May she serve as a good example to us all.

In Loving Memory of Ted
1986 - 2005

Copyright © Tish Silberbauer
August 14, 2005

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I first met Ted when Jonathan had just picked her up from an animal shelter in Melbourne late in 1986. She was a tiny kitten small enough to fit her whole head inside of Jonathan's mouth in search of a dim sim that she wanted part of. Fortunately Jonathan didn't bite down at that time, or we might not have had the 19 years of entertainment that Ted provided. For the few remaining persons who haven't heard how she gained a rather masculine name, Ted is the abbreviated form of her original and rather unflattering gender-neutral name "Shithead", based on a dog which appeared in the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk". Ted established herself in the bachelor residence in Fairfield for a short while, after which she moved with Jonathan and Stephen to Cardigan Street, Carlton, where she lived for quite a few years. I was a constant visitor to the Cardigan Street house, as I worked (sporadically) across the road at Melbourne Uni, so I saw a lot of Ted. She was a perfect pet for us, not fussy about which takeaway food she ate, tolerant of the occasional teasing she received, and able to give as much bad language back to us as we directed her way. She was the recipient of the famous "Moon Boots" treatment which made us laugh so hard that our midriffs were aching afterwards. This consisted of making kitty-leg sized holes in the base of four white polystyrene takeaway coffee cups, then slipping them over each of Ted's legs so that the tops faced down, like enormous white trouser flares. The subsequent walking action this created, and the rapid removal of the cups from legs was something to see, and in true Ted form, there was no ill-feeling afterwards.

At Cardigan Street she managed to use the first of her nine lives by trying to negotiate the upper section of the terrace house balcony on a cold and wet Melbourne night. She fell, impaled herself on the cast iron fence post below, and entered the front door of the house streaming blood. What initially seemed to be a life-threatening injury turned out to be a minor flesh wound, with the metal point going through the skin on one side of her belly, glancing over her gut, but not penetrating the membrane (peritoneum), then coming out the other side of the belly. A few stitches and an ugly drainage tube fixed her up and she was back to normal within a week. She was lively in her youth, and as with many kittens, she had a fixation on a particular game. Ted's thing was to chase shadows in the corner of a room. If a moving shadow was created she would leap after it on the wall. She grew out of this, and developed a thing for a leather tie with the pattern of piano keys upon it, kindly donated to Ted by Stephen. This wonderful creation of the 1980s was never worn around a neck, but provided many hours of entertainment for Ted, and it has now gone on to amuse the next generation of cats in our household.

Ted had relatively few bad habits, apart from the tendency to sound like she was about to tear out your liver when you picked her up. Her language certainly reflected the upbringing in a house full of beer-drinking blokes. She did make a significant faux pas during her toilet training, mistaking the potty-shaped Victorian Railways hat of Jonathan's for a kitty potty. The hat was a prized item, but it lost its value after Ted was seen proudly sitting in it in the fixed upright position adopted by all urinating cats. The sound of kitty urine streaming against the felt could clearly be heard, and after this the hat was never quite the same.

Ted moved on to Prahran with Jonathan, where by all accounts she was a terror to the local dogs, waiting under parked cars and ambushing them when they walked by. She was generally of the opinion that all other quadrupeds were a blight upon society, and should be seen off as quickly as possible. This was quite the opposite of her opinion of humans, whom she adopted no matter how much they disliked cats, or even if they were landlords. She was often the life of a party, sometimes even a nuisance. This inability to cope with other cats and dogs eventually caused her to end up leaving Prahran after becoming very antisocial. Jonathan and Jenny had just gotten married, and Jenny's cat ended up moving in with Jonathan and Ted. Ted went from being easy-going and well-behaved to stealing the roast from the counter, pissing in the indoor plant pots and impossible to pick up without a foul-mouthed outburst. Jonathan prevailed upon myself, Tish and Stephen to take on Ted, and this is how I ended up with her in Kew. Kew was a good spot for her. She had a backyard to lounge in and a house to herself, and was perfectly behaved in most respects. She even practised somersaults off the couch, in pursuit of the piano tie.

She indulged in a bit of hunting, demonstrating those skills that would be at home on the Serengeti, or in the Amazon jungles. Tish and myself were woken from our sleep one night by an unfamiliar mewling sound. It was the sound that cats make when they have a mouth full of prey, so anticipating that she had winkled a mouse from under the fridge I got up to see what she had. She proudly presented me with half a cooked yellow pattipan squash left over from that nights dinner. Needless to say she was not impressed that I fell about laughing. Similarly, she also captured a rogue peapod left over from shelling whilst watching television. Ted was the cat that could free your house from verminous vegetables. She also managed to use up a few extra lives by antagonising the evil Terrier from next door. She did this by strolling through the dog's yard, not realising that the dog was lurking under the verandah. Seconds later Ted shot past us at great speed, with a yapping dog on her tail. She was so spooked that she ran the greater part of the paling fence along the narrow (1.5cm) top without even hesitating. This was the first time that a dog had gotten the better of her, and from then on she developed a more cautious approach to canines. She managed to come the worse off in a backyard battle with a neighbouring cat, and incurred yet another visit to the vet to treat some serious abscesses that developed on the scratches on her butt.

When I got work in Wollongong I had to leave her behind whilst we established our new household. She eventually arrived with Tish, who had just finished her thesis, and in true Ted-style, walked into the rented house in Woonona as if she had been there for years. She then tried out the backyard for size, and not happy with just owning that, hopped through the fence to next door, where the neighbour's large dog was half asleep in his kennel. I could see what was going to happen, and Ted abruptly retreated after being barked at and from then on regarded the backyard as a "no-go" zone which was not suitable for cats. She rapidly endeared herself to a number of people, including the neighbours and our new friends we met in the Gong. She was an excellent traveller, although no food or fluids passed in or out of either end of her body during the trip. We often got some curious expressions from fellow travellers whilst on the freeway in the old Peugeot. Ted would sleep in the sun on the parcel shelf, and I think some people thought she was a stuffed cat, only to see her move her head or twitch her tail. She spent quite a bit of time at Trawool with my parents, and made even more friends amongst my parent's social set.

It was then Tish's turn to get work in another town. This time it was Armidale, and after a few months, me and Ted came up to live in Armidale, where we eventually bought a house. At about this time we also acquired two dogs, which Ted quickly tamed and intimidated, despite her previous loathing of non-human mammals. Ted's age was starting to slow her down, and she spent most of her time sleeping, and the piano tie fell into disuse. Around the turn of the century we noticed that she seemed to be eating an abnormal amount of food and losing condition. She even shat in my guitar case at the precise moment my parents knocked on the door - a subtle hint that she was not happy. Several trips to the vet eventually revealed that she was diabetic. The vet was not very positive about the outcome of this, and we were told to expect the worse, with maybe only another year of life. After several tense weeks of testing blood sugar, adjusting insulin doses, and experiencing two terrifying hypoglycaemic events we got the balance right, and Ted went right on being Ted for a lot longer than one year. This meant that we were having to give her two injections a day and feed her appropriate foods in the right amount. This made travel and other absences from home difficult, but for our Ted we would and did put up with quite a lot of inconvenience.

Ted gave us a lot of her life, and impressed all who met her in her prime. We will probably have the physical evidence in the form of her hair with us for many years yet. I realised when we were having to make the very hard decision to take her to the vet one last time that Ted represented some of the most turbulent, yet rewarding years of my life. As Stephen will testify, she had an unerring ability to recognise when one of her owners was emotionally upset and depressed. She would come and purr gently to give her own special form of comfort and attention. She helped me through two postgraduate degrees with her calming presence. I can remember sitting on the couch with her in Kew, sharing three bean mix from a can with her, whilst I tried to come to terms with what was a difficult period of study and life. By losing Ted, I feel like I am losing one of the last connections with a former unstable and uncertain period of life which was also in some respects carefree, and bohemian. We all seem to have gotten careers, moved on to being sensible and in control, but there were aspects that I will always miss. However, Ted was also a cat who was becoming increasingly uncomfortable due to her old age, and I had to respect that and move beyond my selfish need to cling to the past. Tish and I will always remember her as something special, and we hope that you all think of the good aspects of whatever encounter you had with her.

In Loving Memory of Vale Ted
1986 - 2005

Copyright © Dave
August 14, 2005

A webpage with Ted pictures dating back to the early 1990s can be seen at http://community.webshots.com/user/titiandave