When my husband called from out of town, I told him I had decided to keep the cat. He was delighted, and when he came home he tackled the litter box problem. He moved the litter box to the guest bathroom underneath the sink cabinet. Because the cabinet was against the wall, he drilled a hole around the side, installed a night-light inside and even put an exhaust fan inside the wall of the cabinet. It solved our problem completely. This incident made me realize that if we use love as the focus of our attention whenever we have a problem, the situation will always benefit from it. We then got our second Abyssinian named Moses, to be a companion for Toth.

It was when the third kitten, named Bubble, arrived that my life was changed. A friend of my son's had bought a kitten in a pet shop. At the last minute her parents decided she couldn't keep it, so my son asked me if I wanted it.

The young girl had told him she picked Bubble because she was the smallest one in the group, and during feeding time she seemed to have a hard time competing with the other stronger kittens. We already had two and I really didn’t think we wanted a third one. But after this kitten had been passed around many times and no one seemed to want it, I finally decided to take it.

I felt like I was doing it a favor by keeping it, it seemed like an extra cat, and I never did try to treat it as a special kitten. I fed her regular cat food, and when friends came over to visit I always made a point to say, " that's the extra kitten."

About two months later, Bubble became very quiet, and I saw a white cloud in her eye. I started to worry and took her to many vets, but her condition didn't improve. I felt that maybe because I had always treated her as an extra, she didn't feel loved and just wanted out of this life because she was so unhappy.

I tried to cure her in many different ways, taking her to specialists, force-feeding her, and caring for her every way I could think of, but her condition kept deteriorating. Eventually she became totally blind and so weak that she couldn't use her litter box. I kept baby diapers on my bed where she slept so she didn't have to jump down.

I used an eyedropper to feed her kitten milk whenever she would tolerate it, and every time I managed to get some food down her throat, I made a big deal of praising her. If she ate even a third of a jar, I would jump for joy and be so happy. But even though at times she seemed to improve, she just slowly became worse as the days went by.

When the dreaded day came, it was Thanksgiving morning, Bubble started to have spasms, and I could tell she was in great pain. I began to cry, and frantically tried to locate a vet who could put her down right away. After finding one, I cried uncontrollably all the way to his office.

They told me it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to watch the procedure, but I insisted on holding Bubble while they gave her the shot. I'm so glad I did, because when they put the needle in her tiny vein, Bubble died very peacefully in my arms.

I took Bubble home and put her in the spare bedroom, going to visit her whenever I could. Each time I couldn't stop the tears that kept falling down my cheeks. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’d wake up and find myself crying again and again.

Bubble Story Continued.....