Greetings Fabulous Felines and Hoomans of Hivelandia and surrounding communities!

I hope the beginning of your week after the holiday weekend is going well so far! Around here we've been enjoying a rainy day, and so an opportunity to catch up on bits and pieces that need taking care of.

Today we wanted to focus on the oldest member of our feline family: Smudge.

You see, it has now been four years since Smudge came to live with us.

Smudge was already 16 years of age when she came to us. The Hoomans decided to agree that Smudge could have her retirement years with us because Smudge's is original Hooman mom was moving to the Dominican Republic.

Because they were going to be living out in the woods doing healthcare work in relatively primitive circumstances she didn't feel it was fair to try to transport an old cat — who had lived a cushy indoor life — to a life in the jungle.

And so, Smudge came to live with us at the end of November, four years ago.

Of course we didn't know how well Smudge would adapt to her new surroundings and to being with other cats, after 16 years in one set of familiar surroundings. Sure, she had already had a kitty roommate who was much younger, but when you're old you get pretty set in your ways.

We also didn't know how long Smudge was going to live, so naturally we're delighted that she's still with us four years later at the tender age of 20!

20 is a pretty ancient age for a cat, probably equivalent to well into your 90's as a Hooman!

Smudge has turned out to be a remarkably sweet housemate who fits in extremely well. One of her quirks is that she has earned the nickname "Opera Cat" because she tends to become very vocal and loud at about 8:00 in the morning if breakfast it's just not been served yet!

Of course because she is old she spends much of her time sleeping but that's just a natural part of cat life.

While she is almost completely blind in one eye and likely about 50% blind in the other, she's still enjoying decent health and good quality of life and so we're happy to give her a safe space for her golden years!

And naturally, we hope she will be with us for a few years more... but we try to just be grateful for every day!

Thanks for stopping by our little cat blog, and we hope to see you again!

=^..=

Love Cats? Get Involved in Hive's Cat Communities!

If you're a cat lover and often/sometimes post pictures or other content that includes your feline friends, why not become an active part of Hive's growing Cat Communities?

These are some of the more active Cat Communities — why not join them ALL? Many of the allow you to share your cat posts, even if you started at a different community!

HiveCats by @curatorcat is a central "gathering place" for cat content on Hive; promoting the use of the #hivecats tag for feline content!

Cat Snaps by @manorvillemike is a place to post pictures of your cats when you don't have a whole lot to say beyond just sharing your cute photos!

Caturday by @saboin is a community where we get to celebrate posts relating to Saturday — aka "Caturday" — our own special day!

Cat Photos by @andrarchy is a "mixed use" cat content community; posts can be just photos or longer, as long as the subject is CATS!

Cats by @captainklaus (and Sissi!) is another "general" cat content community.

There are a number of other feline communities listed on Hive, but I am not sharing them for now as they have not had any activity (by their Admins OR users) since the Steem/Hive fork. Updates as they become available!

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