Mr. Tuxedo’s Posts – The Furry Bambinos – Cleveland

Panda Bear Caban: May 16, 2007 – January 21, 2018

The Human Parents — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:15:47 +0000

Our lovable tuxedo cat, Panda Bear, one of the original “Furry Bambinos”, passed away a year ago today on January 21, 2018. It hit us so hard that it has taken a year to write this entry.

In Panda Bear’s last few months he had been valiantly fighting both heart disease and kidney disease. On the evening of January 20, 2018, heart disease began to win. On the morning of January 21 we found him too weak to move, and so we made that difficult decision every pet owner wants to avoid.

Now, even a year later, sadness still lingers with us, as we lost one of our best cats ever.

Panda Bear was born in May of 2007, under a porch in a Cleveland, Ohio, neighborhood with seven siblings. Shortly thereafter, they were taken in by a local rescue group. Unfortunately, the calici virus passed through the litter and Panda Bear had to have his right eye removed. One of his siblings had both eyes removed, and one of his sisters had some retinal scarring.

Panda Bear came into our lives in October of 2007. We had lost our cat Clyde to lung cancer in February 2007, and were finally ready to look for a new cat. We saw Panda Bear and his sister with the retinal scarring at Petsmart. Panda Bear jumped into Sue’s arms, and we knew he was going to be ours. We adopted him, his sister and another older cat who reminded us of Clyde. We named the sister “Meerkat”, and the older cat “Padre”. We affectionately labeled them “The Furry Bambinos”, and that’s when we started this blog.

In the beginning, the three Bambinos hung out together frequently, and most of their early life is well documented here on the blog.

When we captured this photo, it became the header for the blog for several years.

Over the years, we also took to shortening Panda Bear to “P.B.”, so in shorthand, “P.B.” was an “O.G.” (original gangsta) Bambino. Here he is working on a new blog post with Sue.

Panda Bear was impish and could get himself into trouble, but he would lovingly climb into your lap to apologize. He would follow us from room to room, and camp out and keep us company. He made friends with every human that walked in our house, and almost every foster kitten we brought through the door, too. In short, Panda Bear was the kind of cat everyone would love to have, and we were the luckiest guardians on Earth.

Panda Bear would willingly pose with toys. In this early photo of him, notice the blue nail caps. We used to use those before simply just getting better at trimming his nails.

Panda Bear loved to “help” get work done, but he would easily get distracted and start playing.

And he was the reason we stopped putting up a Christmas tree every year.

We tried to do a Halloween card one year in which we dressed all the cats up in costumes. This was the year Panda Bear was a clown.

Even as a one-eyed cat, he could catch flies, mice, and feather toys without any trouble.

He loved to jump and play. In fact, we had just finished a rousing game of “chase the feather on a string”, and he was breathing heavily when we captured this photo of him.

Panda Bear was rambunctious and impish, but he was also the most calm and chill cat we’ve ever had in our lives. He was able to get along with just about every cat and human being that came through our house.

If you know us personally and had ever visited our home, you met and came to know Panda Bear. He was one of our resident “greeter cats” when anyone came to visit.

He was always calm for his vet visits with his vets Dr. Amy and Dr. Jo at Village Veterinary Clinic, and would confidently walk around the room and allow them to poke and prod him.

When the “Coventry Cats” cat store in Cleveland Heights celebrated its 20th anniversary in May of 2008, Panda Bear went to the party. He seemed to enjoy the car ride immensely.

At the store, he had fun browsing through all the toys …

And the store owner, Sheila Blecman, gave him lots of love!

Panda Bear purchased a new Catnip Banana at the store.

In 2011, we attended a blogging conference in Virginia, and Sue attended a workshop where people could create a “flat” version of their pets. Basically, it involved taking a good photo of your pet and pasting it onto some thick foam board. The idea being you could then take your flat pet with you everywhere that real animals aren’t allowed! So, Sue made “Flat Panda Bear”.

Dr. Amy at Village Vet even played along and once gave Flat Panda Bear an exam.

He passed with flying colors!

Flat Panda travelled with us frequently, and ended up going as far west as Columbia, Missouri.

Over time, we became involved with the rescue group that saved the Bambinos. The first two fosters we took in were named Cookie and Caramel. Panda Bear loved them, and so did we, so we adopted them!

Here’s Panda Bear teaching a very young Cookie how to drink from a human’s glass:

And he would frequently wash her head.

Here he poses with a very young Cookie showing her how to sun herself in the patio door.

With the addition of Cookie and Caramel, The Furry Bambinos were now at total of five!

And everyone got along great!

Panda Bear was the explorer (escape artist). Even in winter.

This was his favorite Gizzy Quilt

We have been involved in animal rescue since 2008, and just about every foster kitten that came through our household had a chance to meet him, too. Invariably, they would warm up to Panda Bear almost immediately. We labeled our foster room the “Furry Bambino Foster Academy”, and Panda Bear was the “Guidance Counselor”.

He was the one to meet them and help them socialize as they went through the foster program. All told, Panda Bear was a Rockstar Guidance Counselor to over 150 kittens during his life. That’s how easy going and lovable he was.

He was a lap kitty, too, and he regularly would sleep next to us or near us on the bed and on sofas. When David worked at his computer or sat watching TV, Panda Bear would regularly curl up in David’s lap for scritches and snuggles. If Sue was reclining on the sofa, Panda Bear would knead her chest for almost exactly 15 minutes every night like clockwork. None of the other cats have loved us so equally and affectionately.

P.B. was talkative, too. All we had to do was exclaim “Panda Bear!“, and he would bleat out a short happy response to acknowledge his presence. Then he would flick his tail a couple of times in short, staccato movements like an orchestra conductor waving a baton. Even as he slowly lost weight and his ailments took their toll, his bleat was music to our ears.

Within our own household Panda Bear will be most missed by our other cats Sunny and Sky. They latched onto Panda Bear as shy fosters, and never let go. They followed him almost everywhere and would regularly cuddle up with him, walk beside him, and brush up against him.

Sunny was especially close to Panda Bear, often sleeping with him in the front window.

Panda Bear even made friends with the very shy, skittish, and semi-feral Samoa, who we lost back in 2015.

We can’t say it enough: we’ve lost one of our best cats ever, and we are grieving hard.

Panda Bear is survived by his sister Meerkat, his best friends Sunny, Sky, and Padre, and his step-sisters Cookie, Caramel, and Farrah Fluff.

“Panda Bear!” … we were honored to be your guardians. We loved you dearly, and miss you terribly. Rest well, dear friend. We’re so happy you’re no longer in pain and now able to run freely. We look forward to calling your name at the Rainbow Bridge someday and hearing that lovely bleat in response!

Presents!

Tuxedo Boy — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:16:42 +0000

Yesterday morning, the lady left but the man stayed home with us. We had a great time hanging out with him. For a human, he is particularly well-schooled in playing kitten games. He is much better at games than the lady.

First we played “Chase the Indoor Bird on a String”.

Then, the man turned on the television and let us watch Animal Planet, so we caught a rerun of Meerkat Manor.

Then the man let my sister and I play “Bite Each Other Until You Squeak”, and he did not try to break up our fun like the lady does!

Speaking of the lady, when she got home from “running errands” she brought us some more cans of stinky goodness, as well as some bouncy squishy balls to bat around. But best of all, she brought us this:

Two Kalahari-Themed-Duplex-Cat-Cubes!! So even though she does not know much about how to play with a kitten, apparently she does know something about what a kitten wants. It took the man and lady awhile to figure out how to attach the two cubes together, and then we were in business! I figured out if you sit inside one of the cubes and spin in circles fast enough, you can tip the whole thing over sideways!

Big Grey Kitty kind of sniffed the Kalahari-Themed-Duplex-Cat-Cubes, and Sister took a few tentative tours, but was also largely unimpressed. So it looks like this great feat of human engineering will be MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!

In other news, the humans still haven’t figured out what our names are. For now, the man is calling me “nonononono (giggle)” and the lady is calling me “NO GET DOWN FROM THERE” and occasionally “STOP THAT”. Needless to say, none of these are my name.

We will clue them in soon enough. For now, it is great to ignore their attempts at discipline. If they don’t know my name, I don’t have to listen!

Adopted at Last

Tuxedo Boy — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:44:46 +0000

Woo-hoo!!!! My sister and I have been adopted at last!!

On Monday the nice man and lady who visited us over the weekend came back to visit us again. This time they did a lot of talking to the principals about getting us out of this boarding school and home schooling us instead.

My sister and I (and our six other brothers and sisters) were born in May under some lady’s porch. Our Mama Cat protected us from the lady, but one day the lady noticed how sick we were and took us to a doctor to get better. Then the doctor stole my eye and wouldn’t give it back!! They said something about an “infection” and “blind” and the next thing you know, I have a permanent wink. My sister was given all kinds of medications, and one of our other sisters had both of her eyes stolen!! After being at the hospital, we stayed at a different lady’s house, inside this time, and she called herself “FosterMom”.

Just when we started to get comfortable at FosterMom’s house, she enrolled us in boarding school!! We stayed there for a little while and then FosterMom came back to visit us and told us that we would soon be going to “our furrever home”. I guess that meant that we would be graduating from boarding school.

This nice man and lady came to visit us and they played with us and then we got ready to graduate. For the graduation ceremony, the man and lady put a very small portable room out for us to see. My sister and I walked right in to investigate! How were we to know that they would lock the door behind us? But now we know for next time…

There was a big grey kitty that graduated from boarding school with us, and got adopted by the nice man and lady. Luckily he got his own portable room to himself, as there wasn’t any room left in ours.

All of us let the man and lady know we were not happy about the cramped quarters. The next thing you know, it was very dark and it felt like the whole world was moving! After a while, the world stopped moving, and the man and lady carried the portable rooms into their house.

The man and the lady let out the big grey kitty first and let him explore. Sister and I complained about this grave injustice, and eventually we got let out too.

Wow, are there a lot of places to explore and play here! They even have two sets of stairs for us to play Thundering Herd of Elephants!! And there are even these really cool hurdles between some of the doorways for me to get lots of practice with my high jump!

So that’s the story of my life so far. Luckily the nice man and lady have lots of computers here. So I should not have much trouble getting onto the Internet to blog, what with Big Grey Kitty and Sister also wanting to blog.

I think we’re gonna like it here.