Yamako "Yoko" Yulan 23-Oct-2007 - 3-Nov-2020

Yoko on a fencepost, mid-August 2020

She was the cat who rarely did anything to make me take photographs of her by herself, and then mostly by being the one who went out first in the morning to find somewhere sunny to sleep, so was rarely being at all dignified at the time. She was also the cat who put a halt to staying-on-the-bed privileges, on account of getting up in the small hours and wandering about wailing, and the one who ended demand feeding, by ballooning up, and thus meaning us having to strictly weigh all the cats' food.

Early September, she suddenly lost weight, and the vet diagnosed a lymphoma; so then it was a case of nursing her through the last weeks, where she got totally pampered, offered all sorts of treat-food (with plenty of leavings for the others to hoover up), and getting stay-on-the-bed privilege, as she would now just curl up and sleep through the night. On Monday, she was still happily wandering around, even going out to drink rainwater from plant saucers and then bask in the sun in the greenhouse; Tuesday, she had no appetite, and when she crawled off the bed, fell and just lay there, so it was, alas, time to say goodbye.

In those last weeks, it was hard to remember that this elegant, if scrawny, cat who could just sit hunched up on my forearm had been quite the great chubby lump in her younger days