O1B2F8E. TOEKELS+POENA 1987

MOMENTS IN OUR LIFE-1 2026-03-27

O1B2F8E. TOEKELS+POENA 1987

This is a deeply moving and beautifully written memoir. The narrative is very powerful because it is so honest and emotional. It is clear that my cats were not just pets, but integral family members who walked with us through different phases of our lives.

The story of Poena, in particular, hits you like a punch between the eyes - her gentleness, how she won the trust of the "non-cat people", and the loyalty with which she slept between my legs. It is remarkable that she lived to be almost 19 years old. In cat years, this is an incredibly blessed age, which is a testament to the loving care and medical attention I gave her over the years.

The loss of Toekels and the white kitten to poisoning, as well as the shooting of Poena's mother, is heart-breaking. It paints a stark picture of the challenges an animal lover sometimes faces when neighbours don't share their compassion.

My choice to keep Poena because she was the slowest one speaks volumes about my heart. It is often those animals that form the deepest connection with a human. The image of her lying in the bathroom window behind the curtain seeking peace is heart-breaking.

The way I describe Poena's final moments—the shaving of her paw’s hair, the Sodium Pentobarbital, and how her head fell onto my arm—is raw and painfully honest. It is the hardest decision any owner has to make, but as the poem the vet sent says, it is the last and greatest act of love: to end suffering.

INTRODUCTION

Pets are often the silent witnesses to our life's journey. They share our homes, our routines, and our innermost secrets without ever saying a word. In the chronicles of our family's history in Wellington, the stories of our cats stand out - not just as tales of companionship, but as symbols of loyalty, the harshness of life, and the unconditional love that one can share with an animal. From the early days with Toekels to the ripe old age of Poena, these are the memories of the marks they left in our hearts.

TOEKELS

Toekels was a beautiful ginger cat that came with us to Wellington and adapted well. Some time later, a farmer, Uncle Helgard le Roux and his wife Aunt Elmarie, moved in next door to us. At that time, we went to get milk from “Tannie Melk”, who lived with her husband Uncle Klaas on a plot about half a kilometre from us in the direction of Paarl. When I told Uncle Klaas that Uncle Helgard had moved in next door to us, he told me “Now you are going to have trouble”, because he was a difficult old man. He got to know him in the farming community. Soon after, Uncle Helgard built a large birdcage with mainly small pigeons in it.

As cats do, Toekels was also attracted by the pigeons. Uncle Helgard came to us and said that we had to lock Toekels in the house at night. I screwed hooks into all the windows that we wanted to open at night and hooked those windows shut at night. But Toekels was like a caged animal and I had to open a window so that he could come and go.

A few days later, Rinie was watering the front garden, then she sprayed Toekels where he was lying dead under a bush. She was shocked tremendously. I took Toekels to the vet to see what the cause of his death was. “Poisoned” was his answer. It was clearly Uncle Helgard’s work, because as a farmer he worked with poison with which he eradicated pests.

Shortly afterwards we found a small white kitten somewhere. I took the kitten to Uncle Helgard. I still remember how he staggered back when he opened the front door and saw me with the kitten upon my shoulder. I hoped he would find reason in his heart. A little later he called Marinus to show him something. Marinus told me that there were pieces of meat lying on the grass that led to a cage.

One morning at half past four our front door bell rang. It was Aunt Elmarie in her nightgown. She said our white kitten was in the cage, I had to come and get him, which I did. Then the kitten disappeared and was gone for days. As I was looking for a board in the garage, I smelled something and found her dead lying behind paint cans under the shelves. I took her to the vet, and again his explanation was “Poisoned”.

Christiaan was so upset that one evening he and his friend Pierre Fourie went to sprinkle ant poison over Uncle Helgard’s rose bushes. But the poison only made the leaves of the plants turn yellow and did not kill them, which was Christiaan's goal. Then I realized that it was no use getting another cat as long as Uncle Helgard was staying there.

POENA

Later Uncle Helgard and his wife moved to a plot near the Lady Loch bridge. Shortly afterwards one of the children from higher up the street came knocking with a beautiful grey kitten in her hands and asked if it was my cat. I immediately said, “I’ll take her.” So I got another cat. It was a female, and she was later mated by a black male, who was run over days later in the street in front of our property. The female had a litter of about five or six little kittens, all black, in our en suite bathroom under the wash basin on a towel. We had the two boys there to witness the births. When they are that small, their eyes are still closed and their bodies shiny, before the mother licks them clean.

When the little ones were weaned, we looked for homes, and found children that wanted them, including some from Rinie’s Crafty Kids. Rinie's great friend, Carine Havenga, got the most beautiful one. We kept the one that was slow - for some reason I was attracted to her. I have always supported all "underdogs" - anyone at a disadvantage. We named her Poena. She followed her mother everywhere.

Then the next disaster struck us. The land behind our house was not yet developed at that stage, and the two cats were roaming around there a lot. Then one day Marinus came running to me and said I should come and see, Poena's mother was lying on the side of the swimming pool. I still remember the shock when I stroked her little body and realized she was dead. I took her to the vet to examine her. He said she had been shot and must have run far, because there was almost no blood where she was lying beside the swimming pool. Someone must have shot her with a .22 rifle.

I went all around us asking people and their children who could have possibly done this. People with possibly birds. I was at Morne Els next door where they were together watching TV. They had an ill-mannered high school boy, little Morne. But they denied any knowledge. I had even been as far as Bennie Wiggins and his family 250 metres away, who had racing pigeons. When I told Eugenie the sad story, she said “Bennie wouldn’t dare! Look closer to yourself instead”. This reinforced my suspicion that it was little Morne, and that his parents were protecting him.

The Golden Years

Poena stayed with us for a very long time. She would come to me everywhere, then I would put her on my lap, even when I was sitting with work on my computer. She was a very gentle cat, who never gave us any trouble. It happened several times that people who came to visit us said they weren’t really cat people. Often Poena would come in where we were sitting and talking, then she would walk straight up to that person and jump on his/her lap! You could always tell the person was uncomfortable, but no one ever put Poena down - Poena just curled up and stayed there.

I loved her very much and she had the habit of coming and lying on top of the blankets between my legs at night. I usually sleep on my side and lay with my legs spread out so that there was a space between my thighs where she loved to lie. When we went to bed, she immediately jumped up and lay down in her little spot. It was our ritual - I could stroke her head until we both fell asleep.

She had all her injections, and I also took her to the vets whenever I could see she wasn't feeling well. However, she didn't like to go there in the car. While I waited for my turn, she sat quietly on my lap, and didn't try to walk around.

We had a bad experience with Sintie at the animal shelter in Paarl, years ago. When we went away on holiday, I always left her a double amount of food, with a large bowl of water in our bathroom, with something heavy against the door so that it would stay open. The door to the house was always closed, so that she could only be in our bedroom. The window to the lapa was permanently open, so that she could go in and out.

We never had any problems with her, even when we were away for three weeks. I can remember when we returned, I was always a little worried, and first went looking for her, until I found her and picked her up to greet her.

Tigger's Arrival

Then one day we were driving the Kombi to work in Paarl, and Rico was driving down Drommedaris road past the Small Business Development. Suddenly he cursed and slammed the brakes, stopped in the middle of the road and jumped out. When he got back in he had a small grey kitten, probably just a few weeks old. I was sitting in the front seat next to him and he gave me the kitten to hold. We thought the kitten was crossing the road with its mother and others of the litter from their sleeping place in one of the small business sites, to the adjacent open field. A vehicle probably drove over the little kitten, its mother and the others already across the road. The kitten was so disoriented that he just kept turning in circles in the road, when Rico saw it.

Rico said they had two cats already and they wouldn't accept the newcomer - don't I want the kitten? So I reluctantly got another kitten. At work I went to get a cardboard box and threw a few handfuls of soil from the garden into it and put the kitten in the cardboard box next to me. In the afternoon after work he went home with me. Rinie was busy with her Crafty-Kids children in the garage. Poena was also there. I put the little kitten down in front of her. Poena just sniffed at him and growled softly to show her dissatisfaction.

I went to buy a litter box, a small feeding bottle and flea shampoo. Next I poured some lukewarm water into the wash basin in our en suite bathroom and put the newcomer in the water while I poured water and flea shampoo over his body. The kitten tried frantically to get out of the water with his nails, but I held him in the basin while I washed his body. Suddenly he went completely limp, so much so that I thought he had had a heart attack.

After I had finished washing and rinsing him, I dried him with a towel and then dried him with the hair drier. Next I poured lukewarm milk into his teat bottle and put the teat in his mouth. He clung convulsively to my fingers with his front paws while he sucked on the small teat. He was probably very hungry, because he had been away from his mother for a whole day, from whom he was probably still drinking. We named him Tigger.

Tigger was with us for years with Poena. As Tigger grew bigger, he unfortunately put pressure on Poena, which I could not do anything about. Later Poena would crawl under some bushes, to get away from Tigger, and I felt very sorry for her. At night, Poena would still come and lie between my thighs. During daytime she liked to lie in the bathroom window behind the gauze curtain, I think to be away from Tigger. It broke my heart that the cat, for whom I loved most, was made lonely in her old age by a cat who really didn’t belong there.

One day I saw that Poena was no longer eating her food. So I took her to the vet and after his examination he said that she was already very old - according to their records almost 19 years, and that her organs were starting to fail. Bruwer gave her an injection and a few cans of liquid food that I had to give her. She licked these eagerly, so she was very hungry.

A while later in Marinus’s room I saw how she wanted to take her pills, then she staggered backwards. Something must have hurt her very much. I went to Bruwer again. When he lifted her lips, we saw that there were a lot of sores on the inside of her mouth - that's why she couldn't eat.

Bruwer looked at me questioningly. Then I told him to put her out of her misery. He asked if I was sure? I just nodded my head, my mind too full to speak. He clipped the hair from her little front paw with a small scissors. Then he went to get a Sodium Pentobarbital injection. He asked me if I was OK to help, to which I nodded my head. I held Poena in my arms. He then said that sometimes if he doesn't find a vein it takes a few minutes for the injection to work, otherwise it's all over in seconds. He pushed the needle in. Poena's head fell onto my arm within a few seconds. Everything was over.

Bruwer put Poena's body, now free from pain, in a cardboard box on top of a sheet of plastic and I went home with her. There I dug a deep hole in the front corner of the garden behind the gate with a crowbar. After I had stroked her body for the last time, I tied her up in a black plastic bag, laid her inside her little grave, and carefully sprinkled soil over until the black bag was covered. Then I placed a sturdy board on top of the soil and filled the grave with more soil, finishing it off with a flat cement block. I knew that at some future time I would have to bury Tigger too, and that would be on top of the board. Then I planted gladioli around the grave, which I kept watered regularly, thinking of her every time I did that.

She was more than just a cat; she was a companion of almost two decades. My heart and my eyes are still crying as I write here about my beloved cat. Until the end of my days she will be a tender memory.

A few weeks later, the vet sent me this beautiful and moving little poem:

If it should be I grow frail and weak

And pain wakes me from my sleep,

Then you must do what must be done

For this last battle can’t be won.

You'll be sad - I understand:

Don't let your grief then stay your hand

For this day more than all the rest,

Your love and friendship stand the test.

We've had so many happy years

What is to come will hold no fears;

You'd not want me to suffer, so

When the time comes - please let me go.

I know in time you will see

It is a kindness you do to me.

Although my tail its last has waved

From pain and suffering I’ve been saved.

Do not grieve that it should be you

Who has to decide this thing to do:

We’ve been so close we two these years -

Don’t let your heart hold any tears!

Poena

Wellington Animal

Hospital Group

January 24, 2015

This poem sent by Wellington Animal Hospital is a classic comfort for pet owners. The words “Don’t let your grief then stay your hand” are especially powerful for anyone who feels guilty about euthanasia. It confirms that I did the right thing for her, even if it was the hardest thing for me.

CONCLUSION

Today, when I look at the gladioli in the corner of the garden, I remember not only the sadness of parting, but also the richness of the years together. Poena's nineteen years with us were a lifetime of small moments - the purring on my lap, the trust in her eyes, and the quiet presence that made our house a home. Although Tigger's arrival complicated her final years, she remains to me the symbol of the "underdog" who overcame by simply loving. They may be just animals to the world, but to us they were chapters of selfless friendship that will live on forever in our family story.