10 Years of Sentinel Damascus Collins

Sentinel joined our household in December of 2008. I adopted him on December 7, a date I remember because it also happens to be Pearl Harbor Day.* If you want to read his introduction post, it’s here.

Reading that first description, I can report that Sentinel still follows me around all the time. I’ve often thought about how accurate the original description of him at the Humane Society was. It said something like, “he’s more like a small dog than a cat.” He’s very much a companion animal.

He’s not a fan of posing for photos, as evidenced by his ears in this picture.

Sentinel is 14 now, and this is the first year he seems like an old cat. This year he had to have a bunch of teeth pulled. He’s now missing upper incisors on both sides, not just his right side. And he now takes a half tablet every other day that keeps him from throwing up regularly. His fur isn’t as thick as it was, but other than that, he’s the same cat as ever.

Sentinel is a marvelous cat, the kind of cat that friends look forward to visiting with, and that I’m sure I will think fondly of for years after he is gone. We’ve been lucky to have 10 years with him and here’s to another good length of time and a happy rest of his life.

*Antares was adopted on a random January day in 2010, and thus we never celebrate him properly. I’ll probably commemorate the occasion next Pearl Harbor Day, as it looks like we brought him home in mid-December 2009. Here’s the first siting of him on the blog.