Lee Katz

I am the senior bioinformatician in the Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch at CDC. In my free time, I try to be a good husband and parent, and in my imaginary free time, I podcast with my co-hosts on the Micro Binfie podcast.

2 minute read

Ginger passed away early this morning. Samantha had a good obituary for her

With broken hearts we share that Ginger went peacefully in her sleep this morning around 3:45am. She was the absolute best girl we ever could have known and loved for the past 10 years and we are thankful to have had her for the time we did. She was ready and went on her own terms.

This image was taken just after - a beautiful girl to the end.

Ginger at 3:50am

I’d like to retell one of my favorite stories of Ginger. We had brought her into our family during the 2013 government shutdown (and, coincidentally, we just recently survived two threats of shutdowns in a row with another coming early 2024…). By the time of this story came around, Jan 14, 2015, we had a pretty good idea of Ginger’s personality. Loyal. Quiet. Affectionate but not enough to sleep in our bed.

But also sneaky. Her full name was Ginger Nicole “Sneaky” Katz. If you weren’t watching her, she would sneak off and you would only find her 30 minutes later, wagging her tail and asking to come inside. You wouldn’t have any clue of where she was or where she went to. Even in the instances where you did catch her, she would be camouflaged and you almost wouldn’t see her hiding in the bushes.

Our story starts when we got home one day and saw that Ginger got into a box of individually wrapped cereal bars. They were covered in foil and so we were worried about Ginger’s tummy. She wasn’t in pain even if I gently rubbed her tummy and so we weren’t too scared just yet, but we put her in her cage just in case.

Ginger in the cage, with the box in front of her

After a while, we realized that there was a blanket stuffed into the corner of the couch… and a cereal bar was inside of it still in the wrapper!

First cereal bar found in the corner of the couch

Huh. Maybe we can find others, we thought. Samantha found the next cereal bar rather quickly in the other corner of the couch. Also stuffed in a blanket.

Second cereal bar found in the couch

The hunt was on! Three more to go. The next one was found in the guestbedroom bed under the blankets.

Cereal bar found in a bed

The fourth one was under the pillow of the same bed. Ginger was starting to get pretty pissed at us.

Samantha showing Ginger a cereal bar at the bed

Ok. last one. Ginger was following around like a… mad puppy dog.

We hunted around the house and started getting worried that even one cereal bar with foil was actually in her stomach. But then we both descended on her dog bed. Yep. It was stuffed in a blanket into her dog bed, in the corner.

Finding a cereal bar in her dog bed

Unfortunately, our next move was to ask my sister if she used her new copy of our house key to play a prank on us. Nope.

It was all Ginger. Not only sneaky, but perhaps a little greedy :) No cereal bars with foil made it into her stomach. She was just hiding them all for later when she was ready to eat, I guess.

Ginger was born March 6, 2011, and made it all the way to December 6, 2023. Good girl.

Stock photo of cereal bar box

PS: this package shows 6 individual packages of 2 bars each. I distinctly remember 5 packages missing and so maybe this was a slightly different packaging.

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