Good-bye, Old Friend

I woke this morning to discover that my ancient cat, Stinky, was no longer able to support himself on his back legs. This condition came as no surprise. In fact, I've been expecting it for several months since an x-ray revealed that his hips were overwhelmingly deteriorated by advanced arthritis.
In those months, my husband and I have accommodated Stinky's increasing decrepitude by limiting the scope of his domain. We put his food dish, heated cat bed, and litter box all on the same level of the house where we sleep and where I keep my art studio.
For some time now I've been quietly hoping that my sweet old cat would simply lie down in his heated little bed beneath my studio desk and take a nice long nap into forever. I simply did not want to see him suffer at all and, like most people, I really didn't want to have to make a choice, no matter humane, about ending his life.
Sadly, this morning I had to make that choice.
The hardest part, I think, was waiting two hours for the vet's office to open after I woke up and discovered the poor dear struggling to use his litter box. I helped him as best I could, lifting him into the box, waiting while he urinated, and then lifting him out again when he was done. I was sobbing all the while, I assure you. Then I carried him to bed and curled him up beside me so I could pet him and coo at him and reassure him that I would not allow him to suffer any further indignities. When the clock said it was 8 a.m., I called the vet's office and made an appointment to take him in at 11 a.m.
Three more hours.
Just enough time to make damned sure he was petted and scritched and comforted sufficiently so that I would know that he knew he was loved. After two decades of lap time, nap time and play time, I wanted to make certain he felt all that love before he had to say good-bye.
And now that time has passed. He's out of any pain or discomfort, and I am without a cat for the first time in more than 30 years.
Not today, nor tomorrow, not for a while, but soon enough we will find a shelter cat to bring into our home and into our hearts. Because no matter how awful I feel right now, all those years of soft fur and gentle purring were totally worth it.
Good-bye, old friend. Thank you for giving me all that unconditional love. It really made a difference in my life.

What I remember

I remember being not awake enough to fully grasp what I was seeing, what Matt Lauer was talking about on the Today Show as I poured my first cup of coffee.

I remember sinking onto the couch as the reality sunk in.

I remember worrying about friends in New York City on business and feeling utterly despondent over the unfathomable loss.

I remember the next few days under a pristine blue sky, unmarred by contrails.

I remember the strange silence under that sky.

I remember a few days after, walking to the convenience store/deli on the corner not far from work and telling the Middle Eastern owner and his wife how sorry I was that people had come into their business and called them horrible names.

I remember watching as liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, folks of all stripe and order, came together as Americans. We reached out to each other in charity and fellowship. We gave what we had to give, and sometimes a little more. We helped out. We practiced random acts of kindness. We set aside, for the most part, our petty differences.

Yeah, I remember that.

Cats and their people

While the news has bled misery and tumult on a grand scale, the much more intimate woes afflicting a small cat and her beloved people have turned me introspective and a bit weepy this week.

They've also got me thinking about cats and their people.

On Wednesday, author Neil Gaiman tweeted that his blind cat, Zoe, was ill and at the vet's for an x-ray and endoscopy. By Thursday, the bad news returned that Zoe had an inoperable tumor.
Gaiman blogged about Zoe, as did photographer Kyle Cassady whose shots of Zoe reveal not only how beautiful she is, but what a sweet and gentle loving nature she has. Other members of Gaiman's extended family of artists, musicians, and magic-makers shared their memories of the cat in blogs and tweets. The much larger realm of Gaiman fans and followers (of which I am obviously one), expressed their condolences and spilled their grief as I am doing now.

"I'm wondering what it is about this small blind cat that inspires such behaviour," Gaiman writes. "I think it may be the love. Hers, once given, was yours, unconditionally and utterly."

I think there may be something to it, that notion about unconditional love in certain cats that transcend the role of pet or companion animal to become, well and truly, our familiars. As someone who has been lucky enough to have kept a few such cats (for keeping them is what we do; we never own them or master them), I marvel that some people never come to know such a cat at all. And I have been, at least once, lucky enough to have had the same cat (well, sort of the same cat) come to me twice.

In the late 1980s when I was teaching at a public university in Pennsylvania, I accepted a couple of cats from a student of mine whose landlord was averse to pets. One of the cats was a small, slender tortoise shell who bore much greater resemblance to a space alien than to a cat. She was eager and energetic and full of surprise. We called her Babette.

Her companion cat was a round and robust black shorthair with emerald eyes and the demeanor of a foreign potentate, the benevolent demi-goddess of some imagined island people who lived on milk and honey and prayed by imitating the sound of her low, gentle purr. She came to me with the unlikely name of Pumpkin, and almost immediatley communicated to me in that way cats do that her "deep and inscrutable singular Name" was Joss. Much better.

I wasn't lucky enough to keep Joss for very long, but the time I had with her was remarkable. She was the sort of cat you could have a conversation with, confess your troubles to, ask for advice. And she delivered. I swear, as will my then roommate, Jeff, that the cat could stare sense into us when we were spinning out of control. She had command. She had presence. She had gravitas.

Since she came to me as an adult, I had no way of knowing how long she would be in our lives. Sadly, it was only a couple of years before she quietly breathed her last on a soft, rag rug and we laid her to rest in the back yard behind the garage where cat bones have rested for many, many years.

I grieved her something awful, even with a handful of other cats around, including Babette, to nuzzle my chin and warm my lap.

Some 20 years later, moved to Seattle, I lost yet another great cat (Salieri, about whom much can be written). His companion cat, Stinky (who lives with me still, slowed a bit now at 19 years), keened the loss so terribly that I felt compelled to find him a new companion with all due haste.

I left work a bit early and stopped by the PAWS cat adoption center to see if they had a kitten who might make a good friend for Stinky. I checked out the dozen or so kittens and young adult cats they had on hand, but none of them seemed to want to come home with me. I was about to give up when I noticed a plump, lush black shorthair lounging on the chair behind the reception desk, acting for all the world like she was waiting for her administrative assistant to bring her a cup of coffee.

I asked Dawn, the PAWS adoption services lady, if I could walk behind the counter and say hello.

"Sure," she said. "She's a real sweetie. I'd actually be sad to see her go."

I walked around the desk and kneeled down to look into her dazzling emerald eyes. She licked my nose.

"I'll start the paperwork," Dawn said.

So, it wasn't just that she so readily and immediately accepted me as a bigger cat, a someone-to-be-groomed, that made it impossible for me to leave PAWS without her that day. It was a sense that we had already known each other for a good long time. She was truly my familiar.

And so Toots (whose name at the time was Hera) came home with me that day. She and Stinky took a whole 48 hours to get used to each other. By the end of week, they were curled up on eachother making what looked like a two-headed black cat. Here is photographic evidence of that phenomenon.

For nearly 8 years, Toots sat in my lap, slept on my head, and kept me most excellent company.

When Jeff met her, he, too, felt that sense of familiarity. We both felt lucky simply to have such a cat in our lives again.

When I started dating Damon, Toots let me know what she thought of him by climbing up behind him on the couch and licking his head. To his credit, he let her do it. I knew in that instant that I would surely love him for a good long time.

Sadly, Toots was diagnosed with kidney disease early in 2004. We fed her a special diet, hydrated her subcutaneously, and loved her as much as we possibly could for the next three years. On April 21, 2007, she breathed her last. I still mist up when I think about her.

Some cats are, indeed, like that.

Right now, Gaiman's blind cat Zoe is at the center of a widening circle of people all focused on the wonder of her love.

Right now, I'm grateful for every day that I wake up with Stinky on my head or behind my knees.

Right now, my friend Claire is sad and grateful for her cat, Spiff, who is nearing the end of his days but continues to climb onto her lap to be loved.

These cats are more than pets, more than friends, even. They get to us, they touch our softest, most human centers and remind us that love can be unconditional and healing and strong. And even though we don't get to share that love with them in this world forever, we never lose it really. We just hang on to it and pass it along.

These cats teach us that love can stay.