I started the word processor at my desk, after sitting here for the past hour thinking about what I would write. For some reason it ‘auto-opened’ the following file from last Fall. And it was oddly apropos:
October 23, 2009 -- No matter how you prepare for a loss there is always an element that stings. And when a prepared-for loss is followed by the shock of another on its tail there is a compounding effect: a double gut punch.
This week opened with the familiar feeling of the malaise I’ve had hanging over me for the prior two to three. I woke up in the late morning next to my cat Harvey, a familiar scene. She yawned and stretched as I swung my feet to the floor, grateful that she hadn’t done her normal ‘morning-get-up-get-up-get-up-or-I’ll-walk-on-you-until-you-do’ routine.
Pot of coffee brewed, bacon and eggs consumed, kitchen cleaned top to bottom (a little over caffeinated) I returned to my desk and busied myself in a not-so-normal way. The day flew by and that evening I watched the Phillies win the game at home with Harvey at my side on the couch. A few celebratory beers out at the bar after the game and it was home to bed. As I climbed up the stairs to the bedroom I walked past the cat who was lying on the carpet just inside the front door. “What’s wrong Harv? come on... time for bed.” I climbed into bed and didn’t even notice that she hadn’t followed me.
The next morning I woke up late... very late. Coming down to the office I saw Harvey lying in the middle of the floor... not exactly herself. Her demeanor was off... she wasn’t feeling well. And she didn’t move when I climbed into my chair at my desk.
Harvey slipped away within 48 hours due to a cancerous tumor that had been growing in her chest undetected for an unknown number of months. Losing a pet who has been a constant in your life is never easy. Fast forward eleven months -- we said goodbye to our other cat, Jones, this morning. And it’s still not easy.
Jones was going on nineteen years. We estimate she was born sometime in early February 1992. She was five weeks old when I came across her wandering around the stoop of a neighbor on Waverly Street in March of that year. Barely larger than my closed fist, her biggest features were the ears that dwarfed the rest of her head and tiny body. A gray tabby with a stubby little bob of a tail, she may have been the runt of her litter. “She’s really cute, but I can’t take her... we have two other cats already,” my neighbor told me. When you see baby animals of any kind there is something that turns a screw in you... but I wasn’t sure about opening our home to a pet, especially while Dave was away. I made some more small talk and weighed the options. “I think I’m going to have to pass... I can’t take her,” I told him. We chatted a little longer and watched the kitten explore the alleyway and street, before another neighbor approached with her two dogs, both easily 10x the size of the tiny stray. In amazement I watched as the five-week-old kitten stood her ground with these dogs. “Wow, look at that! That one’s fearless!” joked our neighbor Alba, the owner of the dogs. “Are you sure you can’t take her?,” they asked me again. Something clicked and I thought ‘“ooooooh, OK, what the hell.” I brought Jones home but wasn’t prepared for the awkward phone conversation I would later have with Dave --- “Ummmm, I kind of found a kitten... outside... and it’s REALLY cute...” Let alone the next 18 and a half years.
Okay, boomers, here’s an analogy you’ll get: If Harvey was Betty from the ‘Archies’, Jones was definitely Veronica. Temperamental and stubborn, Jones “...spent more time with you, actively ignoring you.” She wanted what she wanted when she wanted it, and the rest of the time she had no time for anyone and was content to simply sit on her own unmolested. Typically ‘cat,’ I would say. She liked to sit on my desk under the halogen lamp, sometimes baking to the point that I expected her to burst into flames -- she hated the cold. Her propensity to sit on the remote control, changing channels while we watched, was maddening. And when we yelled at her to get down she would sit directly in front of the cable box, making the remote useless. I think she delighted in frustrating us.
If she hated the cold, she hated going to the vet even more. On picking her up from her spay/de-claw operation I gave the receptionist my name on entering the office, she paused and looked up at me with a wry smile, “Oh, you’re JONES’ owner!” She had definitely made a reputation for herself. The commotion, screaming, and hissing I heard from the back of the office was soon discovered to be my temperamental princess. “Bye Jones!” said the tech who emerged and handed me my cat carrier, again with a wry smile. On another visit Jones slashed open one of the tech’s fingers so badly he probably needed stitches... with her HIND claw, yet. Our vet, Dr. Wellens, told me as I stood (mortified) in the exam room, two techs holding the cat down, “You know... I work with wild ocelots that are tamer than your cat...” She wasn’t like that at home, thank God. She did have her very cute and playful moments. The night she discovered the joys of batting a bottle cap around on the kitchen floor was particularly amusing, if not quiet. She continued to play with it well into the night, in the dark... for about 2-3 hours. Never content with store-bought cat toys, she would latch onto the unexpected: a bottle cap, the plastic lid to a gallon of milk, the clear plastic strip that came on the inside collar of a new dress shirt (she repeatedly fished that damn thing OUT of the trash to play with it). She also had her non-trash related favorites. A stuffed tiger named ‘Titus’ was just a little bit larger than Jones was at the time. Perhaps it was tail-envy, I’m not really sure, but she dragged Titus around the house with her, including up and down the flights of stairs on Waverly, which was quite a feat considering she could barely climb the stairs at all. We would play the ‘toilet paper game,’ with her, and would do the ‘funky foot-thing’ when she seemed agitated with us. One of the most memorable stories has to be the ‘Dental-Floss’ incident... if you are brave ask one of us about that one.
Her nubby tail always elicited the same question from those first meeting her: “Oh no! What happened to her tail!?” Dave got upset with me when I explained that I used to tell people he had twisted it off with a pair of pliers. “Oh God, WHAT!?” was generally the reaction... and I would laugh... she was half bob-tail most likely, and 3/4 alley cat.
Jones lived by herself for almost four years, until the day I couldn’t say no to another stray: Harvey. The two cats behaved much like the coyote and roadrunner when Dave and I were around, but we suspect they had a practical working relationship when alone. Regardless, we were glad Jones had almost a year to herself after Harvey departed. A few weeks of cautiously expecting an ambush around every corner segued into a relaxed, pre-other-cat Jones persona. Hissing was reduced to a bare minimum, and she actually started thinking ‘inside the box’ once more when it came to litter. Her quirkier self shone through in little things. The apartment was filled with her chatting, sometimes so much Dave would yell "SHHHHHHHHH!" over and over, only to be answered once more with a "Mmmmmrrrrowwww?" She begged at the table like a dog, and I often stupidly gave in to her. She was fascinated by the showers and bath tubs, often climbing in after we would get out, and especially loved Dave's bathroom scale - she'd just sit on it and stare at the wall. She drank from my toilet. Why the hell she couldn’t have USED the toilet, I’ll never know. Perhaps we thought that was an impossibility. Had we only known when she was a kitten we would have saved ourselves a LOT of aggravation.
This last twelve months piled the years on her. She stopped effectively grooming herself and we had a budding Rasta-cat on our hands. Remember the bit about the vet? Yeah, imagine Dave and me holding her down to clip the mats out of her fur. I think I spent about $100 on ‘magic mat removing tools,’ none of which worked. And she was still quite headstrong as an 18 year old cat. Needless to say, haircut time was not our favorite family activity.
A move to New Orleans, however, was not in the cards for our first born cat, and I think she had that in mind as well. Traveling cross-country with a 20-year-old feline was not something we were willing to do, either to her or to each other. So in a way things resolved themselves as best they could. We returned from NOLA last week after an ‘exploratory’ trip, to find a more visibly frail Jones. Business was as usual but within days she was slowing down -- it hurt to watch her walk across the room, her energy level was dropping quickly -- and when she stopped eating last Friday I knew it was most likely her time. Although it was hard I preferred to see her go at home, as opposed to the way Harvey went, on a table in the sterile environment of the vet’s office. She drifted off peacefully this morning, and I suspect she was harboring a thought to the end: “Would those two just leave me alone? I’m TIRED!”
Walking to a work appointment this afternoon I made a quick detour down Waverly Street, where I found her and where she spent the first 4 years of her life. She had always loved sitting in the front window of that house, in the sun, just inside the screen. She loved the light and the warmth, often sitting in and moving with the sunshine as it slowly migrated across the floor in the mornings. I’ll always think of her at Waverly Street, and if you ask me, she preferred that house over 9th Street, judging by how difficult it was to get her out on the day we moved. (A long story that my friend Rachel recently reminded me of -- she had stumbled on to the scene while it was happening. “Yeah, not a good time,” we both agreed) The Waverly Street house has changed little since we moved out.
The window is still the same. Little things like the trees have changed on that block in the past 14 years, but the sun was still shining down on the bleached white front of the house. I imagined Jones once more sitting there, basking in her glory, greeting all the neighbors who would stop each day to scratch at the screen, and say hello to the funny little friendly cat with no tail.
