Mr. Cat died yesterday after a long illness. He was 15.
Mr. Cat and I met one day in September of 1990. I had gone to the local Humane Society with a clear goal in mind: find a female, Siamese kitten. At this particular humane society (in Golden Valley, Minnesota), they had a cat room in which cats, kittens, and their potential adoptive families could mingle and get to know each other. When I walked into the room, I saw a beautiful creature up on a cat tree. He was curled up with his back facing me, and from that angle looked exactly like the coil of a python. His sleek fur looked like skin and his exotic black and gold markings seemed to bear no resemblance to anything feline.
And yet, I didn’t go to him at once. I was still looking for my kitten-I had come to replace a lynxpoint Siamese kitten, Bianca, whom I had lost a few months earlier under tragic circumstances. Then as I fixated on a small gray and white female kitten, this other cat climbed up on a table next to me and casually (as if he did this sort of thing all the time) stood on his hind feet, wrapped his front paws around my neck, and began to purr and nuzzle me. In effect, he said, “I choose you to be my human.”
Out of all the people there that day looking for cats, he picked me! How lucky I was. And how could I reject his choice simply because he was a) not female, b) not Siamese and c) not a kitten?
I took him home with me and we began a 15-year relationship that spanned four names, five addresses and three cities.
The name on his adoptive papers was “Pike”-not a bad name for him really, as from above he did also resemble a sleek and spotted fish. I changed his name to Mowgli. At nine months of age, he was neutered under that name. But it never stuck somehow, and when we moved to a new apartment in Minneapolis, I changed his name to Paolo. My problem with naming him was that he was such an extraordinary and remarkable cat that no name seemed big enough or good enough to contain him. “Paolo” never really took either, and most of the time we just called him “Cat.” He was the only cat in the house and this blunt term was one of endearment. Then in 1992, I moved to New York City to go to graduate school and there I introduced him to everyone as simply “Cat”-although on his tag I spelled it “Khat,” like those red seeds that much of the developing world chews and spits. This suited him well for a few years, but by 1995, when I moved to Cleveland, I had added the more respectful prefix “Mr.” Under this name, Mr. Cat, he lived out the rest of his long and eventful life.
Here are some of the major events of that life.
Minneapolis, Winter, 1991: One night I opened the back door to find Mr. Cat half frozen to death, covered with oil, reeking of gas, with one of his back legs dangling. It was about 20 below that night and he had been gone all day. I realized immediately that his leg was broken, at the very least. I put him into a box and my then-boyfriend (now husband) Ben and I drove him to the animal emergency room. I remember that when I was holding him in this box in my lap (I feel a pang now to realize that yesterday he made his last journey in a just such a box) the gas fumes were making me dizzy and ill. After some intense hours waiting and watching all the other animal traumas go by, we learned that Mr. Cat’s leg was dislocated and that the ball of the femur had been sheered off by some sharp object. The vet speculated that he had crawled inside a car engine to get warm (as cats often do in Minnesota), and that someone had turned the car on. Did the fan blade chop his femur? The next day I discovered a message on my answering machine saying that my cat was on this lady’s front steps and had been there all day. The address she gave was about three blocks away from our house, which means that in desperate pain, through bitter cold, he had somehow dragged himself all the way home.
However it happened, he needed surgery to repair it. For six weeks or so after the surgery, he went by a nickname, “Frankenkitty.” One quarter of his body was shaved and he had an enormous line of hideous black stitches going from his waist, over his hip and half way down his leg. The price tag on the surgery was $600, and it was hard to raise at the time. I remember a friend’s parents expressing shock that I did not simply put the cat to sleep. I said, “No, no, this is a GREAT investment!” And we all laughed about it. But I was right.
New York City, 1992-1995: While I was in grad school, I lived in a beautiful brownstone belonging to a wonderful woman, Patty, who was my benefactrix. The house was filled with a lot of fine art and antiques. Considering that Mr. Cat and I were guests there, the cat was really a nuisance at times. He needed to stay in one part of the house, but he learned how to reach up, standing on his tippy toes, and open doorknobs with his paws. On occasion he bit or scratched my roommates (one of whom still sports an impressive scar on his wrist). Although, of course he never bit ME and I was so in love with him that I was immune to criticism, which in retrospect I’m sure was also quite annoying. Anyway, we had this wonderful courtyard behind the house and Mr. Cat I think was happier living there than anywhere else we lived in his life. You see, the courtyard was brimming with birds. He learned how to somehow catch a bird, leaving it totally unharmed, and then wrestle it through the cat door. (Also did I mention he wore a bell and had no front claws?) Inside, you see, he could kill it at his leisure. On several occasions I awoke to find a bird sitting on top of my fridge, or flying around the room. As difficult and stressful as it was to catch and release these birds, finding them alive was still better than finding them dead. I stepped out into my foyer one morning-the white walls were streaked with blood. The carpet had huge gruesome stains on it. And there on the floor was a dead woodpecker. I felt like drawing a chalk line around it and calling in the homicide detectives.
He also killed mice, which was perhaps the only truly useful service he provided my hostess in New York. Sometimes I would find some horrible thing– like, say, the back leg and the tail of a mouse. One time he took ill and I brought him to the vet. Diagnosis: he basically had overindulged in wildlife. Some friends and I devised a mnemonic device for him: “Birds before mice: not nice. Mice before bird: word.”
New York City, 1994: Among all the wonderful objects in that house, there was a large piece of amber with a maybe 5-inch lizard trapped in it. The legend was that this had been found in the back of an old clock that once belonged to an archeologist. Patty had bought it at an antique show or traded for it, and it was something that she and everyone else, in a house brimming with valuable things, truly valued. When one of her sons broke his finger, he took the amber with him to the hospital to be x-rayed. It sat in a revered place on the mantle. One night, when Patty and I were sitting there watching T.V., Mr. Cat climbed up on the mantle and (I think intentionally) threw the amber off. It smashed on the slate hearth, breaking into two major pieces and several shards. Patty in her goodness claimed it was okay, and tried to comfort ME in my acute distress. We packed it in a zip-lock bag to protect the desiccated midriff of the lizard from exposure to the air. But she, who had calmly raised three rambunctious boys amid objets d’arts, was clearly chastened by the loss. She smoked cigarettes and her hands shook.
I resolved to somehow, somehow redeem myself by getting the amber lizard repaired. First I called this store, Maxilla and Mandible, which deals in such things. The man on the phone was as rude as you might expect. He said, “Oh, it’s a fake. Just throw it out!” What??? I protested that it was REAL and he protested that it wasn’t and we were at an impasse. So I moved on and called the amber curator at the American Museum of Natural History. This man, too, although much kinder about it, insisted that it wasn’t real. I told him about the clock and the archeologist and he said, “Oh, they always come with a legend like that.” But he was a nice man, and he could see that I was upset, so he agree to at least look at it for me. I brought it over there, and found my way through the dark unpublic regions of that incredible building. He took one look at it and said, “It’s fake.” He explained that something as large as a lizard would never get caught in amber anyway. It’s just petrified sap and sap moves too slowly to catch anything but bugs. Then he examined it under a microscope and became more intrigued. He explained that it was at least an old fake, maybe 100 years old. And then he said, “What is that in there anyway? A skink?” I didn’t know. He said, “I think it IS a skink!” This seemed to excite him. He said, “Listen, it’s a fake, but it’s an old and interesting fake. I’ve never seen a skink in one before. I’d like to include it in my fake amber exhibit, which I’m putting together now. I’ll repair it for you if you will let me use it in the show. The show will travel around the country for a year or so.” I said I would talk to the owner.
Patty wasn’t happy that it was a fake. In fact, it took sort of a while to convince her that it was. She prided herself on having the real, authentic version of everything-no knock-offs. But ultimately, having the piece repaired and having it on display at the museum, seemed to somehow compensate for the misdeed of one rather difficult and rude, bad guest of a cat.
Cleveland, 1996: Mr. Cat didn’t do well with the transition to apartment living after three years of freedom in New York. He tended to pace the rooms at night. He would come into our room and take great pains to throw items off the dresser one by one. If in the attempt to sleep we locked him out of the bedroom, he would tuck his front paws under the door, and with superfeline strength he would shake the entire door (loudly) in the doorframe, while also yowling operatically. This was rather annoying. Finally I solved this problem by purchasing a video called, “Cat T.V.” This half-hour video (would that it were longer), simply showed items of interest to cats. Birds at a birdfeeder with real audio. Fish in a fish tank. Squirrels chasing around and up a tree. Mr. Cat loved his video. And on those nights he got the mean reds (as Holly Golightly once called them), I would put the video on for him. He would sit on a chair transfixed, watching his program.
Also, since we lived in a place where he could not possibly go outside safely, I got him a harness and walked him on a leash. He was pretty good about it, actually, and loved his outings. Around the same time, he took the dog imagery to another level by learning to fetch. His specialty was fetching marbles, although a small silver bell was also a favorite. I would throw it to the opposite end of the apartment. He would chase it full-speed, capture and subdue the marble, and then trot back to me proudly and drop it at my feet.
Cleveland, 1998: On the upside, we got a house, which gave him a lot more room to patrol. On the downside, we got a puppy.
Cleveland, summer 2001: One night the aforementioned puppy chased a small kitten up a tree. Ultimately we ended up adopting this little gray fur ball, named Zane Gray, and she became Mr. Cat’s protegee. He truly loved having another feline friend in a house that was becoming all too dog-centric. He tended to the kitten with all the tenderness of any mother. He washed her and taught her all the important cat things she needed to know. She needed a parent, and Mr. Cat needed someone to care for. He washed her so much in fact that he became afflicted with hairballs for the first time in his life.
Minneapolis-New York-Cleveland, 1990-2002: For twelve straight years, Mr. Cat slept in my arms almost every night. Then one day in October of 2002, he was summarily dismissed from the bed by a small and squalling red thing– a new baby. The baby slept in my arms instead! In HIS spot! For some months he wasn’t even allowed to sleep in the same room-simply because he looked at the baby with that evil crouched and tail-lashing glare he reserved for prey, and because while the baby weighed only six pounds, he weighed twelve. Gradually we forged some sort of compromise. The baby slept in my arms. Mr. Cat slept at the foot of the bed.
Cleveland, January 2003: I noticed Mr. Cat sitting in the middle of the floor while someone vacuumed around him. It took something this dramatic to cut through the newborn-baby haze that I was in. Mr. Cat was sick. I took him to the vet that day and they kept him over night to run tests. The next day, the vet told me the sad news that he was in liver failure and was dying. They gave his just a few days to live. I drove over to get him, sobbing, and brought him home for hospice care in his last few days of life. My mother counseled me to make this miracle substance she calls “Super Goop.” I mixed up the stuff (raw liver and many other things) and coaxed him to take a little bit, about the size of a pea, from my finger tip. I did this over and over again at all hours of the day and night (I was up with the baby anyway). Gradually I got him to move up to a teaspoon of it, then a tablespoon. Then I could just set it down in a bowl and he would eat it on his own. He was well! Cured! He went on to live another two and a half years.
Cleveland, summer 2005: He dropped weight until he looked like a fur covered skeleton. His kidneys began to fail. His ears and nose turned yellow from jaundice. He nearly died six weeks ago of dehydration, but I started giving him subcutaneous fluids on a regular basis. The vet said that sometimes cats live well for years with fluids like this. I had to overcome my dislike of needles, but I did it. He had to overcome his dislike of being poked by someone who doesn’t know what she’s doing, but he did it. We had some nice summer afternoons in the new backyard. A few weeks ago he had enough gumption to escape. We searched around for several hours and I feared that he had crept away someplace to die. But then we found him, filthy, covered with cobwebs, rolling on his back in the dust, incredibly happy and pleased with himself.
His last days were filled with all the indignities of old age and infirmity. As of Saturday, he couldn’t get out of bed, but was still hungry and thirsty and would purr when I petted him. I cleaned him and changed his bedding and took him out for fresh air. As recently as yesterday, when almost all his strength was gone, he found the will to flick his tail. Just enough to tell me that he was pissed about all this, and not giving up by any means. He maintained his fighting attitude till the end. I couldn’t bear to see him suffer anymore, and finally made an appointment for a mobile vet to come to the house today and put him to sleep. I didn’t want to do it, because he did not want to die. Yesterday he couldn’t lift his head anymore. His eyes were glazed over. I sat with him and begged him to stop fighting it. I prayed to the late Patty to come and get him, if these things work like that– and if she would even want to be with him after all his high jinx in her house.
Yesterday, sometime between 4 and 6 p.m. he lost his battle to old age and multiple organ failures. I found him cold and curled up in his bed. Although I was ready for it, I wasn’t ready for it. How could I be?
I made him a clean bed in a box and drove his body over to a pet cremation place. The people were calm and professional, but I had to wait a long time while someone finished a phone call. I had too much time to stand there, crying, and looking at this little plain cardboard box that contained his worldly remains.
From Bush 41, through all the Clinton years, and into the second term of Bush 43, he was my cat. From dating to living together, to living apart in separate cities, to being newlyweds to being new parents, to coming up on our tenth anniversary, he was our cat.
What a wonderful, unique, opinionated, tough, spirited, brilliant, loving, unusual cat he was. How I lucky I am that he chose me to be his person! Farewell, Mr. Cat. Thank you for spending your life with me. Rest in Peace.