Nine Lives
Aug. 8th, 2023 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI have discovered during the course of the day today that it is apparently International Cat Day. We got no announcement of this from the feline overlords, because as far as they’re concerned, EVERY day is Cat Day and they don’t give a shit about other countries. I’ve been meaning for some time to do a photo post of all of the kitzels that have shared a home with us. I almost did it a week ago when I was reminded that July 31 marked 35 years since the Gotcha Day when the first of these insane lifeforms came into our home.
I never had any growing up, although our oldest sister did. A calico named ChaCha lived with Sandy and Jean Pierre in their Bronx apartment, moving with them to Long Island after our older niece was born. When I was maybe 10, I famously helped the teenage boys next door feed an entire platter of leftover turkey carcass to that maybe seven pound cat after we finished Thanksgiving dinner. Nobody could figure out where all the leftovers for sandwiches went. A few years later, after my niece Nicole arrived and they moved to a bigger house, others passed through. One was a semi-feral, fleabitten tomcat ironically named Tiny, with the girls took great pleasure marching around on his back legs when he snuck into the house. But Sandy spent her final years with a much sweeter all-grey indoor boykitty named Ashes.
None of my dorms or apartments over the years allowed pets, except the last one in Ithaca where my cat-allergic roommate adopted a malamute-husky puppy who proceeded to devour everything on the premises, nailed down or not. They wound up adopting him out to a guy with a big farm in the northern regions of the county. I said goodbye to Curly and said, “now you’ve got 40 acres to chew.“ We did, occasionally and briefly, allow a neighborhood outdoor kitty to hang with us at a previous apartment. We never got his real name and he went at various times by either Milo or Feedback. I think I’ve got a picture of him someplace, but this post is about the nine that have lived with us over the years.
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We married in late 1987 and bought the place we’ve been living a few months after that, which gave us the chance to have furbabies for the first time. We had hung out in the neighborhood with an outdoor cat who looked a lot like Milo known as Radar, but when Eleanor’s then-best friend had her own cat deliver a litter the following summer, we knew it was time, and we drove out to their lakeside cottage, picking out a small, sweet black kitten with white bikini markings on her belly to be our first ”child.”
As a kitten, Esmeralda was rambunctious, curious and very photogenic. We probably still have more pictures of her than we even took of Emily in her first year. Almost nine months to the day later, after we'd decided she needed a playmate, and we saw an ad for a litter in Farmington, 20 miles or so from where we lived. That litter was supervised by a crazy cat lady whose kids seemed about as feral as Tiny had been almost 20 years before. The kittens were well cared for, though, and we went home with a big-eared boy who was promptly named Bozo.
The two of them were with us together for over 15 years- through two house moves, one birth, a two-week ice storm that rendered us powerless and them near-feral, Emily growing up, and the arrival of other furbabies, including our first two of the dreaded D-species. Through it all, they bonded together like no others ever did until the most recent pairings of young boys in just the past couple of years:
Bozo, though younger, was the first to go. Ezzer's mommy had lived past 20 and our eldest came pretty close to that before we finally sent her to Rainbow Bridge in her eighteenth year. This LJ post remains as one of fewer than ten I ever marked there as a memory from her final days.
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First to join them at home was this guy, seen in a Petco rescue cage circa 1998:
Tazzer was around two when he came home to us. He didn't fight with the other two, but he was delicate and had a streak of Siamese in him that kept him from bonding with them as they had with each other. We quickly came to know him as "my 401K cat," because just about all my 20th century retirement funds got diverted into rescue surgeries for him as he got things stuck inside him out of cat-killing curiosity. He was the one who knew more of the others than any- not only the two oldest cats but all except the three most recent feline arrivals, plus our first two dogs. He was gentle around all of them, and was a dear companion to all three humans, making it to around 17 before he took his trip to the Bridge.
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After Bozo passed and with Esmeralda approaching last days, circa 2006, we decided to get Taz some company. A local vet had a housed-together pair that they said were inseparable! Could we take them both? We went for the joy of the one and the beauty of the other. The inseparable part, though? Utter bullshit. Michelle, known in her later years almost exclusively as "Evil Cat" or just "Shut Up," didn't get along with her so-called housemate Biggsy any more than she would ever with anyone or anything else.
(ETA: I just noticed that must be an older photo of her, because she's got one of the boykitties sticking out of her ass. Bronzini's the one who always gets along with everybody. Even her:P)
No arguing, she was pretty. But she's the only one we just ran through the express EZ-Pass lane at Rainbow Bridge without even stopping to say goodbye when her time finally came close to the age of 20. That was early 2021; she'd been old enough to vote and we're sure she would have voted for Trump if given an opposable thumb to work the ballot. Here she is with her brother from another personality on an ill-advised joint trip to the vet for shots:
Poor guy:(
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Biggsy, on the other hand, was sheer loveaibility on four little fat feet.
How he could pose. How he could play. How he could purr. We had one of the worst weeks of our life in 2007 when an abscess on his tummy proved cancerous and surgery to repair it would have been beyond his ability to wake up from the anasthesia. My words at that time were succinct and simple:
Biggsy didn't make it.
He was too anemic to make it through the surgery.
It was probably cancer all along.
We had two good years with him.
I'm getting drunk now.
Supplemental.
For the record, I waited until after picking Emily up from school (she'd called about an afternoon engagement and I had to tell her over the phone) before getting seriously into "the grape." But I've more than caught up, thanks.
Our vet just called. She was checking his tissue even after they put him down, and there was carcinoma (carcinomi?) all over the place, so we did the right thing.
He also left this world happy. We had to restrict his food after 8 last night, so right before they brought the final needle, we asked them to bring him some food. Not knowing his preferences, they brought three little bowls of various canned and moist-dry foods. He devoured them like a miniature Hoover and Eleanor swears she felt him purring at the very end. That's how I want to remember my little bud.
I don't do the drinking anymore, but know those feels will be back again with at least some who are here now, especially the oldest of each species. They're still pronounced in good health and I hope those days remain long off.
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We finally get to (mostly) the ones who remain, starting with the first out-of-litter kitten we'd brought in for more than 20 years in 2009:
Zoey is my joy, my desktop and pillow companion, a purr that never quits. She rarely meows but is as expressive in other ways as any who's lived here, and I may be counting the two current humans. She turned 14 this year, survived a mouth cancer scare several years ago, and while she doesn't try to keep up with Da Boyz, she definitely still has some badass left in her. The good kind of badass, that is....
Ah, the boys. It'll be three years ago this month that two mommies in two different states gave birth to three kittens, possibly all from different daddies. The two we adopted together in October 2020 at barely two months old were so different in their personalities and growth. Initially christened Krispie and Pop (the litter also had a Snap and a Crackle), they were quickly renamed Bronzini and Boz, and they bonded like no two had in over 30 years:
Alas, the orange fella quickly showed signs of failure to thrive, and after two cold December nights in the midst of COVID and the fomenting of an insurrection, Boz became the first of our eight to date to pass in his sleep at home. Next to me, with others close by. Bronzini continued to grow, play and become a constant companion and occasional holy terror. After a few months of grief, we began to look again for a playmate close to his age, eventually learning of a Rochester rescue group that had brought this guy up from Tennessee:
Jack's our biggest ever, but he's a little shy, especially with me. He's quite the poser, has the sweetest little squeak of a meow when he needs to be let out of a room for noms or necessaries, and he's almost as closely bonded with Bronzini as his departed little bro was. Jack's also BFFs with Pepper the dog, of all things, and will sleep next to her, headbutt her especially if the dog seems stressed, and follow her around the house (but never outside) like he's a puppy dog. Who knows, maybe there IS a small one in there?
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So that's our Western New York Nine. Thirty-five years of purrs and Purina, of hugs and hairballs, of mystery and mayhem. All of them save Boz and Jack went missing at one time or another for extended adventures. Every one of them came home, even Evil Cat, who marched in during the last game of a Mets season when I was away at Citi Field after we'd long given up any thought of seeing her again. Fuck you, can opener, where's my food? was the clear message conveyed. Yet we still cared for her every day she was here, and when we hear an unexplained yowl or hear the crashing of a delicate piece of dinnerware, we think, Yeah, Satan wasn't ready to have HER back yet.
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Date: 2023-08-09 08:34 pm (UTC)Nice post :)
Date: 2023-08-10 10:17 am (UTC)I see clients struggle with knowing the right time so often. So I shared my story of having to put my first greyhound down and told her she made the right call--as did you.
The last best thing you can do for them is give them a comfortable send off. I see too many clients deny what's happening and put their pets through so much unnecessary suffering...