Episode 9- The Series Finale

That references finally getting through the end of the WandaVision miniseries, which I have many thoughts and many more questions about that I may or may not get to in this post- but it is also fitting because today was the beginning and end of Evil Cat's final journey- the ninth of our furbabies (counting the kids' gone-too-soon kitty Arthur who's buried out front with our others) to go on the journey to Rainbow Bridge....

and the first who we genuinely worry will be sent back to us after being refused entry at the border.


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(Zoey, now the senior gato in the house, decided to try to send that as an email just now by planting her ass on my keyboard. She seems relieved her older sib is gone;)

I picked that picture off my camera roll while we were in the parking lot at the vet after signing the Go Ahead form. I didn't notice that Boz, our recently too-soon lost kitten, was in the picture. He was everything Michelle wasn't: Playful. Affectionate. Empathetic. Bonding with us and all the other animals, even the dog. Most of all, not in violation of any town noise ordinances, since for at least half of her very long stay here, Evil Cat took to YOWLLLLLing at all hours of the day and night.  Mostly it was random YOWLLLLs at nothing special, but in the past few years, she added a variation, which we called making bebbies. She'd grab a dish towel or any other available piece of cloth up to and including a dress shirt if one was on the floor in front of the washer; she would then put it in her yap and march it down the hall to the bedrooms like she was carrying one of her own kittens, yowling all the way.

No  bebbies the past few weeks, but other annoyances went way past 9 (lives) and 11, to infinity and beyond. Michelle stopped grooming herself months ago, which led to fur matting and, eventually, the need for us to bathe her in the tub with warm water and baby shampoo. She took it better than you'd expect, but it still wasn't fun.  She resisted any effort of either kitten, and since December just the one, to play or cuddle or have any interaction not involving growls and hisses from her. The final straw, though, was this week, when her incontinence ramped up to intolerable. Several days running, she planted peebombs on floor mats in the kitchen. Both of us got baptized at various times the past couple of nights when she tried to plant herself on us while watching the tv earlier in the week. It finally got to the point where a first-thing call to the vet today resulted in a late-morning appointment, one from which she did not return.

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Eleanor took her, since I wound up with two office appointments before noon: following up with clients from both yesterday's Hospital Cluster and the earlier-in-week Team Hearing with No Video, and by the time I finished with both and got to Eleanor's car in the vet parking lot, they were already talking about whether we wanted a pine box and a pawprint. (Yes, we asked for them; she was nothing if not memorable.)

They ran no tests, but from the look of eyes, mouth and general demeanor, it was quickly concluded that her kidneys had failed and her thyroid was also off.  The latter was what was causing her appetite to be as good as ever despite losing weight (she was barely five pounds at the end), while the former could not have been cured or treated.  Euthanasia was the one procedure they allow humans to come in for, but we passed. Plenty to remember her by already.

With other furbabies we’ve lost, after they passed we noticed the absence of them playing, cuddling, just missing their loving presence. With this one, it’s just how QUIET it is. I compared it to living next-door to a rock quarry that suddenly went silent. I almost expected to hear a lunch whistle in the background:
 

Watch on YouTube

Yabba dabba done.

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We got a lot of sympathy posts from friends. It's hard to explain that this one, unlike all the others, brought more a sense of relief than anything else. Michelle came to us the year after our first trip to Rainbow Bridge, part of an abandoned pair Eleanor found on the SPCA Whisker Wagon that they said had to be adopted together because they were so inseparable. That proved to be something of a clever ruse to get rid of her, as her older (non-genetic) brother Biggsy, who was a total sweetheart, never seemed to care for her any more than she did anyone else and  vice versa. He passed from cancer way too soon after we got the two of them, and we spent over a decade dealing with her warped personality. Zoey, Pepper and the two kittens joined the household after that, and she didn't take to any of them, either. She was our Special Child- ignoring us except when she demanded attention. If "Karen" had been a thing in 2006, we would have changed her name to that.

We gave Evil Cat a fitting memorial service here tonight. Eleanor started off the music with Joe Strummer from his Mescaleros side project, which I then supplemented during dinner with more melodic selections from The Clash's London Calling. If anything honors that cat, it's something loud. Then we headed back to finish Eddie Murphy's Coming 2 America which we'd begin watching the previous night. It includes scenes with an even more evil Evil Cat than she was, and that Evil Cat's denouement was very fitting for honoring the memory of a feline who never loved us or any other life form under this roof but always loved her cat fud.

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Wanda will hafta wait.