We're in Asheville, NC, this weekend, celebrating Jude's parents' 50th wedding anniversary with the family. Will Miller, the son of a high school classmate of mine, is house sitting for us while we're away.
Yesterday, Will called me as we were walking in the rain through downtown Asheville and hesitatingly told me that our 19 year old cat, NC, had died. It didn't come as a complete surprise because she's not been doing well but I hated that it happened when he was there and I wasn't. Maybe it's for the best, though, because I would have hated for the boys to have found her before we did.
NC, short for "New Cat," has a long and storied history with our family. It's sad because in some ways, she's the last link to our old house on Elliott Avenue and to a more innocent time in our lives before we had the boys and before my mom began to fade away.
When Jude and I bought the house on Elliott Avenue and she moved in, we immediately noticed a black and white cat in the window, outside, peering in at us. It was cold, probably January 2002, and strangely enough, whichever room we were in, the cat appeared in the window. From room to room. We're in the den and there she is. We're in the kitchen and there she is. Weird.
I realized I had seen the cat when we were looking at the house, so we called our realtor to see if the owners had mistakenly left her when they moved. He called them and, apparently, they lamely claimed to have tried to get her in the moving truck they rented. In reality, Jesse and Amy Plaster left NC - they called her "Kroger," because that's where they found her, we later learned - and just like that, we had two cats, instead of one. We later added a third cat, Mini-T, which is another story altogether.
I love animals, but I'm not particularly a cat guy. I much prefer dogs. The running joke I always told was that Jude loves cats and I love dogs, so when we got married, we compromised and got three cats. That line was always a lot funnier to me than to Jude for some reason.
Now, with Jude's cat, Punk, long gone and NC gone, we're down to one cat. And I'm a little bit sad about it.
Originally, NC was an outside cat to a great extent. At our old house, she went outside in the small, fenced back yard and in the front yard, too. She occasionally scrapped with other neighborhood cats who ventured into our yard. Cats are territorial that way or so it seems.
In her prime, NC was a large cat. Not fat, but really big but, for the most part, completely docile. She didn't like to be picked up - like most cats - but she was a bit of a lap cat. I've got pictures somewhere of she and Punk sitting on the blanket with Jude in her chair and a half at the old house, sleeping away. My recollection is that NC and Punk tolerated each other and rarely squabbled but that's a long time ago.
NC was one of those cats who truly had nine lives or close to it. Hers was an adventurous life in the early and middle years, much more sedentary the last few years.
At one point, she jumped or fell off the small, second floor front porch directly above our large, downstairs front porch. She used to climb up on the rail and sleep on it. One day when I was home and had the door open to second floor front porch, she walked out there. A little while later, I noticed her outside on the downstairs front porch. As I opened the front door, I realized she had fallen or jumped. My suspicions were confirmed as she limped into the house.
Another time at the old house, I let her out at night because she was dying to go outside. I don't really hearing anything but after a while, I saw her looking in the large oval glass of our front door. She appeared to be bleeding for her nose and mouth. When I let her in, I could see that she had gotten into a fight with something. I took her up the Pet Emergency Clinic and they discovered a large gash on the upper roof of her mouth, severe enough the the veterinarian surmised she had scrapped with a raccoon or an opossum. They stitched up the roof of her mouth. For three weeks or so, I wrapped her in a bath town to prevent her from scratching me and fed her "kitty Ensure" by shooting a syringe of it into her mouth because she couldn't eat solid food.
Later still, she was out in the front yard and, unfortunately, wondered into the side yard, between our house and Jamie's house. He dog - large and mean - began chasing her and when she jumped and tried to climb the fence into our back yard, she didn't quite make it. She sled back down the fence and Jamie's dog attached her, biting her pretty significant on her back. Again, off to the Pet Emergency Clinic we went for more stitches. After that, NC pretty much stayed inside.
She moved with us to the new house and settled in nicely. Although we had a bigger back yard than in the old house, NC rarely, if ever, ventured outside the check it out. In fact, in the three or four years we have been there, I don't know if she ever left the back deck.
The last year or so, NC slowed down considerably. She didn't do much more than eat and sleep. Long gone were the early days in our old house when she drove Punk a bit crazy with her young cat playfulness. Jude and I laughed when we remembered how she used to love to chase this feather attached by a piece of yarn to what was like a small fishing pole. She would jump and jump, then grab it in her teeth before trying to walk away with it, only to be stopped when the yarn stretched all of the way out.
I bought NC a cat bed and placed in against the far wall in the guest room. For quite a while, that was her spot and she slept there throughout the day. At night, she often wandered into our room, so I placed an old family quilt on the floor, in the corner, by my side of the bed. She slept there at night, often so soundly I could hear her snoring. As I write this, I'm smiling, because I had almost forgotten about NC's snoring. Some cats purr, and NC did that, but when she was in a deep sleep, she often snored, so loud that it would wake us up.
Another funny thing NC always did was to get her claws caught in carpet or blankets. For some reason, she didn't have the ability to readily extricate herself and we had to help her.
One of my favorite things - and it made Jude laugh, too - is that NC would talk to me. If Jude and I were laying around in the day or night, watching television, for example, or reading, NC might walk up to see what was going on. If I meowed at her, she would immediately mimic my meow and stare right back at me as she was doing it. If I changed the pitch or tone, she would, too. It was strange but funny. Literally like she was talking to me or, perhaps, was puzzled why I couldn't understand her.
NC could be maddening at times, especially to me, as she struggled to use the litter box at times. In the old house, we had three litter boxed, all of which I was somehow in charge of changing. Still, she consistently peed on the floor by the two litter boxes downstairs by the basement door. I cleaned up the wood floor there a lot.
In the new house, especially the last year or so, NC couldn't or wouldn't climb into one of the two litter boxes in the laundry room. She peed on the floor in there quite often, certainly more than I would have liked. It used to make me angry, not at her but just at the indignity of my being the one to always have to clean it up. However, as her health declined and I could see she was struggling, it became a kind of zen thing for me. She couldn't help it because she was struggling to get around - maybe because of the jump or fall from the second floor porch of our old house - and the least I could do is to clean up after her willingly and a little bit lovingly.
NC lost the ability or maybe, desire, to give herself a bath and her coat became terribly matted. Several months ago, when we took her for a checkup, the veterinarian she sees shaved her fur. She looked weird, considerably smaller and kind of pitiful at first, but it seemed to bring her some relief. Her fur actually grew back pretty quickly, though, and became matted again, although not as bad as its as before she was shaved.
The last couple of months, NC continued to decline. She found a heating vent and laid directly on it most of the time, in bathroom or in the den. At night, though, while Jude and I watched reruns of West Wing, she always walked over the couch where I lay, looked up at me, and meowed. I brushed her or, more recently, just scratched her head and ears or rubbed her back. While she didn't purr, she stayed there as along as I would continue and clearly enjoyed the attention. It was our thing. I knew we were near the end, but I felt like as long as she could still experience the pleasure of human contact, maybe we had a little more time.
Here's the hard part for me, I think, and part of how I made my peace with cleaning up after NC almost every day. As strange as it is, her decline and her weakened state reminded me a lot of my mom, and her decline and weakened state. There were definite parallels - for me, anyway - between the two. Part of me felt that by respecting the circle of life and caring for NC with patience, kindness and well, love, I was doing what I hoped staffers are doing for my mom each and every day. Maybe I thought it was a karma thing, that if I showed NC love and respect, staffers would do the same for my mom.
Weird, sure, but still. It's how I felt.
As J.P. and Joe expressed to me, one independently from the other, it's going to be weird not having NC around. Yes, boys, it sure is.
NC had a great run and lived a long, full life. As I explained to the boys, when you lose a pet, it's best to focus on all of the good times you shared, because they vastly outnumber the tough times. There's probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere or, more narrowly drawn, for relationships in life.
I also reminded the boys how fortunate NC was to have found her way to our family almost two decades ago. We cared for her, we provided a roof over her head and food for her to eat and, most importantly, we loved her.
In the end, that's everything.
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