Say it with me: "Awwwww…."
Velcro and Xena are kinda sorta getting along now. They play, but there’s still hissing and growling involved. Xena snuggles with Velcro, but only after Velcro is already deeply asleep. There’s been progress, is all I’m saying.
Kato
December 16, 1989 to February 17, 2007
Well, now we’re down to two cats again. I’m sad about Kato; I’d had him since he was very small. In fact, I got him as a Valentine’s Day gift from an old boyfriend, so
he was with me exactly 17 years and a couple of extra days. Still, as
with Friday, I’m relieved that he’s no longer suffering. His decline
was swift and shocking.
Losing Kato and Friday, one right after the other, feels a lot like
losing my youth. They were with me from the time that I first moved out
on my own, and they were a constant through various boyfriends, moves,
jobs, friends, and every other life change since my early 20s.
My husband is taking Kato’s death extremely hard. They had a special bond and spent a lot of time together. As much as Friday was my favorite cat, Kato was his.
Now I’m really glad we have the kitten, because her liveliness brightens the mood in the house. By the way, the name Xena seems to have stuck to her. The fact that it works in the Name Game (Xena, Xena, Bo-beena…) may have been a factor as well. Every cat needs a theme song.
Xena and Velcro aren’t exactly best buddies yet, but I think Velcro appreciates the idea of having another cat to play with. She’s always had to struggle for her place in the household and now she gets to be the dominant cat by default. I don’t think it will be much longer before they’re playing and snuggling together.
I hope this is the last of the gloomy posts for a while. We’re due for happier times.
We still haven’t named the kitten. My sister suggested another name the other day and I told her she should think of something that means "keeps pooping in your shower."
She wrote back that in Swedish, it’s "Skiten Dusch," in Portuguese it’s "Merda do chuveiro" and the German is "DuschescheiBe." Ha ha.
The kitten runs around doing all sorts of things I’d rather not have done in my house, including molesting the wood blinds, threatening to bat my glass candle holder off the table, and stepping on the buttons of the answering machine so that a robot voice randomly declares, "You have no new messages."
Yesterday my husband and I agreed that it’s time we purchased a squirt gun. Because the little cat doesn’t have a name and doesn’t respond to anything we yell at her, it would be extremely handy to be able to squirt her when she’s chewing the cables leading to our A/V gear, lurking in the back of the fireplace or doing any of the other hundred-and-one things we would like to make her stop doing.
In the past, we’ve discovered that a little bit of squirt gun goes a long way. By the time a cheap squirt gun begins leaking and needs to be thrown away, the cat will have learned to react to any similar sound. Then you can make a squirting sound between your teeth and get the cat to stop its bad acts…at least until it figures out that it isn’t getting wet anymore.
The kitten really is sweet and adorable – it’s just that neither I nor my husband has had a kitten around in nearly two decades. Sometimes their abundant energy is just tiring. Imagine if we had a child!
Sadly, our male cat, Kato, is rapidly declining in health. Ever since his pal, Friday, died he’s been very subdued. This week, neither of us has seen him eat anything for at least a couple of days. He appears extremely frail and he barely responds when spoken to or petted. I sincerely hope that we haven’t hastened his decline by bringing in the kitten, but I think it was inevitable either way.
So that’s the emotional tug-of-war going on at our house right now. On one hand we have the joy of the lively kitten and on the other, the sad last days of our oldest cat. Cue Elton John singing "The Circle of Life." Sigh.
My husband and I went to dinner at my sister’s house on Friday night. The plan was that my husband would fix my sister’s computers and my sister and I and one of our friends would watch movies ("Idiocracy" and "Dirty Love," in case you were wondering). Not long after we sat down to eat, a very hyper version of this darted across the room:
My sister had been telling me about an adorable, snuggly, black kitten at her vet’s office. She thought I should have this kitten. I agreed that I would be willing to go to her vet’s office and meet the kitten. I thought we might do so on Friday afternoon, but when I called my sister to ask if she wanted to go to lunch with me, she was headed to a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t think any more of it.
So obviously my sister decided at some point to take things a few steps further. I think it’s safe to say that I was rather surprised to be bringing home a kitten that night.
I had originally meant to lock the kitten in the bathroom and let my old cats discover her gradually. It took about 10 seconds for her to flip out after being left alone in the bathroom, so I immediately scrapped that plan and just opened the door and let the cats sort things out on their own.
The kitten is about four months old and possessed of seemingly boundless energy. The other cats are not warming up to her much yet, although my male cat let her sort of snuggle against him on the couch today, so that’s some progress. I think both older cats would kind of like to play, but not if it means ceding any authority. I think they’ll all get along after a while.
We’ve kicked around some ideas for names, but nothing is really sticking yet. The vet’s office called her Silver because she has a little bit of white fur on her chest and belly. My sister suggested Olive because she has green eyes, but I already know a cat named Olive. I’ve considered Niobe, Xena and Asia, but I’m not 100% convinced about any of those.
Do you like any of the names we’ve thought of? Do you have any name suggestions for a black, female kitten with green eyes? Help me name my new kitten!
My two remaining cats are acting especially needy now that Friday is gone. Our 17-year-old male cat, Kato, wants to remain in contact with a human at all times. When we’re sleeping, he’s perched on one of us. When I’m using the laptop, he’s between my forearms.
Velcro, our female cat, has always been quite clingy (hence the name), but she’s added "venturing into empty rooms and howling" to her repertoire.
Poor Kato’s health has been uncertain for a number of years and I foresee a day in the relatively near future when Velcro will be the only cat left. The question becomes: should we get another cat now?
I wouldn’t want to inflict a kitten on our oldsters (or myself, for that matter), but I think that a suitably mellow adult cat might be acceptable. I know the shelters are full of sweet, grown-up cats that get overlooked in favor of the kittens. I have little doubt that my work with the spay/neuter clinic gives me a direct line to inside information on the temperament of every available shelter cat in town.
And yet, I hesitate. Even though I’m pretty sure both cats would accept a new addition to the household fairly quickly, I worry about stressing them out.
Ultimately, I think it might be best if I just waited to see if fate puts a particular cat in my path. What do you think?
Friday
June 16, 1990 to January 20, 2007
R.I.P.
I spent several hours yesterday digging through all my photos to find pictures of my cats for a work project.
Best of all, I dug up a 16-year-old videotape that contained about five minutes of footage from the day I got my male cat.
Here’s my running commentary upon seeing the tape for the first time in more than a decade and a half:
Oh my God, look at those jeans! Acid washed…high waist. Gah! And my hair! Bad, bad bleach job. I think that was when I was peroxiding it myself. The top part is all flipped back, but it’s really messy and looks terrible. I know this was late in the day, but damn. What t-shirt do I have on? Oh, it’s Billy and the Boingers. I don’t even remember owning that, but I wish I still had it now.
Aw, the kitten is so cute! He could stand in the palm of my hand back then. What an adorable little meow! He used to sleep draped across my throat, which was cute when he weighed five ounces, but not so much once he grew up. Wow, I’m wearing high-top Reeboks with velcro. I think I might still have a pair of those somewhere…
I wasn’t just rattling away to an empty room – my husband was there. I don’t think he was really paying attention, though.
It was a lot of fun looking through all my photos. This week’s blog theme (after today) will be scanned photos and stories from my old collection. Tomorrow: our childhood swimming pool.
While we were distracted by the plight of the poor, old cat we had to euthanize last week, we hadn’t noticed that our 15-year-old male cat was having health problems as well. Once we had a chance to focus on the remaining three cats, we realized that The Boy was having some trouble making it to the litter box – to the extent that he even peed on my husband’s lap. He was also in the throes of one of his recurring eye infections.
I took him to the vet on Monday morning and spent this month’s car payment to find out that he has kidney problems (maybe just an infection, maybe kidney disease), possible feline herpes causing the eye infections, and he’s lost a pound and a half since his last vet visit. Now he’s on twice-daily antibiotics (luckily I’m really good at giving pills to cats), twice-daily eye drops, L-lysine supplements for the herpes and prescription canned cat food for added hydration. Oh, and if he doesn’t stay hydrated enough, I may have to start giving him subcutaneous fluids at home. Joy!
I remember a George Carlin routine where he said something along the lines of, "When you buy a pet, you’re purchasing a mini tragedy."
As much as I love cats, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll really want more after all of these rapidly-aging cats go.
In exactly an hour and a half, my husband and I will take our oldest cat to the vet for the last time. She’s been a part of our household since my mother-in-law died in 1999. Even then she was an old cat; now she’s nearly nineteen and looks older still.
We made the opposite decision more than a year ago when the cat first started having what we’ll call ‘bowel difficulties.’ Encouraged by her bright eyes and continued willingness to eat, I began dosing her with medicine every day. It helped and she rallied for a time, but she has since gotten rail-thin with patchy fur and a demeanor that makes it clear that she does not feel at all well.
Maybe because she’s never been one of our favorite cats, we’ve had a hard time deciding to let her go. Today’s timing feels awful: it’s as though we’re putting our cat to sleep because we’re going to have guests over. We know that’s not the case at all, but it’s hard not to feel guilty.
I’m grateful to our friends and relatives who’ve helped us see her as they see her. Viewed objectively, she looks shockingly frail and miserable. As one of my friends put it, "If that’s what getting old looks like, count me out."
R.I.P. Alexandra – 1987-2005
I hope we made your life a little happier while you were with us.
I’ve had my male cat since early 1990, when he was a tiny kitten that could stand in the palm of my hand. He’s been a part of my life since long before I met my husband, and we’ve lived in six different places together.
He’s had some health issues over the years and thus he gets prescription food to keep him from being too skinny. This is not new: he’s been eating the prescription diet for at least five years. I feed him in our bathroom so the other cats don’t push him aside to get the expensive food.
The new part of the situation is that he has suddenly begun demanding food at all hours of the day and night. There’s nothing stopping him from going to the basement to eat his fill of the cat food that’s available for all of the cats, but he’s not interested in that anymore. No, he’d rather follow us around the house meowing loudly and irritatingly.
That would be bad enough, but now he’s decided that his breakfast will come earlier if he comes into our bedroom and walks all over me until I wake up. He knows I’m the early riser, so every day he jumps up and bugs me like it’s his full-time job. I elbow him off the bed over and over, but eventually he always wakes me up. My policy is not to feed him right away when I get up, but I think he’s well aware that the sooner I get up, the sooner he’ll get fed.
I love letting the cats cuddle with us at night, but I’m afraid it’s time to institute a "no cats in the bedroom" rule. That is, unless I can figure out a way to un-spoil the troublemaker. Any ideas?