Just a Cat

kiko on table

I’m not a cat person. I’ve had three cats now, all of whom just showed up as adorable kittens in desperate need of a home. And we’ve taken them in. I have enjoyed them, and loved them, though it was never my intention to become a cat owner. There is something satisfying about petting a willing cat and hearing a contented purr, or having a warm furry cat-coil settle in my lap. Maybe that’s self-preservation on their part, or maybe they somehow have won me over to “cat person”—or some facsimile thereof, at least enough to guarantee for them food and shelter.

My mom was allergic to cats (and dogs) so I didn’t grow up having pets. And while my sister—a true cat person–has had cats since her college days, I didn’t have the first of the three kittens arrive till I was an adult, married, and had kids. Sagan was a beautiful beige cat who was with us for 6 months or so, until he disappeared shortly after we had him “fixed.” (Perhaps he didn’t think anything was broken?) He disappeared one day and we never saw him again. I can only hope someone found him and gave him a new home.

And then there was Kiko. By the time she showed up on our front yard in the rain, looking more like an odd little turtle than kitten (from a distance), we’d moved from suburban Atlanta to rural west Tennessee. I guess our property looks like an obvious dumping site for someone willing to take in unwanted kittens.

My [then] teenaged daughter and I rescued her and brought her to the vets. Along the way, I told Merrilee that her dad was NOT going to want to take in a kitten. I called him and told him about the little thing and what I’d told Merrilee. “But I like cats!”

And so Kiko had found a home.

She was a pretty little thing—a black Siamese kitten who happily purred and let us love on her. She loved to chase my rubber hair bands and play soccer with them. The refrigerator was the preferred goal post, and more than a few disappeared if I left them out. I think her record was 35 or so “goals” scored under the refrigerator at one time. She could toss them up in the air and loop them around and entertained herself for long periods chasing and batting these things.

She could do amazing spins and bounce off the wall in moves that would make parkour experts jealous. She could land without a sound, and with great precision. We suspected she was part primadonna ballerina, and her sleek, dainty body form fit that bill nicely.

When Kiko was 5 and well ensconced in our house as the princess, another stray kitten showed up on our doorstep—a long haired gray kitten with a roughed up eye from some unfortunate encounter with who knows what. And once again, we couldn’t NOT take him in.

Kiko was unimpressed, to say the least. It was weeks before she stopped greeting him with an annoyed hiss. She eventually got to where she would tolerate him, though sometimes with Lurch-like eye rolling, and it was easy to imagine an accompanying Lurch-like groan.

Unlike our petite, sleek, shiny black-furred Kiko, Kuiper is a Maine Coon cat, twice her size. The two were different as night and day. Unlike Kiko’s ballerina daintiness, Kuiper was more like the kid from the hood with britches hanging low and over-sized unlaced high-top sneakers. Whereas Kiko could light on the head of a pin and do a perfect pirouette and land perfectly without a sound, Kuiper would have trouble landing on a parking lot without leaving skid marks. He’s long on gray hair and short on gray matter, I fear….

Kuiper is a bit of a scared-y cat, and runs and hides in abject terror when company comes—except when the grandkids come to visit. Then he can’t help himself and has to be in the middle wherever they are, despite risking life and limb from the actions of curious toddlers.

Kiko hid when company came too—not out of terror, but disgust that someone had invaded her territory.

The years passed. During this time Kiko became my husband’s lap buddy. She delighted in curling up in his lap, and kept him company while he worked on his astronomy book, Living at the Edge of the Universe: Observations of a Naturalist of the Night. He even included a story about her in the book, about the night he decided to take her out to his observatory to keep him company, and was just sure that there was no way she could scale the 6 foot wall for freedom. Wrong. Somehow she managed to clear that wall. Have you ever tried to find a black cat in the dark on a moonless night?

We discovered the rule of catching an escaped cat—DON’T CHASE THE CAT! A little patience and she’ll return on her own time, and she did that night. No more observatory excursions for Kiko, though!

Just before Christmas this year, Kiko had an upper respiratory infection. She was 13 by this time. The vet gave her an antibiotic and a shot of steroids, and she seemed to do better. But after Christmas, her breathing continued to be raspy and labored, and she was eating very little. Another trip to the vets, this time with an x-ray, and the probable (and later confirmed) diagnosis of histoplasmosis, a fungal infection in her lungs. Prognosis was not good, but we started the best medication for that infection. She wouldn’t eat on her own so we had to syringe feed her baby food or a slurried “urgent care” high calorie pet food. I took her to the vets every 2-3 days for fluids, but she lost weight and gradually got weaker and weaker. The day I found her curled up in the litter box to rest before she felt like getting out we decided we were likely at the end. One more trip to the vets, and another x-ray confirmed the infection had spread and the antifungal medication wasn’t working. We decided the best we could do for her was to stop doing for her and gave permission for the vet to put her down.

“Do you want to be with her?” the vet asked.

“Of course.”

So we sat with her as she got a sedative shot and stroked and talked to her as she fell into a deep sleep. The vet came back and gave her one more shot and we continued to stroke her until the vet confirmed she was gone. And we cried.

Why did the passing of this “just a cat” hit us so hard? She had become a member of our family, and in many ways was another “child” after our own children had grown up, moved away, married, and had kids of their own. She was our companion and “warm fuzzy” and had been a fixture in our household for 13 years. We’d tried to help her as best we could but were fighting a losing battle.

Kuiper is aware she’s not here, and no doubt wonders why. They didn’t interact a lot, but each was aware of where the other was, so his routine is different. And Kuiper watched us in her last 3 weeks giving food and medicine by syringe, with me holding her while Bob gave her the fluid. I think he understood on some level that something was wrong and we were trying to help her.

In my professional life, I work for an organization (Family Voices) devoted to helping families with children with special health care needs. None of my kids (or grandkids) have special needs, but this experience gave me the tiniest window into what life might be like with a child with a medical need requiring daily special attention and multiple trips to the doctors for care. Why do this? Out of love and wanting the best, whether for child or cat or dog or whatever.

The human heart has a great capacity for love, and, I suppose, it is the best exercise for this organ that is but a muscle. And perhaps the strength that love brings to that heart muscle is the strength we draw upon when we say have to say goodbye.

Not a cat person? I don’t know, but I do miss Kiko. She was a good one.

© Melissa Clark Vickers, 2019

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2019 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Just a Cat”

  1. Mardrey Swenson Says:

    I love this, Melissa!! Thanks for writing and sharing it. I love cats, but my daughter-in-law is allergic to them, so I only have a dog.

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