oldernow

So, for a change, here's a blog from today.
my banner or whatever sentence has been "feels sorry for his cat Stench" for a while now. Today we put him down.
He started out life named Admiral Whitey. I live in the back country with my wife and friends on 60 acres amidst many larger farms, forest land, and gorges. Not your mother-in-law's New York for sure. we live on a dirt road, thank you very much, and measure distances to houses in miles, not feet. so we get a lot of barn cats and strays. over the years we've taken in many and kept about a dozen or so at various times.

the most outstanding brood we've ever had was Willow, Bristol, Miss Moop Twisticat and Admiral Whitey. Bristol was a wild unneutered male that weighed in at 22 pounds of total attitude and muscle. Like our current 18 pounder Waylon, his food of choice is fresh-caught rabbit. These boys are professionals. He got his name from the Bristol speedway racetrack, because he was FAST. He was mated to Willow, a tail-less shorthaired tortoise, and the smartest cat I've ever known; more than that, the wisest, and one who walked through walls, as you'll see. She birthed 9 kittens, of which we ended up keeping two and getting one returned. Twisticat had an early ear infection and tended to walk in circles. This soon got him killed in the road, which often takes our animals. Dirt it may be, we country-folk rip down this sucker at 80 mph of a summer night. the deer help weed out those with alcohol slowed reflexes.

That left us with four. We didn't know about the kittens when they were first born, as Willow kept them well away from the house for a long, long time--too long for there to be proper bonding. we searched but never found her hiding place. the first of the 9 to find us was a brave little white kitten who walked up to me and demanded something from me with a strong meow. I gave him food, and thus began a 16 year relationship of servitude to the ginger cat I misnamed Admiral Whitey. I should have stopped with Admiral, but you know how it is with cat names. The second was Miss Moop, a full crazy calico with long hair. she came playful out of the barn one morning and bumped into my shoe. as her eyes traveled upward to take in the full height of this hoooman, her jaw literally dropped open (never seen another cat do that!). she stood in glazed terror when I scooped her up to hold her in my hand. this response also marked her lifelong caution and aloofness from humankind. her personal addiction was frogs, and in the springtime she would gorge on the peeper and get absolutely stoned on their toxins for days. a regular hippy cat if ever there was. we all tried to seduce her into companionship but she would tolerate no such intimacy. she accepted proximity and would tolerate being petted, so long as she remained safely on the floor. She was totally gorgeous. We figure in their next life she will be a total babe and her brother will be the lame red-headed high-jumper that just can't deal with girls at all.

Well, time passed [say 7 years] and Bristol, then Willow died. A week after Willow died--hunted down by coyotes--she came to me in a dream, and sat on the right side of my armchair. this is where she sat when she wanted me to open some door or other for her. when she wanted food she sat on the left side of the chair. like i said, she was smart. well i got up in the dream and opened 'a door' and that was that. until mid-morning when we got the call that my wife's mother had died during the night.

We then lived with Miss Moop (who got her name because that's what she said: ''moop" -- a very genteel and quiet sort of meow) and Admiral Whitey. By now his name had deteriorated into Admir-bobble Whiney or just "Bobbles" He was cursed with an unfortunately whiney voice which did nothing for his prestige. Other than that, though, he was one tough hombre, driving away cats, raccoons, possums, and skunks from under the house; hunting down squirrels in the attic and such like. He saw the vet so often we left a carrier there and just swapped them out for return trips! so he was a tough brave little fellow, weighing in at about 9 pounds. They were joined by two barn cats: Waylon, a coal-black highwayman tomcat and Murray a born snugglepuss. both were tamed and Big W has replaced Bristol as the Big Cat on Campus. He's slow, and stupid, but whatever he hits once never gets up for a second swat. He lives mostly on birds and rabbits, and is an excellent ninja cat hiding in shadows until the last second.

So Moop got an eye infection that escalated rapidly into the loss of her eyeball and then the disintegration of her face. this is a cancer produced from an STD and sunlight, or so they tell me. her dignity and sensitivity could not long tolerate her appearance and pain, so we elected to put her down--the first time we've done that in all the 20 named cats that have lived with us. If the road doesn't take them, old age will. We have all their ashes in boxes in the kitchen. I want to put their little skulls in a glass bowl, but my wife thinks that's morbid (as opposed to keeping them near the fancy dinnerware!). Anyway, we have a nice traveling vet terrifyingly named Dr. Bury-em (Barium but that's how it sounds), who came to the house, quietly joined us with Moop in the cat sick-room we created many years ago, and after a short while, sedated her, then dispatched her. After we sat shiv for a while, we moved Moop's body to a small box to be taken away for cremation and low and behold there was a 3 inch golden statue of Kwan Yin lying directly under her. We were moved to tears by the secret kindness of Dr. Barium to have slipped this little guide under Moop to help her passage. I called her and heard a long silence on the line--she had no knowledge of this statue! To this day we have no knowledge of where it came from or how it got there, but I suspect her mother brought it to her from the other side.

So her brother soon got the same cancer, but being made of sterner stuff clearly had absolutely no intention of being stopped by it. We therefore made a pact with him a year ago to stay the course and take his lead on what to do. Over the summer great hunks of flesh and fur fell off his face, so that by fall half his face was nothing but raw oozing flesh that had a slight blood-odor to it. His eye fell out and when he shook his head bad things happened. but the rest of him was intact, and he continued hunting fussing with the other cats, demanding attention from me and the like. It got increasingly hard to hold him and we soon had his habitual sleeping areas draped in rags and towels that had to be washed weekly. in September I was sure he was finished, but all that had finished with the expansion of the cancer. it then started to creep inward and the surface of his face putrified. Soon a slow drip of liquidized flesh and ichor dripped off his chin as he walked around, and the odor became an unbearable sour rotting-flesh stench. I think Zombies would have run from him. He didn't care so much, but now it was impossible to breathe around him at all; we had Tibetan incense going by the box whenever we hung out with him, and he started to just eat and sleep and ask for attention--no more outside activity or attention to the other cats. Naetheless he remained wiry-strong and utterly willful, and it was clear he had no interest in being dead. I bought him a little Anubis doll to get him used to the idea, but he refused its company.

Then in January the ichor dried up and his face became mummified (aren't you glad you're reading this?--we called him Stenchly Griz or Grisly Stench at this time--and he answered to both). everytime he drank water we had to throw it out because it turned slimy yellow. now he was simply curled up in a tight ball and staggering over to the food dish and back; cleaning himself, using the litter and occasionally getting petted. He still purred when petted and was skilled at showing up when someone squeamish visited the house -- like us for example! Be that as it may we tried to stay with it, and the Vet agreed that if he maintained his behavior he was okay to keep alive. then last week his other eye began to really fail, and he could no longer easily find his food dish. even so, I was reluctant to take away what was bound to be only a few last weeks from him after honoring his intent thus far. and honor it was indeed, for his will and indifference to his state was just magnificent. and then on valentines day I dreamt his mother again, who once more came and sat on the right hand side of my armchair and gave me SUCH a look that I knew it was time.

I called the vet and the appointment was set; today we sat with him in the morning and I told him what was to come; he gradually relaxed in my arms and breathed very comfortably and purred very deeply for quite some time. then his head got so hot I could barely keep my hand on it and thereafter he was quiet. We then loaded him into the cat carrier one last time, which usually was a battle best fought wearing welder's gloves, but today he went in absolutely fearlessly. he made never a sound on the way to the vet. a first in 16 years. he was sedated in about 3 seconds, and was gone in another 2. so quiet. so clean, so free. I think his spirit left his body when my hand got hot, for it is said that the top of the skull is our doorway out of the body, and I have very good reason to believe that is so.

so goodbye Admiral Whitey, by all the Gods that Matter, you surely earned your name in the end, and shall now surely be rebirthed by your extraordinary mother into a form far better than the one you have shed.