I need to tell you about my cat

I need to tell you about my cat.

In an earlier blog, I wrote how Zach, my warrior cat, entered my life.  Now I need to tell you how he left. 

I was going through an awful divorce when my grandmother told us her nephew Michael was giving away tabby kittens. Nana used to babysit for me all the time back then. I’d been losing my mind for nearly a year when we got Zach. My girls and I experienced trauma like you watch on the Lifetime Channel, and now I was waitressing four nights a week, was doing grad school one night a week, and was working for a newspaper one or two nights a week. 

Life was chaotic and my babies, just three and five, were spending more time with my grandmother than they were with me.  We were stressed out and hurting and Nana knew it. The last thing I needed was a cat. At least that’s what I thought at the time. 

But it turned out Zach was a great distraction. My nana knew what the girls and I needed better than I did. Though he did wreak havoc on our house.  

The nicest thing I owned back then was a cotton chintz living room set in a pretty peach and celery floral print. It was a wedding gift from my parents.  Within a year of living with Zack, the poor set was a frayed, fur-balled mess.

The second nicest thing I owned was my mom’s country French walnut dining set. My mother got lots of new furniture delivered right before my sister got married in 1988, and I got the dining room set, which was at that point still flawless.  For three years, I kept it spotless. Then Zach joined us and it all went to hell. The legs became his scratching posts. I’d come home from work and find cat puke stuck to the table top.  I tried covering the set, tried locking Zach in rooms, tried spraying him with water. Nothing helped. 

The obstinate little critter wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. What he wanted was to be outside. What he did if we didn’t do what he wanted was scratch everything in sight.   

Zach grew mighty and muscular. He attacked dogs. He attacked visitors. He brought me dead mice and pigeons. Even though I yelled at Zach all the time, he adored me. 

My kingdom for a head pat

His idea of heaven was a pat on the head and a warm patch of cement. If I was sitting outside by the pool, he’d amble over from wherever he’d been napping, usually this overgrown rhododendron in the far corner of the yard. He’d nuzzle my arm until I scratched him in his favorite place, the M marking on his forehead, then he’d crawl under my chair and nap in my shadow. 

I’d come home from work or running errands, and no matter where he was, no matter what critter he was stalking, Zach would hear the putter of the old car and come galloping out to greet me. No matter who else was in the car, he’d walk up to my driver’s side door and wait for me to climb out. He’d butt his head into my legs, and force me to pet him.  

He’d follow me to neighbors’ houses and pace outside until I emerged.  If the neighbor had sliding glass doors, he’d find them and rest back on his haunches and watch us.  I’d wave at him to let him know I was okay. I was not being held captive. I’d yell for him to go home. But he wouldn’t. 

At one point or another one particular neighbor, a lovely woman with spotless expensive furniture, would ask politely if I wanted to let the cat in. I’d look around her house, at the perfect ivory sofa, the polished coffee tables, and I’d shake my head and think of my own scraped up furniture.

“Wouldn’t be right,” I’d say.  I’d make my hand into a claw and make a scraping motion.

“Ah,” the woman would say. She’d nod her head knowingly, but she didn’t really understand. She didn’t have cats. She asked all the time if Zach could come in.

According to my vet, the average lifespan of an outdoor cat is ten years. She was always after me to turn Zach into an indoor cat, but I just couldn’t do that to him. It was always about quality of life for Zach, not quantity. He needed the outdoors.

Those crazy teen years 

 

When Zach hit his teens, he began spending more time inside. He got his outside kicks by lounging in the full sun on the sill of the bay window and watching the cars go by and the birds twitter past.  He started getting friendlier. He’d nose his way onto my lap when I’d watch television. He’d curl up next to me on the couch while I was reading. His new favorite place to sleep, rather than outside under a bush, was on the pillow, next to me.

By age sixteen, Zach had lost all interest in going outside. Instead, he’d follow us around the house. He started sleeping more. He lost muscle tone. He thinned out a bit. But he still had a zest for life.  We had two other cats by then, Winifred and Squeaky Mmm-Bop.  Zach drove them nuts. He’d chase them around the house. He’d growl. He’d lick them into submission. He was still the king, the alpha male. He knew it. They knew it. My girls and I knew it.

Uh oh

Around this time last year, Zach started sleeping on the floor because he couldn’t make it onto my bed any more. I took two blankets and made a nest for him. I did not use old blankets. I used the soft thick blankets I put on my bed and my daughters’ beds. 

Then late in the fall, Zach stopped using the litter box. He started relieving himself next to the box. At first, I was furious with him. I wondered if this was a power ploy. Maybe as he got weaker he needed to maintain his cat king authority by constantly re-establishing his territory? Sometimes I would catch him in mid-pee, and I would yell at him to stop. He wouldn’t. He’d finish, then rush past me and hide under my bed. I realize now that I was frightening the little guy. I was bullying him.  

One day I caught him getting set to pee. He didn’t see me. I stood in the doorway and watched him put his front paws into the box. He tried to lift a back leg, but he couldn’t get it high enough to get it over the side and into the box. He tried many times, and finally gave up and peed on the floor instead. 

I took him to the vet. I’d put off taking him because I was afraid. I was afraid she’d find a blood disease, or a tumor. I was afraid she’d tell me it was time to put him down. Zach was nineteen at this point. He was thinner. He was sleeping a lot. I knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. 

She took some blood and gave Zach three hundred dollars worth of tests. Turned out there was no tumor, no blood problem. He had massive arthritis in his back hips. That was probably why he wasn’t using the litter box. It hurt too much to climb into it. Otherwise, he was in remarkably good health for a cat the age equivalent of a ninety year old human. 

She looked at me carefully. I could put him to sleep if I wanted, she said. But really, there was nothing wrong him. He was getting old, that’s all.

   

I felt relieved. I told her I couldn’t put Zach down for being old. We all get old. We all eventually pee where we shouldn’t. That’s life. 

She agreed. She looked like she felt relieved too.

So my life, for the past few years smooth and uncomplicated, got a teeny bit more difficult. Last year, I was late or nearly late to work every day. Granted, punctuality is not one of my strengths. But last year it got really hard to leave the house every morning. Here’s why.

Zach liked his routines. He always relieved himself around 7:40 every morning, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a few minutes later. The thing is, to get to work on time, I needed to leave the house by 7:45. Here’s something else. Cat pee damages floors. The longer you wait to clean it, the more damage it does to the finish. I stayed around and waited for Zach to pee so I could clean it up fast and minimize damage to the wood floor.

This process would work in reverse each afternoon. I’d come home, clean up the new pee, then head in to say hi to Zach. He’d get up, sometimes slowly but more often extremely slowly, and make his way toward me so I could scratch him right where he liked it, at the black M marking on his forehead. Then he’d lumber into the kitchen, pick at his food, rub up against my legs a little, and go back and nap on his blankie. That’s one thing Zach always did, every day for practically his whole life. No matter what critter he was tormenting, no matter whose yard he was tearing up, Zach always put a halt to what he was doing, and ran up to greet me when I came home. In April, that stopped. 

Now for the inevitable

 

He’d lost even more weight. He was the size of a kitten now. I could feel his bones when I picked him up. My girls and I wondered if he’d make it to his twentieth birthday, May 27.  A few days after Easter, Zach didn’t get up at all. I called the vet and asked what I should do. She asked me a few questions and agreed that she needed to see him. We talked about possibly putting him down. I made an appointment for the next day.

In the morning, Zach got up and walked around a bit. He snarled at the other cats. He rubbed up against my legs. He had a bit to eat and drink. I called the vet and canceled. I asked her if she thought I was a bad person for not keeping the appointment. She said I wasn’t, and that when it was time to put him down, there’d be no question whatsoever. I’d know. 

I started holding Zach more, only now I picked him up with a blanket because he was so bony. I figured if it hurt me to hold him, it must be even more uncomfortable for him to be held. He’d purr sometimes, but not that much. He’d get up to sniff his food a couple of times a day, but he didn't eat much. He’d snarl at the other cats if they were in his way. They’d run and hide. He spent most of his time on the nest of blankets in my room.  Every day, he looked frailer and thinner than the day before. He made it to his twentieth birthday. 

It was a Sunday afternoon in June. I hadn’t seen Zach go to his food bowl since the day before. He’d been laying on his blanket all day. I picked him up and brought him into the kitchen and placed him on the floor. He raised his head and sniffed at the bowl, then closed his eyes and lowered his head. I picked him up and brought him back to my room. I kept checking on him. He never once moved. Late that night I heard him get up. He moaned a little. I heard him walk down the hall. 

The next morning, I found a puddle of urine in the hallway. Zach was asleep on the floor right next to it. I cleaned it up. I cleaned Zach up. I put him on his blankie. I went to work and called the vet as soon as I could. I told her what happened. 

“It’s time. I know it,” I said. 

I took the first appointment that I could: 3:30 that afternoon. I called some friends because I felt like I should tell someone. They offered to drive me. I said no. It wouldn’t be right. Zach hated strangers.  They stressed him out. He loved me. He loved my kids. My kids weren’t around, so it needed to be me. Just me. I didn’t call my girls. I figured, What was the point? I’d be calling them after. Why torture them? Plus, what if I couldn’t go through with it?

All day, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Maybe I’d get home and everything would be like it had once been. Zach would be on the bay windowsill sleeping in the sun. His ears would perk up as he heard the Honda pull into the driveway. He’d greet me at the door. 

Instead, I arrived home and found Zach lying on floor near his blanket. He didn’t look up when I said his name. He didn’t purr when I bent down and scratched his head. 

Saying good-bye

I didn’t bother searching for the cat carrier. I scooped Zach up in his blankets and we left the house.  I walked around the yard with him in my arms. I pointed out the bad tree where the crows used to sit and scream at him as he hunted for intruders. I showed him his favorite napping place, a rhododendron bush with secret dark passages where the branches met the ground. I showed him the sky he loved to study. I showed him the dark driveway where he’d stretch out in the sun.

He just lay in my arms, his eyes vacant, mouth open slightly. Except for the rise and fall of his belly, he was unresponsive. 

I put him on the floor of the front passenger seat and started the car. As we moved up and down the hills that led to the vet, he moaned. I worried that he was uncomfortable.

“It’ll be okay Zach. I promise.”  I tried not to cry but my eyes kept blurring up. It was hard to see the road. 

I started shaking as I pulled into the parking lot. By the time I entered the reception area I was bawling. The receptionist sized up the situation and before I could walk to her desk she was by my side, leading us to a private room. The doctor was there within seconds. 

I placed Zach on the metal table. She weighed him. He was only nine pounds. At his most ferocious he’d weighed eighteen. He was thirteen pounds when I’d brought him in last fall. She checked his vitals. She nodded, and said, yes, it was time. It was just going to be a matter of a few days, tops, anyhow.

She left the room while I said good-bye to Zach. I didn’t need much time. I’d been saying good-bye to him for months. I doubted he even knew I was there. His eyes were distant. He didn’t respond when I touched him. 

I patted his head right where he liked it, on the M above his eyes, as the vet injected him. I kept telling him I loved him. I don’t think he heard me. He was already somewhere else. But I kept saying it, just in case I was wrong. I’d stopped crying.

His pupils dilated and that was it. 

I kissed his M, and the doctor took him away. The receptionist came in to let me pay the bill privately so I wouldn’t have to be around strangers who might not understand or care. The bill was eighty-one dollars. There were two items. Euthanasia: $81. With Sympathy, $0. 

A few minutes later, the doctor brought him back. He was curled up in a white cardboard box with tape at both ends to hold the cover in place. Someone had written his name on the lid in black marker, and had drawn a heart next to it. Seeing that made me cry again. 

I brought Zach home and buried him myself in the backyard in one of his favorite resting spots, under a pine tree near where the pool deck used to be. Friends offered to come over and help, but I said no. He was my cat. He didn’t like strangers. He liked me. I needed to honor that and see things through to the end. 

It was hard saying good-bye to Zach, but it wasn’t hard burying him. I used to have a perennial garden in the back yard, and still have some silly cement statues lying around. I poked around in some overgrown bushes and found a statue of a smiling lion cub with one paw in the air. I dragged that over to the grave site.  Until I find something better, that’s what will stay there. I can see the statue from the window over the kitchen sink. It’s cute and playful, like Zach when he was a kitten. 

Sometimes I stand at the kitchen window and remember. 

I think of my grandmother, who found Zach for us. She’s gone ten years, though it seems like just yesterday we were having Sunday dinners together.  I think of my little girls, all grown up now, both far away with cats of their own. For just a second, I allow myself to think of the sociopath who tore our lives apart back in 1991. Then I push that rottenness from my brain and remember the four-legged critter who helped us heal. 

Once I had a warrior cat named Zach. How lucky am I? 

Anatomy of a DNF, version 10.6

I woke up at 5:18 this morning, though the alarm was set for six. It’s the pain that did it, a jabbing that started behind my right ear and shot up to my right eye and down my neck. It passed so swiftly that I wondered if I’d dreamed it. So I drifted back to sleep and bam, there it was again.  

Startled, I sat up and debated my next move. If I got up and took some meds, I was up for the morning and I knew it. I slid back under the covers, and rolled onto my side, hoping the new position would calm my head so I could get those extra thirty minutes of snooze time. Not five minutes later, the pain attacked again.  

I climbed out of bed and padded into the kitchen, gulped down some pills and water, and made coffee. Outside it was dark and silent. I turned on the computer and checked the weather in Hollis, New Hampshire. Perfect running weather: mid-60s and overcast.  

“That’s a good sign,” I thought. “Everything will be just fine.” 

I still had four hours until the race. Anything can happen in four hours. People on the cusp of getting over stomach bugs can heal remarkably well in four hours.  I’d certainly felt much better last night than I had the night before. Obviously, I was on the mend. Maybe this last pain surge was the end of it.  

I showered, dressed, and packed Body Glide, water, and a change of clothes.  I double-checked that I’d printed out the directions to the race. I was already fed up with the spears that still insisted on poking at my skull and neck. I didn’t want to add getting lost to my worry list. I took another pill and checked the label on the side of the bottle. Wasn’t this stuff supposed to kick in a half hour ago?

Now my stomach was gurgling but I was afraid to eat. I wondered if I needed the calories anyhow. Maybe muscle memory would be enough to get me through the run. I considered the extra weight I’m packing. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need to eat anything today anyhow. I certainly have enough extra nutrients stored away in my thighs and upper arms.  Geez. Hibernating bears survive winter on less fat than mine.  

I packed a banana and some peanut butter toast though, just in case. 

I drove north. The sun had risen. The highway shimmered. The surrounding landscape, undulating trees, sunburned rainbows, breathed and glowed. I played Bruce Springsteen and sang along to drown out the acid bubbling up my digestive tract. At least the skull attacks had finally subsided.  

I got to the start and watched the runners. Wondered who’d be lagging behind at the end with me. Some wore race T-shirts. We talked about races we’d done. Most hadn’t done this half marathon yet. 

“I’ve done it plenty of times,” I say. "But I don’t know how today will go. Stomach bug.”

Everyone gave me a version of the same hollow line: “Oh you’ll be fine.”  Then they’d leave to go talk to someone else and I would too.  

The race started on a driveway next to Hollis-Brookline High School. You run a tenth of a mile down the driveway, then take a left, then a right, then another right and loop back. You hit the high school again at the two-mile mark, and then at the finish, the 13.1 mile mark. 

I’ve run this course at least a half dozen times. As I wait for the announcements to commence, I remind myself of that. I used to meet up with a New Hampshire friend here, and we’d run the course together as part of training for some of our marathons. It’s pretty and shady. There are horse farms and orchards and lots of steep hills.  

I groan at the thought of those steep hills. I clutch my stomach and position myself way at the back.

My plan is to start slowly, and take inventory. Check my legs, stomach, head. If I don’t feel capable of completing the run, I plan on dropping out at the mile two mark. I’ve never dropped out of a race before. I’ve always finished what I’ve started. But if dropping out is the right thing to do, then so be it. I’ll live. Right?

We sing the Star Spangled Banner then move downhill, all 1,200 of us. I run gently and wait for the magic to happen; for my legs to loosen, my stomach to tighten, for some electricity to shock my system. But there’s nothing, except this thought, “If you weren’t signed up for a race today, you would be resting. You know better. You need more time off.” 

But the thing about running distances is this, sometimes that’s the way it is at the start of a run. Your head and body aren’t always in sync right away.  I’ve had plenty of runs where I’ve felt crappy the whole entire distance. But still, today feels different. It feels wrong. 

At mile one, my legs are clumsy and thick. I slow even more. I keep my head down and move forward. I feel like I’ve already run eight miles. 

“Why are you out here?” I keep asking myself that and I don’t have an answer. My legs hate me. My stomach is burning. I make it up the first steep hill at mile 1.5, but as I head down to mile two, I’m clutching my guts. I know the run needs to end. Stopping is the right thing to do. There’s no doubt at all.  I am about to experience my very first DNF – Did Not Finish.

I reach the mile two water table, gulp down a cup of water, and take myself off the course. People smile kindly and start saying nice things to me but I look away. I don’t want to hear them. My eyes start filling up. I take off my race number so I look just like any other spectator.

I knew going into the run that it was pretty likely I’d have to drop out. I knew it would hurt. But here’s the thing. I never expected the dropping out to hurt more.