And Now...

[porphyry]

...just to add the icing to this illness-brother hospitalization-illness-ice storm-illness-snowstorm-disrupted classes due to cancellations-icestorm-illness-car wreck-injured child-injured mother-snowstorm-four plagiarist students this term cake--

... my cat died.

I suppose I should take the long, philosophical view. He was sixteen-years-old, almost seventeen, so he'd had a long, happy life. Three or four days ago, I noticed he'd stopped eating and drinking, never good in a cat (or dog, either). He would be tempted by nothing, and nothing is more pitiful than to watch an animal try to take a drink--want to take a drink, badly--and be unable to. He didn't appear to be in pain, but I couldn't take watching him like this anymore. Today he went to the veterinarian and we learned his kidneys were shutting down. We let him go.

He was a sweet cat--more like a dog than a cat, actually; friendly, affectionate, faithful even. We will miss him very much.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your condolences; I knew you'd understand how sad I am, being cat lovers yourselves. And my cats are (or were, I should say, since now they are all gone; this cat was part of what was once a trio).

His name? If you'll permit me a story about him...

He was a shelter kitten, the one I never meant to get since I already had two cats. But a friend of mine was a big supporter of this animal shelter, and for Christmas that year (1991), she gave me a gift certificate for the pet of my choice from the shelter.

When I got to the shelter, the day after Christmas, there were of course no kittens left, except one. No one wanted him because he had a bad cold--but God, he was cute! And so friendly--the minute I picked him up I was charmed.

Once home, we weren't sure what to name him because first of all, he'd been wrongly gendered at the shelter--his cage said "female." Once home, though, I was holding him and rubbing his tummy and saw that he was in fact a male. We tried out a few names, but none seemed to fit. One early characteristic he displayed, though, was that he would eat anything.

Now, there is an old cartoon made by Tex Avery in which the Confederate Wolf inherits a little billy goat who eats anything--finally, the wolf becomes so exasperated with the goat, he sets the billy goat to eating a railroad tie which will send the goat miles away and hopefully for good. That night, though, the little goat is back. The wolf says, "Why, look, everybody, it's Billy! Ole Billy's back!"

So this kitten, who would eat anything, one day in an attempt to get a bite of something my father was eating, decided after my father turned away to prevent the kitten from doing so, to scale all the way up my father's back and onto his shoulder so he could get whatever was going into my father's mouth, too. My father just turned to us and said, "Why, look, everybody, it's Billy! Ole Billy's back!" And the name, Billy, just sort of stuck. Not a very dignified name for a cat, but it suited him.

Thanks for listening to my story--God, I miss that cat so much already.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Billy the Kat, that's sweet.

Sorry about your loss.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thank you. (tears) Such a sweet little guy, he was.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It was a rather weird name, but it did fit him well. Oh, yes, we'll get one (I want two) soon; we want a male and female, siblings perhaps, and Andrew has approved of the name Sylvia for a female but we haven't decided on a male name yet.

No, one never hears of cats named Steve, and usually not Geoff, but I know of a cat named Joeffry--this poem was written by Christopher Smart in approximately 1760 while Smart was confined to an insane asylum. He was a good observer of cats, however.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/661.html