“Family”

Since Max died, I still look for him after I fill a glass with water and plunk in some ice cubes.

Max was 21 years old, pushing 22 (if he wasn’t 22 already). This was Joann’s cat, one of the four we had when we “blended” our families together. Max was Joann’s least-favorite cat. He was “needy.” He wanted to be scratched constantly. He paced around a lot. Once my two cats died, Max became the dominant cat. He would “tuck” me into bed most nights by pushing my hand hard with his head. In return, I’d scratch his head—massaging deep into his muscles, scratching his head hard. And I really mean hard. Other times, Max barely gave me the time of day... until that last vacation of Joann’s while Max was alive. I’d sit down in the living room to read in the morning and he’d jump onto my lap. Three days before Joann returned from her 10-day vacation, Max figured out I was mostly upstairs in my office. He’d come up and jump onto my lap while I was working. He never did that before; he was always on Joann’s lap when she was working downstairs.

The night Joann came back from vacation, Max came to bed with us, but was very weak, very unbalanced, and not purring much. The latter was unusual. The next day, his back legs seemed stiffer than usual. Skipping a whole bunch of details, we took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. Did we wait too long to do this? The vet assured us that even he—the vet—had problems deciding when to euthanize a pet. With his latest cat, the vet realized he probably waited two days longer than he should have. He reiterated what I had said to Joann the morning before: “We do it [euthanize the pet] because we can.” It’s still a sad decision to make.

I wrote these last three paragraphs about two months after Max died. Now, nearly two years later, with Circaea and Edre being the black (and black-and-white) cats that fill our family, too many times when I pour myself a mug of water with ice cubes, I look for Max. The reason is that in the last year or two of his life, I suddenly noticed Max was drinking out of “my” mug of water. Then I noticed he would come to the kitchen whenever he heard the ice fall into the mug. And like feeding cats at breakfast and dinner time, regardless of how quiet I was about putting ice in a mug, Max would still hear it. Whatever table I’d place my mug, Max would hop up, stick his head in the mug, and start drinking my water. I think he licked the ice cube(s) as well.

A few weeks after I realized Max was continuing to drink from my glass, I got into the habit of pouring water for the two of us. Especially near the end of his life, I’d sometimes pour the water in a bowl—with an ice cube, of course! It seemed easier for him to drink from the bowl. However, more often than not, I would pull out a regular, though shorter glass for him, pour in some water, drop in an ice cube.

Then, as Max drank from his glass, I’d tap it with my mug and give a toast. L’chaim. “To life.”

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The following two paragraphs (with slight edits) and picture were posted January 11, 2005.

About six months after Sarah died, Max started losing weight. Lots of weight, though it has stayed the same for a full year now. He’s looking a little scrawny. His purr is not nearly as loud as it used to be. Yet he keeps eating, keeps walking around (albeit stiffly), keeps grooming himself (though not as fastidiously as he used to), still smells nice, and keeps shoving my hand hard when I finally lay down in bed to sleep at night so I’ll scratch his head.

Here’s a picture Joann took of Max in September 2003. This picture reminds her of the famous picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. A friend of Joann’s says that Max looks like a mandala.*

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The following text was revised in early December 2000, soon after Sarah died:

Here are Sarah (left) and Max (right). Sister and brother. They were often this close to each other, often sleeping against each other, sometimes one on top of the other. Max is in constant need of attention. About a month before Beaulieu died, Max started taking the apparently coveted position on the bed at night—along my right side, near my waist, where my hand rests—to scratch him! Sarah, after six years, would let me scratch her... if she walked up to me; rarely did she allow me to go to her, bend down, and pet her. Sarah’s fur was the softest I had ever felt.

The previous paragraph was written in mid-September 1999. The following was added in early December 2000:

Sarah finally started to accept me the last five or so months of her life. When I sat in the overstuffed chair in the living room, she’d often purposely hopped from the couch not too far away and hopped onto the armrest beside me. Sometimes when I read on the couch at night, she’d hop up behind me and let me rub her with my head. Often, she’d come to the bed after I had laid down for the night. She wouldn’t stay with me all night, mind you, but she’d hop up onto my chest and let me pet her for a while. She might stay there until I fell asleep. And sometimes during the day, while I was sitting, Sarah would let me pick her up and hold her for a couple of minutes.

We don’t know whether Sarah had cancer or an ever-increasing polyp somewhere up her nose. I suppose those would be the same thing. Because a cat’s nostrils are so small, the vet could not perform surgery by going up the cat’s nose. Instead, the vet would have to come to the problem area from the back of the cat’s head. That did not sound like a good idea at all. Someone had suggested chemo for the cat, but we found out about that relatively late. And so, we let the cancer/polyp grow until Sarah was clearly uncomfortable. In the meantime, the growth made her forehead bulge noticeably. It also made her sneeze a lot—sometimes it was a sneezing fit of a half dozen rapid-fire sneezes.

Sarah stuck around Joann’s office seemingly a lot more than usual her last few months. Many times, she lay Sphinx-like on top of the computer monitor, which was slanted such that Sarah would slowly slide down the top of the monitor. You wouldn’t see her slide down the top of the monitor—it was that slow a slide—but you’d hear little squeaks coming from the pads of her paws as they slid on the plastic monitor case. The last couple of weeks of her life, Sarah picked up a new habit: She’d curl up next to Joann’s pillow when Joann went to sleep with the bedside light on. We weren’t quite sure whether Sarah was doing that because the lamp offered some heat or, in retrospect, Sarah just wanted to be near Joann.

Joann figures Sarah was about 17 years old when she died.

Some patches of her fur were not as soft as usual the day or two before she died.

Needless to say, Max’s personality has changed. Not helping him was that we had gone on a 12-day vacation a few days after Sarah died. When we got back, Max was all over us. Obviously, he was lonely.

I have to admit, I was too. I miss the cats we had.