The Paw

 She steps into my life.

A feline disruption.

Demanding affection, food and a lap.

She complains, and wants attention.

Her paws destroys furniture, claws ripping cloth;

Feet stepping on the table, the desk, fresh laundry, my lap.

She crawls into my lap and purrs.

Soft brown and beige fur; with big blue eyes a mystery of emotion.

A cat that’s both aggravating and ingratiating.

Until she isn’t.

Weak, pain-filled legs can’t jump up onto the table, the desk or my lap.

Walks along the wall, not knowing where to go. Her eyes don’t see.

She can’t find her food nor the litter box.

Leaves vomit, pee, poop on the floor.

Her spirit is gone; it’s time to go. I kiss her good-by.

Her absence leaves holes in my heart.

And an impression of her paw.

Cats are simultaneously adorable and annoying. They have big eyes and are soft, furry and cute. They sleep a lot and drape themselves over various surfaces and purr when they are happy.  But it’s hard to know what they are thinking and what they want besides food and a soft lap. Their emotions are not readily discerned. A cat language translator needs to be invented. Are they bored, in pain or lonely? An owner is never sure about this mysterious creature.

My cat came into my life when my daughter, on one of her rare visits in 2016, insisted that we go to  the animal pound, since I “needed” a cat. I don’t know why I agreed.My thought was to get an older cat or a cat that was not likely to be adopted. A kitten did not interest me because of the longer commitment and possible obnoxious behavior.  A black cat looked promising, but it had behavioral problems. They brought out a tuxedo brown and white female siamese. She REALLY wanted to be adopted and was friendly, but she didn’t like other cats. We took her home. I kept her previous name, Mama Cat. Why she was named that is unknown, but it could have been her affectionate behavior. Most of the time she was just “cat”. 

Any pet is a lot of work, especially when older. They rip up furniture and vomit on the floor.  I thought that an older cat would be easier. Ha! She had thyroid cancer, peed like a horse and had arthritis, then kidney problems.

Mama Cat never liked to play with things. She was more interested in being petted and snuggling. Previous cats I had owned weren’t overtly interested in affection. She DEMANDED it. This aspect of her personality was both gratifying and annoying. She never seemed to get enough. Being siamese, it was probably due to her breed.

Mama Cat would always wait by the couch until I sat down and then jump in my lap. She was never a good jumper and could be let out in the back yard to lay in the sun on the patio. But she could still jump on the desk or in the chair during my zoom calls. In the last year of life, I had to pick her up because her legs weren’t strong enough to jump at all. Lacking any ability to do this was sad, not being able to make her wants known when the body was incapable of expressing them. 

Mama Cat’s health when downhill when she was twenty. For a couple of years prior, she needed to go every week to the vet for hydration because her kidney function was marginal. She would complain after eating for an unknown reason.  Her right eye became dilated and it was difficult to know if it was painful. A vet eye doctor said that she was okay, but a cat neurologist five months later thought that she was blind and probably had a brain tumor. This is when I especially longed to know how she felt, but she couldn’t tell me.

It was difficult to know what to do about Mama Cat. She would walk in a daze along a wall, not knowing where to go. The litter box was unused and she peed and pooped on the floor and sometimes smeared it on herself. I had to put her food in front of food, because she couldn’t find it. Walks were a painful limp. 

After talking to the vet, I made the decision to end the suffering. It feels terrible to have to power to kill a pet, but I didn’t want her to have more pain if the tumor progressed. In the back of my mind, I dreaded finding her dead.

 The vet gave Mama Cat a sedative, then the drug that would kill her. It didn’t take long until she was gone. I gave the cat a parting hug and also hugged the vet. They took her away. I opted for cremation, but not to keep the ashes. I couldn’t imagine burying her in the garden. It was bad enough with the parakeets when they died.

They made an impression of her path, a faint trace of her existence.

With her gone, it was a relief and painful. I didn’t have to fed a cat, clean up her poop and pee or worry about her health. I didn’t have to take her to the vet every week for hydration. I could leave the house without worrying about feeding her when I got back. I could go anywhere for any length of time without having to arrange a sitter. 

But her absence was a emptiness, as if a little furry cat had a big presence. No purring lap sitter, no head nudges, no adorable sleeping poses, no blue eyes watching me. It was an un-needed and lonely feeling. Nothing was vying for my attention or wanting affection. The loss of a small creature leaves a big paw-shaped hole.

NEPTUNE

When I first saw him, he looked ordinary–one of many birds that flit around in countless pet shop cages. I was unaware that they had distinct personalities. He was a brilliant turquoise blue with a yellow head. My daughter had had a succession of failed pet experiments, including a goldfish disaster of 2992 that I still shudder to think about. “You mean you have to feed them?” Fish and crabs had all died. We already had a cat that didn’t express interest in children. So this parakeet was the next step.

Since parakeets are social, and he didn’t have a friend, I took upon myself to give him attention.  I put him in the home office and he would sit on the window ledge and talk. He emitted a long unmelodious series of chirps, squawks and warbles. Some of the sounds were vaguely human words. The bird would climb up my arm and sit on my shoulder. He pecked at my hair like he was grooming me. He licked the salt off my skin after a workout with his rough tongue. I found it soothing to have a bird perched on me.

I was one of his flock.

Neptune had special skills. He liked to fling his toys off of the top of the cage. He would spin his Ferris wheel. He dropped things that hung in his cage to wake my daughter up when she failed to arise soon enough to let him out.

After a year, my daughter decided that Neptune needed a friend. She saw the bright yellow bird in the store and had to have her. My daughter named her Saturn. After that, Neptune bonded with her more than people and started to talk “bird” more than “human.” They had conversations together and chattered nonstop. The first thing upon waking, Neptune would go straight to her cage.

These two birds lived for years. But recently, I found Neptune puffed up and lethargic. He squawked in pain whenever he had to move. His leg was limp. I realized something was seriously wrong with him, so I took him to a vet.

The vet suggested $900 worth of invasive tests and procedures, but if he was really that sick, the procedures would not prolong his life much. I took him home, not sure what to do. I hated to see him suffer.

He flew into Saturn’s cage, but all he could do is huddle on the bottom. When I checked on him later in the evening. I was shocked to see his limp body. I took him out and put him in a paper towel by his own cage, with the faint hope that he wasn’t dead. I was sad, but relieved that he wasn’t miserable anymore.

In the morning, he was in the same state, so I put him out on the patio. I don’t usually cry, but his death was unspeakably sad, touching some deep melancholy inside. The reaction reminded me of how I felt when I went back to the vacant house I had lived in for eighteen years and saw the empty hummingbird feeders. My ex had left me and I was stuck with a house that I had to sell.  Seeing the hungry hummingbirds reminded me of the sense of abandonment and loss and the inevitability of change. Like then, the intensity of sadness that came out of nowhere surprised me. Neptune was a connection to my old life that was gone.

Saturn

His companion was now alone and I worried about how she would react. Did she know he was gone forever? Would she be able to survive on her own? Without him she sat in her cage and didn’t move or talk much. She was unhappy and was a shadow of herself. I wanted to help her, but she wasn’t bonded to me. I was a poor substitute for her friend.

I had to tell my daughter that her beloved pet was gone. When I told her, she started crying and so did I. Neptune  meant a great deal to her, and she missed him.

I often wonder why humans are so fascinated with animals and form such strong relationships with them. Maybe we don’t want to be alone on the planet and animals are part of our world. They bring us joy, love and peace. A strong nurturing instinct makes us want to help them if they are sick or injured. Unassuming small creatures hop into our lives, steal our hearts with their antics and have a huge impact.  This ordinary parakeet wasn’t so ordinary after all.