Fascination Place

It’s been hard, as you might guess. I realized that this is really the first time I’ve had someone this close to me die. I’ve never had a friend or a immediate family member die, and the pets I grew up with passed away after I’d moved out (and while I appreciated and remember my grandparents, I’m not sure I’d say I was close to them). But now I understand why friends who have had pets die in recent years have been so broken up by it. I guess you can’t really understand until it happens to you.

Yesterday morning I was sitting on the bed crying a little, and Blackjack came in and looked up at me, jumped up on the bed and nuzzled me, and then sat down next to me. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but he seems to be reacting to our emotions more than Newton or Roulette. Although I think Roulette has been looking around for her sleeping buddy from time to time. Today she got into the cat window and sniffed every corner of it before lying down in the cat bed; it must still smell like Jefferson.

The things that make me smile are seeing our cats doing their normal things. I think it reassures me that they’re okay, especially Newton who, after all, is Jefferson’s brother. Debbi bought some new food dishes (they used to eat out of two 2-sided dishes, and we decided it would be uncomfortable to use those and not fill one of the bowls each day) and they’ve all been eating. Newton’s still taking his pill every morning. He jumps up on my bathroom counter and licks the water after I finish shaving, and all three cats have come in to check out my shower after I get out of it. We’re getting full-on sun today, and they’ve all been lying in the sunbeam in the front room. I was able to get both Newton and Roulette to play last night. I cleaned the porch today and let them out on it; Blackjack rolled around on his back in happiness, and both he and Newton (the dummies) chewed on the surviving snapdragon.

There’s still a big hole in the house, though. In some ways Jefferson was the glue that held the other three cats together, and I think they’re figuring out their new dynamics. Jefferson was top cat, and I expect Blackjack will become top cat now, but he’s a lot more rambunctious than Jeff, so that will be different. Roulette I think wants to start cuddling up to Newton, so we’ll see whether that happens.

We’re going to try not to spend too much time at home this weekend, as it could be a bit morbid. I don’t want to leave the cats alone all the time, either, but then, midday is their prime nap time, and there are all these great sunbeams around.

It’s a bit of emotional thrashing around. We’ll get through it, but it’s going to take some time.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture of me and my cats from 2003 (before we got the kittens, I believe), which I think sums up our relationships fairly well:

I slept well last night, so that’s something. Newton and Roulette both came in to join us for bed last night. I’m not sure if they were confused by Jefferson’s absence, or if they were reacting to our emotions. Or both. I gave Newton a lot of extra attention last night, which he loved, of course, purring up a storm and rolling onto his back and kneading me. (I need to clip his claws.) Debbi is worried that Roulette will get depressed, since she loved Jefferson so much. Blackjack has gone around meowing a little, but he does that anyway, and I’m not sure if it means anything. He often seems to live in his own little world.

Blackjack and Newton were both snoozing with me when I woke up this morning. I played with Blackjack a little (let him rabbit-kick my foot), and then he jumped down. Newton got his usual attention, and then stood up and looked toward the door. I told him (not knowing what he was thinking, of course) that Jefferson wasn’t going to come in to join us this morning. Jeff would often jump up with Newton, and give him some licking while they were both standing on me.

Usually Jefferson comes in to the dining room while I’m reading the paper and meows to get up on my lap, and I put him off until I get to the funnies (which I read last). Blackjack has been joining me for the paper recently – he’s become a lie-on-the-paper kitty – so he came over for a little while and then went to his cat bed in the window. But, no more morning snuggles and purrs with Jeff at breakfast.

Roulette burrowed under the blanked on the futon in the front bedroom as she always does, coming down once to have some breakfast. Newton lay for a while in his usual spot on the bed, and just before I left he’d moved to the front room to lie in the sunlight.

I’ve been wondering if Jefferson’s last few weeks were what he’d have wanted. I know he got some playing in with the laser pointer and cat catcher in the last few months. He’s had some treats. He got some petting. He loved potato chips – he’d come running across the house when I opened a bag of them – but he hadn’t had any in a while. I gave him plenty of chin skritches in his last minutes yesterday. Unfortunately his last week was spent dealing with out crowded house as Debbi’s family and some other friends were visiting, and none of the cats enjoy large crowds. Monday night I went to Magic and Tuesday night I had frisbee, so I feel like I didn’t really get to see him in his last few days. That makes me really sad.

But I know that he had a really good life, even if the last few days weren’t the best they could have been if I’d known what was coming.

I cried a little after I got in to work this morning. I may be working with my office door closed off and on today and tomorrow.

I sent mail to my ex-girlfriend Colleen, who was Jefferson’s first “mom”, since I haven’t seen her on Facebook recently.

If you’re curious, I have some pictures of Jefferson (and the other cats) from the last 4 years visible via this tag.

This morning I noticed Jefferson was not eating – not even a treat – and was being very lethargic. He’d lost a lot of weight over the last 8 months, and he looked even more gaunt than he has recently. I took him into the vet, and by noon she called with the bad news: Jeff had had what she called an “acute renal incident” and whatever measurements they used on his kidneys were “crazy high”.

I spent most of the day agonizing over what to do: To have him hospitalized for 2-3 days getting hydrated and perhaps getting close to normal, and then facing daily subcutaneous fluid injections and other treatments for perhaps a few months to two years of life, or deciding that, as the vet put it, he’d had a good 16 years. By late afternoon, I decided to do the latter. The vet said she thought it was a reasonable decision, that his measurements were not good and it was no guarantee that he’d get back to normal.

Debbi and I met at the vet and said goodbye. Jefferson was snuggly and cuddly, and just before the doctor came in he wanted to get put down on the towel on the exam room table, where he lay down. The doctor gave him a sedative (he didn’t close his eyes, she said they never do), and then she put him to sleep for good. It was very quiet. he even had one lip curled up like he did sometimes.

I didn’t take a final picture of him lying there, and I decided not to keep his ashes. That’s not the sort of person I am. He’ll go to kitty heaven along with several other kitties, and I’ll have my memories and my photos of him.

I got Jefferson and his brother Newton (well, I was told they were brothers) from the humane society in October of 1994, when they were 6 months old. I’d left graduate school in May, started working at Epic in June, and moved to my first solo apartment in August. I’d been going to the Humane Society twice a week for several weeks looking for just the right kittens. It was awfully hard, not adopting the other kittens or cats. I remember in particular two 11-month old orange tabby brothers who were there for week after week; I hope they got adopted. Jefferson and Newton showed up one day and I immediately put in to interview them. I was told that someone else had put in to interview Newton, but when my appointment came later that week it turned out they’d decided not to take him. The two of them were full of energy, jumping all over me and my then-girlfriend Colleen, and I quickly decided they were the guys for me.

The Humane Society screwed up and didn’t neuter them on the day they were supported to be neutered, so I had them home just for a weekend before I had to take them in again, and leave them overnight. That was hard, too. But then they were home for good, little bundles of energy running around my apartment.

It took me a month to name them. They totally stressed me out getting into things, and just being the “little brown guy” and the “little orange guy”. Newton named himself by always falling off my lap while rolling around getting petted. Jefferson’s name just came to me as one that matched Newton, when I decided I had to give him a name, to make him feel more like a member of my home. But it fit.

Newton was the bold one, but Jefferson was the smart one. I’m sure he figured out how to open my front door – if only he could reach the handle. I let them both into the building’s hallway, where they’d go down the hall and intimidate my friend Jim’s cats, walking right into his apartment if we let them.

Those early years, the brothers were inseparable. They’d snooze together and play together, habits they grew out of in their later years. Early on Jefferson would climb into bed with me and curl up alongside my torso; over time he’d move to the foot of the bed (probably because of the extra-comfy blanket I draped down there at the time) and lounge over my foot.

When I moved to California, the cats flew in the cargo hold. When they came out the other end, Newton was hiding at the back of this cage, while Jefferson was loafed up front and center, with a look that said, “I am never going to forgive you for this, you realize that, right?” Both cats (predictably) never liked moving to a new home; they’d slink around the place on their bellies, and then hide somewhere until nightfall, at which point they’d come out and check everything out. They got it all figured out pretty quickly, though.

One day I came home from work and pulled up to my car port, thinking, “Hey, that orange cat sitting at the foot of the stairs to my floor looks just like Newton!” In fact, it was Newton – at some point during the day they’d pushed the screen out of a window over the kitchen sink and gotten outside. Who knows how long they were out there, and it’s lucky they weren’t killed. Jefferson ran back inside as soon as I went upstairs, but I had go down down to entice Newton back.

When Debbi got her kittens, she brought them down every weekend. Blackjack had delusions of being top cat, but Jefferson was having none of it, and quickly taught the kittens their places. Despite this, Roulette loved Jefferson, and the two of them became fast friends, mostly curling up in the papasan together every evening. Jefferson always seemed just a little put out, but sometimes he’d give in and lick Roulette’s head.

I think the coming of the kittens spelled the end of Jefferson and Newton’s close relationship, though. They rarely slept together anymore, and Newton would sometimes play dominance games by holding Jefferson by biting the scruff of his neck.

Most of all, though, Jefferson was my cat – no one else would do. I’d come home and he’d jump down from the bookcase upstairs and come running down to greet me, and then follow me around meowing at me until I picked him up. Other people were not sufficient, and he’d only grudgingly give them attention. He was always quick to purr his deep purr (it took Newton quite a while to find both his purr and his meow). When I was on the phone, Jefferson would jump into my lap, or meow at me if I wasn’t sitting down, no matter where we’d each been when the phone rang. Debbi often said that Jefferson wanted everyone else to just go away, so it would be just him and me.

This morning Newton was meowing his head off around 3:15 in the morning. In retrospect I wonder if he knew something wasn’t right.

On his last day Jefferson came in to greet me when my alarm went off. He came down for breakfast, but didn’t eat. He went up to lie in the sunbeam for several hours, and later I found him sitting in the green cat couch in the hallway – a couch he’d claimed as his some time ago – and finally in the cubbyhole of the cat tree. He meowed all the way to the vet. He’d gotten down to 8 pounds – literally half the cat he once was.

After we said goodbye, I went to buy comic books (I listened to podcasts of Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me! on the way, which helped take my mind off it by making me laugh), and Debbi put away our two-sided feeding dish and found a round ceramic one for Newton. The other three cats seem a little bewildered, but I don’t think they know why. Oddly, Blackjack is the one who’s been walking around yowling.

Jefferson would have been 16 years old next month. That’s a pretty good run for a cat. I’ve known for a while that cats at that age can go very quickly. Maybe we could have gotten a few more good months with him, but maybe they wouldn’t have been good months. It will take me a little while not to think about that.

Goodbye, Jeff, my little brown guy. I honestly could not have asked for a better cat. I love you and I’ll always miss you.