“Cat is fractious” no more

 

On our first visit to his vets, just about a week after we rescued each other, the intake tech wrote a note for Sammy’s vet: cat is fractious.

How little did I know then how true that was. The online thesaurus site lists tons of synonyms for fractious and I can easily say that Sammy exhibited most of them at some point: irritable; unmanageable; testy; scrappy; wild. I could go on, but you get the picture:

But no more, for my beautiful boy died in our sleep on March 15. Beware the Ides of March indeed.

I knew he was dying. He’d stopped eating and had lost a lot of weight. On the morning of his death, I found him settled on my collection of throw pillows in my bedroom (finding a quiet, safe space is a well-known behavior amongst cats when they know they are dying). And I knew that but stupidly, I picked him up and settled him on the couch in the living room. Comfortable, but not nearly as comfortable as those pillows. I am wracked with guilt about moving him. However, if it caused him to stay alive a little longer, then I am OK with it. Because it meant he was still alive when I got home.

I ate dinner quickly, changed into my jammies, picked him up, settled him in my lap and fell asleep on the couch. I can’t be sure of this, but I think, in the middle of the night, he awoke me with a loud meow just before he died. But that might be wishful thinking on my part.

When I awoke, I knew he was dead. But I let myself pretend it was just his normal habit of jumping up on me when I was asleep and settling in for a nap. So I talked to him like I would normally do when he wouldn’t move from me: “Sammy, get up, mummy needs to use the loo.” I went on in that vein for about five minutes, delaying the inevitable.

And, like after the workplace shooting, most of my posse of beautiful strong women reached out to me and helped me through it.

So you know that old chestnut of a question, “If you could have lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?” Well, before Sammy, my answer was always William Shakespeare. After Sammy, it would be whoever could tell me of Sammy’s life before me: who got him declawed? How many siblings did he have? Did his mummy and daddy love each other or was it just a one-night stand? Did he ever do the deed before he got fixed? Did someone abandon him or did he run away, to be found by someone named Guido who took him to the shelter? (When he got to the shelter, he was initially named Roseannadanna, in keeping with the Saturday Night Live theme. That was changed to Rodin (one of my favorite artists). I named him Sammy after Sammy Davis Jr because he had only one eye (something else that I am sure added to his fractiousness!).)  

I’d also ask my lunch partner who abused that beautiful boy so much that he turned into a psychotic biting machine? Notice how I wrote I’d like to meet someone who could answer these questions, and not the person who did the abusing because I would kill that motherfucker in a slow and very painful way.

But, like my moving him from the pillows, perhaps on some level him getting abused was a good thing because it meant we ended up with each other. Because he was as fucked up in his head as I am in mine. Yeah, he might have gotten adopted on his good looks alone, but any normal, sane person would have returned him after one of his biting sessions. We were meant for each other.

But now he is gone and I am alone once more. It does hurt, but, because I am a sociopath, I am handling it so much better than I thought I would. I expected to try to fill the cat-shaped hole with a parrot. Or a tortoise. I pictured my grief causing me to shave off all my hair. Or dye it black. (One of those is for sure going to happen soon.)

But I am going on with my life with reminders of him everywhere. His picture is my profile pic for my work emails. Most of my passwords have some form of his name in them (there are lots of other deets in them so that is not giving away anything). He is my screensaver on all my devices. I say good morning to him. I tell him at night when it is time for bed. And about a week after his passing I had a dream that was so intense that I think it might have actually happened: He jumped up on my lap and we rubbed noses and said goodbye. In other dreams I feel him nibbling my toes or jumping up on my lap for a nap.

I could not give him the best life, but I think I gave him a good one.

RIP, love of my life.