--------Sometime 1991 - Oct 11, 2006
was a year or so old. I sometimes called her as Sandy the Wonder Cat because her default look—one of preemptive distress/concern—suggested that she was wondering what you were about to do to her. Yes,
she was cautiously pessimistic—and completely endearing. And since she was adopted, I could never determine whether that was simply her nature or whether some aspect of her initial environment had imparted this skeptical outlook. No matter, she was my baby.
If I was at times frustrated by her caution—sometimes if I slid over in bed too fast she would bolt, and I would think 'you idiot, I was simply adjusting my position'—I was also charmed by her apparent fragility; she had that power which shy people have that makes you want to extend yourself and try to draw them out. And I was glad she wasn't one of those boundary-free cats given to sitting on your head at night or waking you up too early. We had a solid co-independent relationship.
My bed was an important interactional site. Except in really hot weather and during her last few months, she would inevitably find her way onto it; most mornings she would either be sleeping somewhere on the bed or appear at some point to gently let me know she was present (if not open to the idea of eating once I arose).
Not that her presence on the bed meant that she would come over and interact; often a mini coaxing/ignoring drama was a required prelude. But once she decided to come close, she would usually climb up onto my chest and then lick the backs of my ears while purring loudly.
I travel quite a bit. During my decade in Brooklyn my roomate Tom, whom she knew as part of the house-hold, along with his cat Moose, looked after her when-ever I was on the road. In Maryland this fell to my next door neighbor Jim, an outsider, and mainly involved placing food in her bowl a couple times a day. (It was a long time before he actually saw her, and then only fleetingly; he once joked "I know there's a cat in there because I see the food has been eaten.") But whenever I returned from a trip of any duration Sandy, after a brief initial display of aloof-ness, was usually all over me for a day or two.
Lacking any natural enemies, she of course needed to conjure one: stray socks. If I was at my computer in the middle of the day and suddenly heard major yelping meows, it was undoubtedly Sandy with a sock in her mouth carrying on like she had just lost
the lottery by one digit.
Sandy's last year was marked by trouble keeping food down. Some if it was dental (she'd had a number of teeth out over the years and some occasional gum sores), but mostly it was some kind of stomach cancer both binding and bloating her intestines (echoing some of my own recent Crohn's problems; we were both on the same steroid for a while) and towards the end she simply couldn't eat much and started wasting away. (An August x-ray also revealed that she had some arthritis in her spine.)
After sharing with my friend Ethan that I was thinking the time had perhaps come to relieve Sandy of her pain, he urged me to consider doing it sooner rather than later for her sake, since he'd waited too long to do the same for his old dog. This helped confirm what I knew in my heart—that this was indeed the right time to say good-bye to my diminutive companion of thirteeen years.
A few days after I called to inquire about it, a vet from the clinic I used for her care was free to come around noon and euthanize her. That morning, after placing her on the high stool in the kitchen and squirting her meds into her mouth (our routine for the last month), I offered my head in nuzzlement and she licked my ear before jumping down—welcomed confirmation that she was at heart still herself.
She was put to rest in my lap on the living room couch. She was peaceful; I wasn't. But no regrets.
Farewell my little one.
Orrin
October 15, 2006
remarkable composed
----the look
2 days before leaving
