This post has been in writing since early April. This seems like as good a time as any to post the finished piece. Consider it a lengthier introduction, a portion of a portrait. And don’t worry, it has a happy ending.
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So many important issues to blog about. So little time.
I would like to take the time to introduce you to our two “kids.”
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Back in June 2006, I moved from my Orange, CA apartment to live with my mother for what I thought was going to be a few weeks, but ended up being six long, suffering-filled months. Long, irrelevant story.
My then-fiance traveled over there for a couple weeks to help me move, and just to spend some time with me. We spent one beautiful day in my favorite place in the world, San Diego, bumming around the art museums, picknicking on the sand at La Jolla cove, and just generally enjoying the salty ocean air. (He insists now that we will retire there, whatever we have to do to achieve it.) He helped me pack up my room full of stuff and move it out to the car, and kept things slightly sane with my mother “helping” at the same time.
And when he and I beat my mother back to her home with aforementioned stuff, and opened the door, this little black ball of fluff came bounding up and looked up expectantly at him, and meowed.
And my now-husband picked up the energetic ball of fluff, cradled it in his elbow, and declared, “He’s gonna be my buddy.”
Little did he know.
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My mother raised me on her own. She’d lived under poverty and abuse her entire life. For all the trouble in our relationship, I still feel she did a tremendous job. And I’ve always felt privileged to grow up under such an open and forgiving heart.
It manifested itself in many ways, but its relevance to this story is that I never grew up with any fewer than two cats that we called ours at any one time, and I’ve counted thirteen under our family umbrella at times. She couldn’t turn them away. Some of them were indoor kitties; some were feral and untamable, but showed at least some begrudging respect for us after time, all the while keeping their distance. They always ended up with names — no animal could find its way onto our property regularly (any of the dozen or so rental properties I lived on before Mom bought her house back in ’99) and not end up with a name. When I grew old enough to understand the implications and protest to Mom, the tame kitties started staying inside rather than being allowed to roam — and when the low-cost spay/neuter clinic moved into town (previously, even strays cost upwards of $200 to fix within a hundred-mile radius, which was unattainable when I spent a good chunk of my childhood on welfare), got them all fixed and vaccinated regardless.
I know I’ve counted at least a hundred cats in my life, over my twenty-two years.
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Another stray had moved into Mom’s backyard. I first met her the preceding summer, when she showed up on the front porch sporadically, and took to calling her “Sweetheart.” She disappeared before we could scoop her up and take her to the low-cost clinic.
Late in March of that year, she showed up again in our back yard, toddlingly embarazada. My mother was preparing for a trip up to the Columbia Gorge to visit my sister’s branch of the family (whom we rarely ever get to see), so she enlisted my brother to take in the stray on our (indoor) back porch, make her comfortable, and check in on her daily.
On April 7, 2006, she gave birth to seven kittens — impressive for her rather small size. Three were stillborn.
Sweetie had trouble with them from the start. She couldn’t seem to nurse the four surviving for any longer than ten seconds — she’d grow restless and jump out of her bed (the typical cardboard box lined with soft warm towels), wander around for a couple minutes, then jump back in the bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.
With a little bit of supplemental formula, the kittens seemed to grow at a healthy pace. Their mother, on the other hand, ended up passing away.
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Matthew and I had a good time together. We made caramel. We traveled up into the Sierra Nevada to the restaurant that was to host our wedding, and had lunch out on the deck over the river. We visited with my friends.
And we sat out in the back yard watching the kittens play.
(Yes, we could tell the twins apart.)
You can judge a person’s character by how they react around animals. Matt has always been a dog person; he grew up with a German Shepherd mix, Dusty, but never really lived with cats. — Still, it took all of one half-second between seeing those fluffy little things bouncing toward us and taking one into his arms to form a permanent attachment.
(He still protests insistently, whenever I’m talking to “my Buddy,” that “no, he’s my buddy!”)
It was obvious after less than a day that little-b buddy was going to be big-B Buddy, and that he was, without doubt, Matt’s cat. I favored the little tabby thing, of whom Mom asked, “she looks like a Mitsy, doesn’t she?”
The other tuxedo kitty was Buddy’s Twin, and the kitten with the ragdoll markings was, simply, Ragdoll. (She was Mom’s favorite.)
You know you’re in trouble when you give an animal a name.
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Matt’s visit was far too short, as such visits always are. We leaned against each other, silent, on a bench outside a Borders near the airport — we’d arrived slightly early, and didn’t want to part ways unnecessarily early. The day was long, and sad. Nothing more can really be said. Anyone who’s done long-distance will surely understand.
It wasn’t a full week after his departure that the kittens all fell sick. They stopped eating, stopped playing — they were awake, and alert, but sat about the back porch languidly, staring up at you with plaintive eyes, and mewing loudly anytime you came in sight of them.
I gathered them up into the cat carrier — a good fifteen years old by now, and visibly so — and rushed them to the vet’s office. They ran tests, and found an intestinal infection. The vet warned me at the time of “fading kitten syndrome,” while trying to get them to eat (they still wouldn’t). She sent me home with a couple cans of special food and a stash of antibiotics.
Their file was under, simply, “Kittens.”
I took them home. And I sat down in the back with them, and covered my lap with a towel, and picked up the first kitten in reach. And fed her.
And I did this, regularly, for weeks. It can’t’ve been pleasant for the poor souls — having their jaws squeezed open and a glomp of “Chicken and Liver Pâté” pressed in their tiny little mouths with a tongue depressor probably longer than they were, having their snout and chin then clamped together until they swallowed — over, and over, and over, and over. And then the medication. And then the baths — a lot of wet, warm washcloths wiping down sticky, mucky fur, both front and back — though fortunately I believe the number of genuine baths was limited to two.
It became a point of sanity, for me. I could sit down on the dirty wood floor, painted blue at some point in its sixty-some years — though not much of that paint remains at this point — throw a towel over my lap, close the door to the house, and lean against the screen door leading out to the back yard, and just be. The kittens would mewl at me, jump up at my chest, and at several points actually climb my back up to my shoulders (they were still small enough to where this was an honest-to-goodness climb). Buddy in particular I had to wrap in a towel to hold against my chest — where he would finally stop crying, and just purr.
They seemed to be getting better. Not much better, but some. It didn’t take quite as much persuasion to get them to eat. They seemed slightly more active. Ok, very slightly.
But it was still a surprise, that one night, only a couple weeks after I’d brought them in, when I was startled to see how… awkwardly… the ragdoll was lying, off by herself, away from the others. She hadn’t showed any signs of worsening. I approached her, carefully; she’d always been a bit wary of people (and given what it took to keep her alive, I damn well didn’t blame her). But when I reached out to stroke her, and felt her stiffening body, it was obvious what was happening.
She was dying.
My heart crashed. Right there, right then. And I crept into my mother’s room — it was maybe ten o’clock, and she had been reading in bed, as she usually does — and tried to tell her what was happening. Really, it was very obviously a beg for help. I felt absolutely helpless.
I didn’t get to finish — she screamed at me for disturbing her sleep, and what did I want, and why do you have to bother me now, and why aren’t you in bed, and —
I don’t know why I didn’t expect it. Except, of course, the same reason that any person living under abuse never really expects it — or at least thinks “maybe this time…”
I did the best I could — I gently transferred her to softer bed, tried to make her comfortable, and I stayed with her as long as I could.
When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. And so was Buddy’s twin.
***
I took the soonest time the vet could give me, and rushed the remaining two in. Of course, we pretty much knew what was wrong at this point. And the tests — two blood tests on each kitten, to make sure there were no false results — didn’t argue.
Buddy tested positive for Feline Leukemia.
Mitsy tested negative.
I guessed that made sense. Mitsy, after all, took all of two days to pretty much fully recover. She was still a little limited, but otherwise was bounding about as if fully healthy.
Buddy had seemed to be the worst off — and yet there he was.
It was possible, the vet explained, that Mitsy’s immune system was able to fight off the virus, and the others simple weren’t so lucky. We’d vaccinate her to protect her in any case, and keep Buddy on the antibiotics until things cleared up.
That intestinal infection probably did do them in: their immune systems simply couldn’t keep up. We fed them antibiotics, which could slow the reproduction of the bacteria, but couldn’t kill off what was already there; that’s work that the cat’s immune system would normally be doing. We’d keep trying on Buddy — but if his condition showed signs of worsening, it might be time to consider bringing him in to be put down.
That stung. It always does.
My mother, later, would tell me that she’s always felt it’s best to put a sick cat down.
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I cannot do that. If a cat is not suffering, and if there is a reasonable hope at healing them (enough to live comfortably), I will not put that cat down. If an animal is suffering, and/or there is no reasonable expectation they will ever get better: yes, in that case, it would by far be the humane thing to do.
But… just because they take a little extra work to care for?
Absolutely not.
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I’m happy to say that Buddy decided to give us the pleasure of staying a little longer. It’s been two-and-a-quarter years now, and he’s as healthy as a cat can be, virus aside.
Raising those kittens was an act of survival for me. Not ever quite making the connection that the medication I took as a sleep aid was, in fact, an anti-depressant, and that this was my first time without it since age twelve, I was in a particularly vulnerable place. And that is a place abuse bears no hesitation to inhabit. I am still healing today from everything that took place that summer.
When I moved out to Pennsylvania that December, I had to leave the kittens in California with my mother, unable to find a pet-friendly apartment even remotely in our price range. It wasn’t until May 2007, when we returned to California for our wedding, that I was able to see them again. And early the next morning, we stopped back at my mother’s house, airline-approved pet carriers in hand. After saying our goodbyes, we loaded the cats into the car and started down toward LAX, to find our way back home.
Home.
As a family.
I find it just about impossible to communicate the meaning weltering behind those four words.
Home. With my family.
Now. Finally.
God willing, we can go through life together for many years yet.
