Math: ca. August 1, 1991 - April 7, 2006
We had our cat Math put to sleep yesterday morning. Needless to say, we're still recovering from the shock. It all happened amazingly fast.
Math hadn't been eating so well the past couple of weeks. Although she still attacked her pellets with reassuring vigor, she had all but abandoned her daily glop, which accounted for a large portion of her calories. Still, she got around adequately, if a bit stiffly, and was not feeling any pain, as far as we could tell. But when I got home Thursday evening, Math, to my amazement, didn't greet me at the door yowling for more pellets. My concern grew when I discovered that she hadn't eaten anything all day; and when I found her scrunched up on the couch in what should have been a rather uncomfortable position, concern gave way to alarm. She said nothing but looked up at me unsteadily. Her heavy-lidded gaze was completely unnerving; I was struck with a horrible free-fall feeling of despair. I gave her a pet and she began to purr, weakly. Her labored breathing sounded like Darth Vader, after he threw the Emperor down the Death Star shaft. Oh, no, I thought, this is it.
I canceled my planned evening of working on my manuscript, so I could spend some time with her if it turned out that she really was deteriorating that rapidly. I put in a DVD of old Muppet Show episodes and sat down on the couch next to her. Normally, she would automatically, almost reflexively, climb up into my lap; but this time she didn't move from her scrunched-up posture. She purred a bit more for me when I reassuringly stroked her back, but presently she got down from the couch-stumbling and almost falling when she hit the floor-and staggered off a few feet to sit on the hardwood floor, in a compact pose we call the "meat-loaf kitty." Every few minutes she'd try a new place and a new posture. It was clear that none of them made her comfortable. Over the past several months her health had wavered between pretty good and pretty bad, but even after her operation she never looked this ill at ease just lying around. And the way she looked at me was utterly alien.
After a couple of hours of this, she limped over to the stairs and laboriously started to climb them. She rarely went upstairs, even when she was in good shape. Puzzled, I followed, ready to carry her back down if she gave up. She made it, but only after immense, painful effort and a couple of stops to cough and catch her breath. What in the world did she want up there? When at last she reached the top she made a beeline (albeit a very gradual one) for the shower mat in the bathroom, and there she stayed until just before Kathy got home (around midnight), when she lumbered over to our bedroom and climbed up into a box mostly full of Kathy's sweaters. I can only assume she did that because she found them comforting, as they smelled like Kathy. She didn't look any more comfortable wedged into that box than anywhere else.
When Kathy arrived I immediately took her upstairs to where Math was crouched in the closet. Our other cat, Pandora, followed. "Blrrrp?" she asked, obviously worried. Pandora was undoubtedly picking up on our distress, and not Math's. Our cats had never grown together. Their relationship was one of mutual tolerance.
Kathy quickly reached the same conclusion that I did, particularly after watching Math getting out of the box, nearly falling again, and then lurching and swaying back to the bathroom. With great agony she decided to take Math to the vet the next morning.
Math stopped next to the toilet and looked up, expectantly, until we got the hint and fetched her a bowl of water. (She was always good at employing symbolic language, though we never gained much skill at parsing it.) She seemed fairly content to stay there, so Kathy brought up some food, as well (the good stuff, not the glop) to see if she'd eat. She did pick at it a little, but her heart wasn't in it even if her stomach was.
Neither of us slept at all Thursday night. I was hoping we could spend the night together with Math, even if she hadn't slept in our bed in several years. But she kept moving around and conspicuously avoided perching anywhere too soft or yielding. Kathy did what she could to make her comfortable, while I drifted in and out of a tormented half-sleep for what seem like about a year and a half. I was completely wrung out by the time Kathy got me up for our trip to the vet, and she looked worse than I felt.
Kathy and her family agreed that she would bury Math in their back yard. Kathy drove me to work on her way down to her folks' place. It was the greyest, dreariest day I've seen in years, and perfectly appropriate. The sky hung down over us like a lead curtain, as if the dawn sun had got stuck halfway over the horizon. As we drove, the drizzle turned to rain, and the rain to a downpour. Soon we were crawling along through a deluge, the likes of which we hadn't experienced since our encounter with the remnant of Katrina last August. (I had intended to ride my bike to work. Thank goodness I'd taken Kathy up on her offer. Even my waterproof gear wouldn't have been able to withstand such an onslaught.)
Math had a rougher time of it coming into this world than departing. Kathy acquired her at the too-tender age of four weeks. Math's mother belonged to neighbors of Kathy's graduate advisor. Idiot neighbors, who left town for the summer and locked their pregnant cat outside. In Phoenix. Kathy's advsior scooped up the kittens from underneath the house as early as he dared, brought them to work, and told everyone in the department that any still unspoken for at the end of the day would go to the animal shelter. When quitting time rolled around, exactly one kitten was left: Math. Kathy still has a picture of the baby Math next to her pocket calculator. It's a toss-up to guess which is larger-the cat or the calculator! Astonishing to believe that she'd grow up into this behemoth who usually avoided fighting through pure intimidation.
Though I've complained in the past about her irascible personality (probably caused by her traumatic early kittenhood), she was a good cat. I've already felt the pang of loneliness doing the Sudoku all by myself in the evening, with nary a cat haunch plopped directly on top of the puzzle every five minutes. She was gregarious without being personable: though she had a very low tolerance for being touched by strangers, her place was always in the middle of any gathering. Among her more endearing qualities was her habit of lying on the carpet directly on her back, legs pointing straight up, wrists flopping like the Easter Bunny's. We labeled this the Funny Cat. She'd lie like that for half an hour or more, and then for some unfathomable reason would suddenly right herself and go walk off to find some better place to lounge around in. Sometimes her front and back legs would be pointed away from vertical, in different directions; this was the Funny Cat with a Twist. We named the variations on this pose by their angles. A Funny Cat with a One-eighth Twist, or a 45° angle between fore and hind legs, was quite common; the Funny Cat with a Quarter Twist less so. Only twice did I spot the Holy Grail of Funny Cats: the Funny Cat with a Three-Eighths Twist. That one looked almost painful. Alas, she stopped doing the Funny Cat some time before we moved to Cleveland, presumably as her arthritis worsened.
I've been sitting at the computer for nearly two hours, and nobody has asked if she could jump in my lap. Never more will my tibial nerve get completely crushed under a huge mass of cat playing "Leopard on a Tree Branch," rendering my lower leg completely numb for the rest of the evening. And now our only chance to hear "a-lung-a-lung-a-lung" is to listen to a recording. Goodbye, Math. We'll miss you greatly.
Math hadn't been eating so well the past couple of weeks. Although she still attacked her pellets with reassuring vigor, she had all but abandoned her daily glop, which accounted for a large portion of her calories. Still, she got around adequately, if a bit stiffly, and was not feeling any pain, as far as we could tell. But when I got home Thursday evening, Math, to my amazement, didn't greet me at the door yowling for more pellets. My concern grew when I discovered that she hadn't eaten anything all day; and when I found her scrunched up on the couch in what should have been a rather uncomfortable position, concern gave way to alarm. She said nothing but looked up at me unsteadily. Her heavy-lidded gaze was completely unnerving; I was struck with a horrible free-fall feeling of despair. I gave her a pet and she began to purr, weakly. Her labored breathing sounded like Darth Vader, after he threw the Emperor down the Death Star shaft. Oh, no, I thought, this is it.
I canceled my planned evening of working on my manuscript, so I could spend some time with her if it turned out that she really was deteriorating that rapidly. I put in a DVD of old Muppet Show episodes and sat down on the couch next to her. Normally, she would automatically, almost reflexively, climb up into my lap; but this time she didn't move from her scrunched-up posture. She purred a bit more for me when I reassuringly stroked her back, but presently she got down from the couch-stumbling and almost falling when she hit the floor-and staggered off a few feet to sit on the hardwood floor, in a compact pose we call the "meat-loaf kitty." Every few minutes she'd try a new place and a new posture. It was clear that none of them made her comfortable. Over the past several months her health had wavered between pretty good and pretty bad, but even after her operation she never looked this ill at ease just lying around. And the way she looked at me was utterly alien.
After a couple of hours of this, she limped over to the stairs and laboriously started to climb them. She rarely went upstairs, even when she was in good shape. Puzzled, I followed, ready to carry her back down if she gave up. She made it, but only after immense, painful effort and a couple of stops to cough and catch her breath. What in the world did she want up there? When at last she reached the top she made a beeline (albeit a very gradual one) for the shower mat in the bathroom, and there she stayed until just before Kathy got home (around midnight), when she lumbered over to our bedroom and climbed up into a box mostly full of Kathy's sweaters. I can only assume she did that because she found them comforting, as they smelled like Kathy. She didn't look any more comfortable wedged into that box than anywhere else.
When Kathy arrived I immediately took her upstairs to where Math was crouched in the closet. Our other cat, Pandora, followed. "Blrrrp?" she asked, obviously worried. Pandora was undoubtedly picking up on our distress, and not Math's. Our cats had never grown together. Their relationship was one of mutual tolerance.
Kathy quickly reached the same conclusion that I did, particularly after watching Math getting out of the box, nearly falling again, and then lurching and swaying back to the bathroom. With great agony she decided to take Math to the vet the next morning.
Math stopped next to the toilet and looked up, expectantly, until we got the hint and fetched her a bowl of water. (She was always good at employing symbolic language, though we never gained much skill at parsing it.) She seemed fairly content to stay there, so Kathy brought up some food, as well (the good stuff, not the glop) to see if she'd eat. She did pick at it a little, but her heart wasn't in it even if her stomach was.
Neither of us slept at all Thursday night. I was hoping we could spend the night together with Math, even if she hadn't slept in our bed in several years. But she kept moving around and conspicuously avoided perching anywhere too soft or yielding. Kathy did what she could to make her comfortable, while I drifted in and out of a tormented half-sleep for what seem like about a year and a half. I was completely wrung out by the time Kathy got me up for our trip to the vet, and she looked worse than I felt.
Kathy and her family agreed that she would bury Math in their back yard. Kathy drove me to work on her way down to her folks' place. It was the greyest, dreariest day I've seen in years, and perfectly appropriate. The sky hung down over us like a lead curtain, as if the dawn sun had got stuck halfway over the horizon. As we drove, the drizzle turned to rain, and the rain to a downpour. Soon we were crawling along through a deluge, the likes of which we hadn't experienced since our encounter with the remnant of Katrina last August. (I had intended to ride my bike to work. Thank goodness I'd taken Kathy up on her offer. Even my waterproof gear wouldn't have been able to withstand such an onslaught.)
Math had a rougher time of it coming into this world than departing. Kathy acquired her at the too-tender age of four weeks. Math's mother belonged to neighbors of Kathy's graduate advisor. Idiot neighbors, who left town for the summer and locked their pregnant cat outside. In Phoenix. Kathy's advsior scooped up the kittens from underneath the house as early as he dared, brought them to work, and told everyone in the department that any still unspoken for at the end of the day would go to the animal shelter. When quitting time rolled around, exactly one kitten was left: Math. Kathy still has a picture of the baby Math next to her pocket calculator. It's a toss-up to guess which is larger-the cat or the calculator! Astonishing to believe that she'd grow up into this behemoth who usually avoided fighting through pure intimidation.
Though I've complained in the past about her irascible personality (probably caused by her traumatic early kittenhood), she was a good cat. I've already felt the pang of loneliness doing the Sudoku all by myself in the evening, with nary a cat haunch plopped directly on top of the puzzle every five minutes. She was gregarious without being personable: though she had a very low tolerance for being touched by strangers, her place was always in the middle of any gathering. Among her more endearing qualities was her habit of lying on the carpet directly on her back, legs pointing straight up, wrists flopping like the Easter Bunny's. We labeled this the Funny Cat. She'd lie like that for half an hour or more, and then for some unfathomable reason would suddenly right herself and go walk off to find some better place to lounge around in. Sometimes her front and back legs would be pointed away from vertical, in different directions; this was the Funny Cat with a Twist. We named the variations on this pose by their angles. A Funny Cat with a One-eighth Twist, or a 45° angle between fore and hind legs, was quite common; the Funny Cat with a Quarter Twist less so. Only twice did I spot the Holy Grail of Funny Cats: the Funny Cat with a Three-Eighths Twist. That one looked almost painful. Alas, she stopped doing the Funny Cat some time before we moved to Cleveland, presumably as her arthritis worsened.
I've been sitting at the computer for nearly two hours, and nobody has asked if she could jump in my lap. Never more will my tibial nerve get completely crushed under a huge mass of cat playing "Leopard on a Tree Branch," rendering my lower leg completely numb for the rest of the evening. And now our only chance to hear "a-lung-a-lung-a-lung" is to listen to a recording. Goodbye, Math. We'll miss you greatly.