Celebration of the Best Cat Ever
My beloved cat Mystery has now been missing for a month and I feel it's important that I write about her. Catherine has already written a wonderful tribute to her, and I know that she also loved Mystery dearly, but I know that she would agree that Mystery and I had a special bond which nobody else approached. I need to sing her praises once more and celebrate the awesomeness that is Mystery (even if part of me is convinced that everything I'm about to write will be inadequate).
Mystery entered our lives courtesy of one of Catherine's work colleagues. Her colleague had a cat which never went outside, apparently, which meant that it wasn't necessary to keep doors and/or windows shut. Despite this tight regimen of household control, her cat ended up giving birth to a litter of four kittens, three girls and a boy. Clearly the only possible explanation was divine intervention, which goes some way towards explaining Mystery's status as best cat ever (at least to this thoroughly besotted human).
We saw photos of the kittens before getting to meet them and made tentative choices of which kittens to adopt on this basis. All of them, of course, were adorable, but I seem to recall that I had initially selected a different kitten. After we went over to meet the kittens in person, however, it wasn't very long before I decided that Mystery was the one for me. Mystery was the smallest of her siblings in size and build and (initially at least) much less outgoing. While her siblings were running all over the place chasing things, Mystery was more inclined to hide under a chair and watch, but it quickly became clear to me that she was no less engaged in her surroundings and had already developed a keen intelligence in order to deal with her more rambunctious siblings. While the other kittens would throw themselves backwards and forwards chasing the thing dangling on the end of the string, Mystery would watch it going back and forth, choosing her moment to strike. She didn't pounce often, but she always caught her target. We gravitated towards each other very quickly and thus a perfect partnership was born.
The kittens were pretty freaked out by being taken to a new environment, so I took two days off work to help them settle in. Mystery was the first of the two to emerge from hiding, but I still spent a large part of that first day sitting or lying on the floor near her, moving very slowly or being very still, while she lurked under the table and worked out what was safe. Introducing her to the rest of the house was a lengthy procedure of moving a short distance, stopping, and waiting for her to join me. Eventually we made it to the food bowl, and once that proved to be acceptable, the rest came more easily, although only in my presence.
At the time I described Mystery's behaviour as “assuring herself that I wouldn't mysteriously disappear or disapprove if she moved more than a few feet away, and working out that the concept of me moving, standing or even (gasp!) walking wasn't too scary.” Looking back at the other things I wrote at the time, I'm surprised to note that we were spending time together outside by her second full day in the house, but not for very long, only on the back porch and only in my presence. By this time we had also coined the word “exploratious” to describe her inquisitive engagement with her new environment, the first of many nonsense words which demanded to be applied to Mystery in lieu of more generally acceptable pre-existing dictionary words - they just sounded right, as if she were also taking a pioneering approach to language as she defined her new world. (For a brief time we called her Mystique instead, as a friend suggested it was a classier name than Mystery. As Mystery is indeed a classy cat, I was briefly swayed by this argument, but within a few days we had reverted to Mystery - it just sounded and felt right for her.)
Her sister Mayhem eventually emerged late on the first afternoon, apparently liking the look of the Mystery climbing all over me and deciding “I'll have what she's having” - which is a pretty good characterisation of the rivalry for possession of me that quickly developed. Mystery grew in confidence rapidly, adapting quickly from being the picked-upon smallest sibling of four to adopt her new persona of alpha cat who owned the food bowls - Mayhem was often only able to eat when I stood over the food bowls to monitor their behaviour. Despite their rivalry, they were often seen crashed out together as kittens and young cats. As they grew older they became more possessive of their own space and I was no longer able to cuddle them both at once (or not without great care), but they continued to work as a team in hunting, and in defending their territory and each other from intruder cats. The sight of the two of them curled up near each other became much rarer, but it was still a sight I experienced more than once within the last year.
I'm going to digress from any vague sense of narrative progression in this piece to quote from my old Livejournal, at a time when we'd had the kittens for almost a month: “Mystery was just starting to get worked up about 11 last night, which wasn't a problem until she started trying to kill a fly. It was fascinating to watch - she'd spring into the air, rotate in the air with all four limbs flailing at the fly, then hit the ground and immediately spring up again like a pogo stick. This was fine until she started landing further and further away from her starting point, in an arc of rapid landings which brought the Flying Windmill Kitten of Death across the room, onto the couch, and straight at me. Fortunately she collided with my quickly raised arm, leaving me with only minor mauling, and I decided it was time they went to bed :)”
Bed time was something about which young Mystery had very definite opinions. We would shut the living room door so that we could sleep without worrying about kittens making suspicious noises (or, for that matter, suspicious silences) all over the bedroom and preventing us from sleeping. This, however, was an outrage which would result in wails of despair and an almighty rattling as Mystery would stick her paw under the living room door and bash the door backwards and forwards. She quickly put her intelligence to good use and worked out how to turn the door handle from the top of the lounge. After we started locking the door, Mystery didn't give up but began clutching the handle with both front paws and swinging bodily back and forth trying to open it. (For a time there, it seemed very much as if she was trying to work out how to walk on her hind legs like us and to develop opposable thumbs.) Initially, this sort of behaviour resulted in us shutting the cats further away in the kitchen. Eventually, however, I saw the light and allowed Mystery to come and sleep on the bed next to me. Sometimes this led to exciting confrontations as Mystery defended her territory from Mayhem's tentative efforts to join us. On a couple of very special occasions, Mystery was kind enough to jump up onto the bed with a mouse in her mouth and chase it around on top of the bed. Somehow these occasions were never appreciated as much as she expected they would be, especially when the mouse ended up escaping and hiding somewhere inaccessible but definitely not inaudible...
As you can no doubt tell, Mystery was a Mighty Huntress and we frequently told her so. We had a bit of a mouse problem when we first got the kittens, so we made sure to make a big fuss of them whenever they caught a mouse. This was clearly a Highly Appropriate Response, so Mystery encouraged us by giving us more opportunities to praise her skills - bringing us beetles, butterflies... all sorts of things. She would enter the house announcing her new prize with a characteristic “I've got something in my mouth” miaow, trot up to the nearest human, drop her find on the floor and assume one of two positions - Mystery's patented sitting-up-straight “look what a good cat I am pose”; or what we called the Lion of Triumph, sprawled on her side and curled in a slight arc around her prize. Unfortunately she was so focused on receiving her due praises that her prize would frequently have time to run away and hide, leading on occasion to the Daddy Move the Furniture and Help Me Find the Mouse game.
Mystery and I were pretty much inseparable. She could never understand why I would want to leave the house without her, and on a number of occasions I found her chasing me down the footpath as I was trying to go to work. When I returned home she was almost always waiting out the front of the house, even in the direst weather, keeping an eye out for me. She would run down the path or spring out from her hiding spot in the bushes, telling me off for going away while simultaneously expressing her delight at my return. I'm told that I also had a very distinctive way of saying “hullo Mystery” as I greeted her. Mystery had been with us for almost a year when she dabbled briefly with human speech, greeting my appearance with sounds that were as close to “hullo” as one might expect a feline larynx to be capable of. Presumably this turned out to be too much effort when her regular range of sounds would do just as well at getting my attention and expressing her mood, but the resemblance to human speech really was uncanny.
Mystery was not at all impressed when Catherine and I went away on our honeymoon. Although we arranged for a friend to cat-sit so that the cats wouldn't be alone, Mystery was not happy with my absence and instigated a massive cull of the local rodent population, as if she were making sacrificial offerings to bring us back. Although our cat-sitter disposed of all the corpses and only left the house a few hours before we returned, by the time we got home there were four fresh mouse corpses displayed prominently along the pathway to the front door. After an initial expression of delight at my return, Mystery then gave me the cold shoulder for a few hours, pointedly ignoring me with her back turned (while guarding the front of the house in case I was planning on leaving again) until she decided I'd learned my lesson.
One of the most delightful ways in which Mystery would express her affection for me was her purr. I have never heard a louder or deeper purr than hers, which could even be heard from the next room on occasion. Sometimes Mystery would be sitting quietly in a room and start purring as soon as I entered. There have even been occasions when I've heard her purring from another room, only to hear her purr double or triple in volume upon seeing me enter (as confirmed by Catherine, who had been next to her at the time). It's a sign of her devotion that I found incredibly touching.
Mystery was also extremely cuddly and affectionate, often almost throwing herself into my arms rather than wait to be picked up. She would push her face into mine while placing her paws on either shoulder in a semi-hug. She would curl up in my arms and purr like mad. She would climb all over me and sometimes sleep on my shoulders. She used to sit on top of my head as a kitten, but that was one kitteny activity that she couldn't maintain as she grew. Sometimes, when she was happily cleaning herself, she would helpfully lick my arm clean. On one occasion, when she was resting on my chest, she even started cleaning my beard! Bemused and somewhat touched, I allowed her to get on with it - she did a very thorough job. (Yes, I did clean off my face later on.) Mystery had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of drool, presumably drawn from the same mysterious well which allowed her to purr so deeply. Mystery's Healing Drool, as it quickly became known, would flow freely in some of her ecstasies of happiness and often required the strategic application of a towel after she moved on.
Mystery wasn't very interested in laps. As a kitten she would sit in my lap but nobody else's. When she was a little older she abandoned laps, preferring to sit next to me on the arm of the lounge chair. She was also very interested in joining us on social occasions when we made use of the kitchen table, jumping up to sit in my place if I happened to abandon my chair. She would also do the same with Catherine's chair, but mine was the preferred option. She wouldn't use it as a launching pad to reach the food on the table - rather she would sit up straight and look around at all the people, enjoying the discourse of civilised society and accepting her due homage. If I was lucky, I would be allowed to share my chair with her when I came back. Within the last year she started sitting in my lap again on occasion, which I was only too happy to encourage, and she even began to sit in Catherine's lap on rare occasions.
On the night of Monday 21 December 2015, I finished washing the dishes and turned around to discover Mystery waiting patiently behind me, as was her wont. I picked her up and cuddled her, as was my wont. Sometimes I would go off and do other things while cuddling her, but on this occasion I decided to devote my full attention to her - cuddling, nuzzling, patting, hugging, going nose to nose, rubbing her head with my chin, the full kitten service. I stood in the kitchen for over an hour, doing nothing but pay attention to Mystery. I finally started to make the cup of tea I had been going to make originally, taking the next half hour to do so while I continued to give her as much attention as I could. We spent a bit of time roaming the house together, Mystery in my arms and sometimes on my shoulders, until Catherine came home. After at least a solid two hours of entirely Mystery-focused time, I continued to lavish affection on her during the evening. When I went to bed, Mystery came with me for the first time in a while - she'd spent most of the last 10 years sleeping next to me or on the end of the bed, but for the past few months she'd found other spots in the house to sleep. As we had both become accustomed to, she began by walking around on my chest for a while before I was able to convince her to settle down resting partially on my chest. When I was ready to roll over and get to sleep fully, she moved over and slept next to me, although she'd shifted to her current favourite spot in the house by the time I woke up.
On Tuesday night, while we had visitors, she cozened her way outside after the cat door was shut. She didn't turn up again that evening, but as she had spent the night outside on a couple of occasions before, I assumed she would be waiting outside for me as usual the next morning as I left for work. I checked her favourite spots in the bushes but didn't see her. It was the first day of Catherine's holidays, so I texted her and asked her to tell me when Mystery turned up.
She didn't.
I don't want to dwell on the intervening period, or the reasons that we expect we are unlikely to see her again at this point. Suffice it to say that there have been a lot of tears; that Catherine has provided immense support in the search and in making sure that I'm okay; and that Mayhem has been receiving lavish amounts of attention.
Instead I want to end on celebratory note. Mystery has brought me an incredible amount of joy during our time together. I could not have asked for a better, sweeter, more loving and affectionate cat. During our time together she threw herself into everything with enthusiasm, and I am incredibly honoured and fortunate to have been the centre of her world. Although I wanted to be with her right until the end, and will always regret not being able to honour that commitment, I am especially grateful for the concentrated time I spent with her on our second-last evening together. She will continue to walk beside me (and to be curled up inside my heart) for the remainder of my life.
This entry was originally posted at http://jesusandrew.dreamwidth.org/118026.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Mystery entered our lives courtesy of one of Catherine's work colleagues. Her colleague had a cat which never went outside, apparently, which meant that it wasn't necessary to keep doors and/or windows shut. Despite this tight regimen of household control, her cat ended up giving birth to a litter of four kittens, three girls and a boy. Clearly the only possible explanation was divine intervention, which goes some way towards explaining Mystery's status as best cat ever (at least to this thoroughly besotted human).
We saw photos of the kittens before getting to meet them and made tentative choices of which kittens to adopt on this basis. All of them, of course, were adorable, but I seem to recall that I had initially selected a different kitten. After we went over to meet the kittens in person, however, it wasn't very long before I decided that Mystery was the one for me. Mystery was the smallest of her siblings in size and build and (initially at least) much less outgoing. While her siblings were running all over the place chasing things, Mystery was more inclined to hide under a chair and watch, but it quickly became clear to me that she was no less engaged in her surroundings and had already developed a keen intelligence in order to deal with her more rambunctious siblings. While the other kittens would throw themselves backwards and forwards chasing the thing dangling on the end of the string, Mystery would watch it going back and forth, choosing her moment to strike. She didn't pounce often, but she always caught her target. We gravitated towards each other very quickly and thus a perfect partnership was born.
The kittens were pretty freaked out by being taken to a new environment, so I took two days off work to help them settle in. Mystery was the first of the two to emerge from hiding, but I still spent a large part of that first day sitting or lying on the floor near her, moving very slowly or being very still, while she lurked under the table and worked out what was safe. Introducing her to the rest of the house was a lengthy procedure of moving a short distance, stopping, and waiting for her to join me. Eventually we made it to the food bowl, and once that proved to be acceptable, the rest came more easily, although only in my presence.
At the time I described Mystery's behaviour as “assuring herself that I wouldn't mysteriously disappear or disapprove if she moved more than a few feet away, and working out that the concept of me moving, standing or even (gasp!) walking wasn't too scary.” Looking back at the other things I wrote at the time, I'm surprised to note that we were spending time together outside by her second full day in the house, but not for very long, only on the back porch and only in my presence. By this time we had also coined the word “exploratious” to describe her inquisitive engagement with her new environment, the first of many nonsense words which demanded to be applied to Mystery in lieu of more generally acceptable pre-existing dictionary words - they just sounded right, as if she were also taking a pioneering approach to language as she defined her new world. (For a brief time we called her Mystique instead, as a friend suggested it was a classier name than Mystery. As Mystery is indeed a classy cat, I was briefly swayed by this argument, but within a few days we had reverted to Mystery - it just sounded and felt right for her.)
Her sister Mayhem eventually emerged late on the first afternoon, apparently liking the look of the Mystery climbing all over me and deciding “I'll have what she's having” - which is a pretty good characterisation of the rivalry for possession of me that quickly developed. Mystery grew in confidence rapidly, adapting quickly from being the picked-upon smallest sibling of four to adopt her new persona of alpha cat who owned the food bowls - Mayhem was often only able to eat when I stood over the food bowls to monitor their behaviour. Despite their rivalry, they were often seen crashed out together as kittens and young cats. As they grew older they became more possessive of their own space and I was no longer able to cuddle them both at once (or not without great care), but they continued to work as a team in hunting, and in defending their territory and each other from intruder cats. The sight of the two of them curled up near each other became much rarer, but it was still a sight I experienced more than once within the last year.
I'm going to digress from any vague sense of narrative progression in this piece to quote from my old Livejournal, at a time when we'd had the kittens for almost a month: “Mystery was just starting to get worked up about 11 last night, which wasn't a problem until she started trying to kill a fly. It was fascinating to watch - she'd spring into the air, rotate in the air with all four limbs flailing at the fly, then hit the ground and immediately spring up again like a pogo stick. This was fine until she started landing further and further away from her starting point, in an arc of rapid landings which brought the Flying Windmill Kitten of Death across the room, onto the couch, and straight at me. Fortunately she collided with my quickly raised arm, leaving me with only minor mauling, and I decided it was time they went to bed :)”
Bed time was something about which young Mystery had very definite opinions. We would shut the living room door so that we could sleep without worrying about kittens making suspicious noises (or, for that matter, suspicious silences) all over the bedroom and preventing us from sleeping. This, however, was an outrage which would result in wails of despair and an almighty rattling as Mystery would stick her paw under the living room door and bash the door backwards and forwards. She quickly put her intelligence to good use and worked out how to turn the door handle from the top of the lounge. After we started locking the door, Mystery didn't give up but began clutching the handle with both front paws and swinging bodily back and forth trying to open it. (For a time there, it seemed very much as if she was trying to work out how to walk on her hind legs like us and to develop opposable thumbs.) Initially, this sort of behaviour resulted in us shutting the cats further away in the kitchen. Eventually, however, I saw the light and allowed Mystery to come and sleep on the bed next to me. Sometimes this led to exciting confrontations as Mystery defended her territory from Mayhem's tentative efforts to join us. On a couple of very special occasions, Mystery was kind enough to jump up onto the bed with a mouse in her mouth and chase it around on top of the bed. Somehow these occasions were never appreciated as much as she expected they would be, especially when the mouse ended up escaping and hiding somewhere inaccessible but definitely not inaudible...
As you can no doubt tell, Mystery was a Mighty Huntress and we frequently told her so. We had a bit of a mouse problem when we first got the kittens, so we made sure to make a big fuss of them whenever they caught a mouse. This was clearly a Highly Appropriate Response, so Mystery encouraged us by giving us more opportunities to praise her skills - bringing us beetles, butterflies... all sorts of things. She would enter the house announcing her new prize with a characteristic “I've got something in my mouth” miaow, trot up to the nearest human, drop her find on the floor and assume one of two positions - Mystery's patented sitting-up-straight “look what a good cat I am pose”; or what we called the Lion of Triumph, sprawled on her side and curled in a slight arc around her prize. Unfortunately she was so focused on receiving her due praises that her prize would frequently have time to run away and hide, leading on occasion to the Daddy Move the Furniture and Help Me Find the Mouse game.
Mystery and I were pretty much inseparable. She could never understand why I would want to leave the house without her, and on a number of occasions I found her chasing me down the footpath as I was trying to go to work. When I returned home she was almost always waiting out the front of the house, even in the direst weather, keeping an eye out for me. She would run down the path or spring out from her hiding spot in the bushes, telling me off for going away while simultaneously expressing her delight at my return. I'm told that I also had a very distinctive way of saying “hullo Mystery” as I greeted her. Mystery had been with us for almost a year when she dabbled briefly with human speech, greeting my appearance with sounds that were as close to “hullo” as one might expect a feline larynx to be capable of. Presumably this turned out to be too much effort when her regular range of sounds would do just as well at getting my attention and expressing her mood, but the resemblance to human speech really was uncanny.
Mystery was not at all impressed when Catherine and I went away on our honeymoon. Although we arranged for a friend to cat-sit so that the cats wouldn't be alone, Mystery was not happy with my absence and instigated a massive cull of the local rodent population, as if she were making sacrificial offerings to bring us back. Although our cat-sitter disposed of all the corpses and only left the house a few hours before we returned, by the time we got home there were four fresh mouse corpses displayed prominently along the pathway to the front door. After an initial expression of delight at my return, Mystery then gave me the cold shoulder for a few hours, pointedly ignoring me with her back turned (while guarding the front of the house in case I was planning on leaving again) until she decided I'd learned my lesson.
One of the most delightful ways in which Mystery would express her affection for me was her purr. I have never heard a louder or deeper purr than hers, which could even be heard from the next room on occasion. Sometimes Mystery would be sitting quietly in a room and start purring as soon as I entered. There have even been occasions when I've heard her purring from another room, only to hear her purr double or triple in volume upon seeing me enter (as confirmed by Catherine, who had been next to her at the time). It's a sign of her devotion that I found incredibly touching.
Mystery was also extremely cuddly and affectionate, often almost throwing herself into my arms rather than wait to be picked up. She would push her face into mine while placing her paws on either shoulder in a semi-hug. She would curl up in my arms and purr like mad. She would climb all over me and sometimes sleep on my shoulders. She used to sit on top of my head as a kitten, but that was one kitteny activity that she couldn't maintain as she grew. Sometimes, when she was happily cleaning herself, she would helpfully lick my arm clean. On one occasion, when she was resting on my chest, she even started cleaning my beard! Bemused and somewhat touched, I allowed her to get on with it - she did a very thorough job. (Yes, I did clean off my face later on.) Mystery had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of drool, presumably drawn from the same mysterious well which allowed her to purr so deeply. Mystery's Healing Drool, as it quickly became known, would flow freely in some of her ecstasies of happiness and often required the strategic application of a towel after she moved on.
Mystery wasn't very interested in laps. As a kitten she would sit in my lap but nobody else's. When she was a little older she abandoned laps, preferring to sit next to me on the arm of the lounge chair. She was also very interested in joining us on social occasions when we made use of the kitchen table, jumping up to sit in my place if I happened to abandon my chair. She would also do the same with Catherine's chair, but mine was the preferred option. She wouldn't use it as a launching pad to reach the food on the table - rather she would sit up straight and look around at all the people, enjoying the discourse of civilised society and accepting her due homage. If I was lucky, I would be allowed to share my chair with her when I came back. Within the last year she started sitting in my lap again on occasion, which I was only too happy to encourage, and she even began to sit in Catherine's lap on rare occasions.
On the night of Monday 21 December 2015, I finished washing the dishes and turned around to discover Mystery waiting patiently behind me, as was her wont. I picked her up and cuddled her, as was my wont. Sometimes I would go off and do other things while cuddling her, but on this occasion I decided to devote my full attention to her - cuddling, nuzzling, patting, hugging, going nose to nose, rubbing her head with my chin, the full kitten service. I stood in the kitchen for over an hour, doing nothing but pay attention to Mystery. I finally started to make the cup of tea I had been going to make originally, taking the next half hour to do so while I continued to give her as much attention as I could. We spent a bit of time roaming the house together, Mystery in my arms and sometimes on my shoulders, until Catherine came home. After at least a solid two hours of entirely Mystery-focused time, I continued to lavish affection on her during the evening. When I went to bed, Mystery came with me for the first time in a while - she'd spent most of the last 10 years sleeping next to me or on the end of the bed, but for the past few months she'd found other spots in the house to sleep. As we had both become accustomed to, she began by walking around on my chest for a while before I was able to convince her to settle down resting partially on my chest. When I was ready to roll over and get to sleep fully, she moved over and slept next to me, although she'd shifted to her current favourite spot in the house by the time I woke up.
On Tuesday night, while we had visitors, she cozened her way outside after the cat door was shut. She didn't turn up again that evening, but as she had spent the night outside on a couple of occasions before, I assumed she would be waiting outside for me as usual the next morning as I left for work. I checked her favourite spots in the bushes but didn't see her. It was the first day of Catherine's holidays, so I texted her and asked her to tell me when Mystery turned up.
She didn't.
I don't want to dwell on the intervening period, or the reasons that we expect we are unlikely to see her again at this point. Suffice it to say that there have been a lot of tears; that Catherine has provided immense support in the search and in making sure that I'm okay; and that Mayhem has been receiving lavish amounts of attention.
Instead I want to end on celebratory note. Mystery has brought me an incredible amount of joy during our time together. I could not have asked for a better, sweeter, more loving and affectionate cat. During our time together she threw herself into everything with enthusiasm, and I am incredibly honoured and fortunate to have been the centre of her world. Although I wanted to be with her right until the end, and will always regret not being able to honour that commitment, I am especially grateful for the concentrated time I spent with her on our second-last evening together. She will continue to walk beside me (and to be curled up inside my heart) for the remainder of my life.
This entry was originally posted at http://jesusandrew.dreamwidth.org/118026.html. Please comment there using OpenID.