Losing-the-Old-Kitty Blues
My wonderful kitty, Leona, who has been my constant companion for the last 17 years (she's 20 yrs old) will be put to sleep tomorrow. We've had a rich, loving time together. She and I have been together longer than we've lived in Madison and longer than Tom and I have been together. She's such a fixture in my life that I'm not sure I'll know who I am without her. The vet is coming here tomorrow afternoon. A good friend who is a vet tech is also coming, and Tom will be here as well. I have lots of loving support that I'm more grateful for than I can say.
Leona has always been a tiny little cat--mostly fur by volume and weight, I think--but she has the soul of a saber-tooth tiger (probably was one in a past life). She is fierce, stubborn, and loyal. She has never liked being held, but she is probably the friendliest cat I have ever known. In the three years of her life before she came to live with me, she lived with two families. In both cases, her human friends were disappointed that she didn't like to be held. So they each got another cat. Leona, the imperious queen of all, would invariably beat up on the new arrival, until finally she was banished. I promised her that she would always be the feline queen in our household, and indeed she has been.
When she first came to live with me, we ate all our meals together. I would pull a chair out from the table and she would hop up on the chair to join me. I would cut up whatever meat I was having (these were pre-vegetarian days) in small bits for her. At breakfast I would put a dollop of yogurt on my pinky for her to lick off. And whenever I opened a can of tuna, she got the tuna juice, which she loved. We had a very companionable life together. Alas, when she got a little older, her little stomach could no longer tolerate human food. It invariably made her throw up. We have both missed having our meals together.
When she came to live with me, I finally realized that all those years I thought I needed a man, I was wrong. What I really needed was a cat, on whom to lavish all the love and affection I could muster. She has always been very happy to oblige me in that respect. She moved with me from Urbana to Madison and from our first apartment in Madison to our house. I'm happy to say that she always seemed to approve of whatever new digs she found herself in. That's saying a lot for a very territorial kitty.
She used to be very athletic. She would jump 5 or so feet in the air after the birdie toy, and race all over the house after the evil red dot (laser pointer). She used to look so proud whenever she jumped from the bed to her perch by the windowsill. One time when she was out on the balcony of our apartment, she actually managed to kill a bird. That was probably the proudest moment of her life. I think she thought I was hysterical with joy. I never did set her straight on that one.
She lost her hind right leg to cancer several years ago. The same week my father died, I picked her up to find a golf-ball-sized lump on her leg that hadn't been there only days before. Before her surgery she weighed 10 pounds; afterward she weighed 8.5 pounds. She adjusted to her tripod life like the fierce tigress she is. She almost died 3 years ago from kidney disease. She spent a week in the emergency vet hospital, in an incubator to help her regulate her body temperature. She wasn't ready to go though. Just when the vet and I thought we would have to let her go, she got all perky on us. Now she has debilitating arthritis, which combined with her three-leggedness makes moving very difficult. She weighs less than 5 pounds.
I'm so lucky to have had such an awesome little feline friend. *sniff*