Goodbye, Mr. Frodo
My sweet old man-cat, Frodo, has cancer.
What a fucking stupid thing for a cat to have.
He's had his share of health troubles, over the years. He nearly died of a kidney infection some ten-ish years ago. He wouldn't eat or drink anything, no matter how much we tried, until one day we decided to try the juice from canned corn. Frodo has always been a corn fiend, even going so far as to swipe entire ears of corn out of a pot of hot water on the stove. He would then trot proudly through the house with his prize dangling out of the corner of his mouth like an oversized novelty cigar until he found a place to consume it in peace. Corn, ultimately, is what nursed him back to health from the kidney infection.
He's had issues with being allergic to certain foods, causing vomiting (oh, the epic vomiting!) and making him scratch holes in his face. We never seemed to be able to keep track of what was causing it until the holes came back again and, eventually, the light bulb would slowly warm up again and we'd figure it out.
The puking eventually became a steady flow where hardly a day would go by where there wasn't more. Eventually we noticed the lump in his neck. Dawny being unemployed at the time, our only option was to hope it was something benign and that it would clear itself up, and it seemed to do that, at one point. It came back and in time it was clear that he was sick, visibly losing weight and virtually unable to keep food down. By the time the vet saw him, the lump in his neck had grown and she found another in his belly. There just wasn't anything to do.
We got him some steroid medication that actually seemed to be helping. For about a week.
Now he's frail, older than ever, and having a harder and harder time moving around. They say that sometimes the medication itself can cause its own trouble.
His good days are fewer and less good and he has a hard time getting off his warm perches (and walking) on his bad days. I can't remember the last time he's made it upstairs by himself.
The vet is going to come back on Thursday and we'll say goodbye to our old friend.
I honestly don't know what Samwise will do without his Mr. Frodo to dote on.
In 1996 we moved out of our first apartment in River Falls, WI and into an apartment with ConanDammit and FabioConan to get a foothold back in the cities. The men of the house voted against it but, as usual, were summarily ignored and the womenfolk ventured out to the Humane Society and returned with one of the smallest cats I'd ever seen. The runt of his pack, he seemed like he'd only had his eyes open for a week or two. He was scrawny but bright and full of energy. I hated him and he fell in love with me for it.
We taught him tricks. He would fetch like a dog and would come when called. I used to pick him up with my teeth by the scruff of his neck and carry him around and he would purr like he was in little kitty heaven. He was less enthusiastic about me putting his entire head in my mouth, but he grew out of that pretty quickly. We used to play rough, back in the day. I would throw him around and he would come right back and bat at me and wrestle, but always with his claws in. He was always very careful not to hurt me. One day we were playing particularly rough. I had him down on his back and was rubbing him into the carpet when he finally drew his claws. And blood.
He turned my arm into ribbons and ran away with an insane look in his eye. He would lose control of himself, sometimes, but there was always a part of him that could see what was going on. The look in his eye made it clear that he didn't want to be doing what he was doing, but he didn't know how to stop it. This was one of those times.
As my cousin used to say, "When you play rough, you get hurt rough." I pulled my hand away, but never lashed out physically or verbally at Frodo. He ran, but he came slinking back later to lick the bandaged wounds and anything else I would offer. He was so clearly, so almost humanly sorry it was almost upsetting. I'll never forget the change. He never played rough with me again, no matter how much I tried. I miss that.
He drew blood from a number of our friends, though, and he earned quite a reputation as a terror. There were humans he would accept and there were humans who he hated. In his later years he would slip out of the house on every occasion he could to go and fight the neighborhood dogs. He usually won, too. Because cats are fucking ruthless. Eventually, when his dog-fighting years were on the decline, we started letting him out to have the run of the neighborhood. He was much happier when he could roam. Being inside all the time was starting to drive him mad.
A year after we got him, we moved into our own house and Frodo came with us. We were worried about the transition, but you could see him wander the house, evaluating the entirety of it, and judging it good. He settled in immediately. The house was too big for just one cat, though, so we adopted a second and called him Samwise.
Samwise was every bit the dutiful and dedicated companion that his namesake was to Frodo Baggins of The Shire. The two have been inseparable and, like their hobbit counterparts, maybe just a little bit gay for each other. Samwise, especially in his younger days, could often be found suckling on Frodo's chest. That... was a little weird. (And yes there was a Pippin. She was a farm cat who never got comfortable living in the house. We had her fixed and she still lives happily on my Aunt's farm. After Pippin there was a Merriadoc, but we eventually had to give her back to the Humane Society because we couldn't (wouldn't) keep up with her overactive anal gland. It's exactly as gross as it sounds. There was even an ugly neighborhood cat who hung around that we called Gollum. We're nerds.)
For a long time, I think Frodo honestly thought he was going to grow up into a human. There was something about his mannerisms and his expressiveness that clearly conveyed that he knew this four-legged, fur-covered shell was only a temporary one. One day, I shit you not, he tried speaking to me. He walked up onto my lap, put his front paws on my chest to get my attention. He looked me right in the eyes and opened his mouth. A strange, breathy cat-whisper came out of his mouth. He blinked hard, and then opened his mouth and tried again, keeping an intense sort of eye contact with me the whole time.
It was one of the singularly most creepy things I've ever seen. I would have snapped his neck then and there if a discernable word came out.
Because that's just too fucking much.
I haven't always been good to him, especially after Hunter's birth. I separated my feelings for the cats when my son was born because I was worried about what they might do to a defenseless newborn. Sam would ignore or flee the baby, but Frodo might very well have lashed out from jealousy. (Merriadoc was just so goddamn stupid and fat that she might have crushed a baby without even knowing it.) It was important to me to know that if any of the animals did anything to harm my son that I wouldn't have any mixed-feelings delaying any reaction I deemed necessary. In retrospect, it was a... counter-productive attitude, but it seemed important, at the time, to accept that I would do anything to protect and defend my son.
I missed a lot of good years because of that.
I've been unkind and at times I've lost all sense of scale and proportion, especially surrounding the endless (and sometimes epic) regurgitation. More than any overt cruelty, I've been cold and neglectful, at times. Pushing him away when the only thing he wants in the world is for me to hold him. To just lay a hand on him. To acknowledge him.
To be fair, this sort of "battered cat syndrome" was the basis of our relationship in the beginning and I still say it's part of the cat psyche that attracts them to this sort of behavior. All the same, I feel poorly for it, especially now. Now is the time where I try and give him whatever he needs because it's been clear for a while now where his path was leading.
Now that it's too late, I do what I can to make up for lost time. I try and be with him whenever he needs. (There are still limits, but I try.) I make efforts to make sure Hunter is sweet to him. I'll hold him close or just sit and stroke the furry bones that lay beside me. I can't make up for the years where I closed him off from me, but I can be there for him now, in the end to provide what comfort I can.
When he was small, one of our favorite games to play with him was "Wampa Cave." I have no idea how this started, but it was discovered that if you picked him up by his hind legs, he would stretch his forelegs down towards the floor (like he was extending The Force in an effort to retrieve his fallen lightsaber) and then arch his body back up, bringing his forelegs close to, but not quite touching, the hands that were holding his legs (as though he were using his lightsaber to cut his legs free of the ice encasing them). Only when he did that would we release him.
It was a ridiculous game, but a popular one. "Here comes the Wampa! Grab your lightsaber!"
His paws used to smell like butter cookies.
Which is a little weird when you consider that he walks around in a box of his own shit. (His shit never smelled like cookies...)
We never de-clawed any of our cats. Common practice or not, it seems far too cruel. It's meant we've had to be conscious of our furniture choices and yeah, some things/people get scratched, but if you beat a cat enough they'll stop clawing as much. That being said, we used to joke about de-clawing just one of his fingers and claiming that Gollum bit it off during a struggle on Mt. Doom.
When Frodo's health really started to fail and we finally got a Vet to come and see him, we told Hunter what might happen. At that time, Frodo made what seemed like a miraculous recovery. We knew it would be temporary, of course, but we hoped we might squeeze another good year or two out of him with better food and medicine.
After about a week or so things turned back again, and he seems to be declining faster than ever. We sat Hunter down to have a family discussion about it and to try and let him decide if he wanted to be there to say goodbye. In response he jumped up from the couch and ran to his room.
"Well, that went well..."
We all followed him up and talked it over, explaining the process. We did some crying and it really, finally started to become real. For me as well.
There's little question that it's the right thing, now. Moving is becoming increasingly challenging and he's more and more prone to staying in one place for most of the day, now. His favorite perches are elevated, of course, and it's getting to the point where he can hardly make it onto the couch anymore. Jumping down from his favorite places is more of a marginally controlled fall than anything traditionally cat-like. There are times where he won't purr for me anymore. Not many of these, because, well, he's got issues. He's lost so much weight it's getting to the point where touching him is a lesson in anatomy. Every bone protruding at what seem like strange angles, without any meat to cushion them. Like a fur bag of twigs.
As he lay in his warm spot on the kitchen counter, over the radiator, I told him it would only be a few more days. I held him and cried and he purred louder and harder than I've heard in a long time. If nothing else, I'm grateful that we have a chance to say goodbye. I know this is the right thing, he can't clean himself properly anymore. I know we're doing what's best for him. But it still hurts.
And yes, I feel ridiculous banging on like this about a cat, but there it is. He was something special. I never realized how much I'm going to miss him.
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