One year ago tonight was a terrible one. On this particular night, our cat Mojo lay dying in our bed. She had not eaten in many days, she was frail and gaunt, and could barely breathe. She had taken her final steps two days before...since then she had been too weak to move. I lay with my hands on her all night, feeling her muscles tense up every once in a while, and giving her a reassuring squeeze to let her know I was still there. Tonight, one year later, I still miss her, and feel the need to eulogize her...even in the face of potential ridicule that some would point my way for feeling so strongly about a pet, much less a cat. Some will empathize, some will think I'm an over-sensitive wussbag...c'est la vie.
It was the winter of 1999...Valentine's Day weekend to be precise...and Michelle and I had been married for about 8 months. We were living in our townhouse in Tinley Park with our cat Twiggy, a former stray that I had found in West Lafayette, IN and Michelle had subsequently adopted as her own. Most cats seem to pick one human as THEIR PERSON, and Twig had Michelle...she merely tolerated me. Twiggy also seemed to have trouble finding her litter box at times, and Michelle read somewhere that she might be getting lonely when we go to work, resulting in her misbehavior. It was this thinking that got Michelle motivated towards the idea of getting another cat to keep Twiggy company.
Now, as I said, it was Valentine's Day...our first as a married couple...so I had planned a weekend getaway to a local resort for some fine dining and swimming and other resort-like activities. Michelle had other plans....she had found kittens. Apparently, she was more than just a little fixated on the idea of getting another cat, it was going to happen, weekend getaway notwithstanding. So, it was with some reluctance that I had to cancel my romantic plans, and found myself a passenger in my wife's car heading over to a local Animal Shelter. I wasn't totally bummed, because I could not deny that having a new kitten in the house might be fun. Michelle informs me on the way over to see the kittens that she even has a name already picked out: Mojo. I was more in favor of deciding on a name AFTER we had seen/met the kitten, but Mojo DID seem like a good name...
Well, there were three kittens at the shelter, and after undergoing an interview process and background check, we were allowed to meet one of them. They were all from the same litter, and since there were two boys and a girl and we only wanted one, we were put into a room and the little girl was brought in to see us. Unlike her brothers, who were white and black, she was a true calico..mostly white, with orange and grey markings. She had a little orange patch around her nose, short, stubby legs, and a ringed grey tail that was longer than the rest of her body. She came right to me, and that was it...I was going to be her person.
I had never had a pet before. We had a cat, Macaroni, when I was growing up, but she was pretty much oblivious to any person in the world with the exception of my mom. She remained that way for 20 years, too...never gave anyone else in the family a bit of care, but she loved my mom. Past that, I had a fish for awhile, Otto, but he was never much for expressiveness, either...not that I expected much from a fish (I'm crazy, but not THAT crazy). Well, when the volunteer at the Shelter brought Mojo out to me after they had given her a bath and a blow dry, I took her in my hand and tucked her into the folds of my hoodie, and I knew this was my pet. She fell asleep in my arms instantly.
When we got home, we attempted to introduce Mojo to Twiggy. Even after following the carefully researched ideas on how to get an older cat to accept a newer kitten (rubbing the scent of the old cat on the new cat...really?)...it was apparent that things were NOT going to go smoothly. I have never since seen a mixture of fear and hatred on the face of an animal as I saw on Twiggy that day! She was mortified. Mojo took no notice at all. As soon as we let her out of her cat-carrier, she took over the house. She was so small, she actually ran UNDER a stunned Twiggy, which did not help things. In order to ease the transition, we confined Mojo to the spare bedroom initially, and I went in there to keep her company. She climbed all over me as I read books, and played fetch with me. Then, she would inevitably curl into a little ball and fall asleep next to me. Gradually, we let her have the run of the house, and she immediately began to terrorize Twiggy...something that continued for the remainder of the Twig's life. Our initial idea of getting Twiggy a "friend" rapidly became nothing more than a running joke...they clearly had no love for each other...ever. Poor Twiggy.
Mojo rapidly became like my shadow. As hard as Michelle tried to get her to like her, she would run to me every time I came into the room. She would stare at me from across the room when I was reading or watching TV. She would follow me up and down stairs. She would play fetch with me, and play soccer with me. She grew up, but she didn't get much bigger. She still had stumpy legs, made even more conspicuous by her incongruously large tail. She LOVED to play, and was a serious attention-hog. She would get jealous of Michelle, and liked to sleep between us in bed at night. She was also a little brat. If we were gone for a weekend, it would be a solid day after we returned before she would deign to grace me with her presence and accept my apologies for leaving.
Then, when she was three years old, she got sick. It started with repeated vomiting, then loss of appetite, and after a few days, I took her to see a vet. An x-ray showed that she had eaten a piece of ribbon, and it was lodged in her intestine. I was given some laxative to feed her, which she lapped right up, and she returned to normal shortly afterwards. I brought her back to the vet for a follow-up visit, and while showing me the x-rays, the doctor pointed out that she had some abnormalities in her kidneys. One kidney was shriveled and useless, and the other was extra large, indicating that at some point in her young life, she had probably contracted a uterine infection, which had done the damage. The prognosis was not good. The doctor gave her 3 years to live.
We went to another vet closer to home for a second opinion, and he agreed with the initial diagnosis. He also offered a way to extend Mojo's life: a diet of renal-friendly soft food, and treatments involving sub-cutaneous fluids. No sweat on the former...just needed to purchase the food. The latter, however, was more than a little intimidating. Basically, it involved what looked like an IV setup, bag, hose and NEEDLE...only instead of hitting a vein with the needle, all you had to do was get it under the skin. Riiiiiiiiiight. Sticking a cat with a needle. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
When it came time for the first "treatment," Michelle said she wanted to help. So, she grabbed Mojo, and the three of us crammed into a small bathroom where I had the bag hanging. It took me a couple tries to get the needle in, and Michelle freaked out right away...even worse than the cat. She left, and it was up to me. I struggled, but for some reason, Mojo let me do it, rather than leaving me a bloody carved-up mess as I had thought.
For the next NINE years, I gave Mojo treatments. First once per week, then twice, then every other day, and finally, near the end, EVERY day. I can't say it was always easy. There were times when I left bloody. There were times when she decided she would NOT be having it and muscled away from me. There were times when I had to stab her more than once with the needle. There were times when the needle went all the way through the fold of skin I had grabbed. She hissed at me, growled at me, and yowled like a wild beast...but she NEVER, EVER, EVER bit me. And most of the time, she just calmed down and let me be her doctor. At times, I even sang her the song "Doctor Worm" by They Might Be Giants to calm her down. This really must have tested her patience, because I suck at singing.
Last year around Thanksgiving, Mojo started to slow down. She didn't play as much, and was hardly eating anything. I knew it was the beginning of the end. All those years of sitting and letting fluids drip had given me a lot of time to think about just how the end would come, and none of those thoughts were terribly appealing. We had stopped taking her to the vet for two reasons: One, we pretty much knew her condition was irreversible and deteriorating and that we were doing all we could for her, and Two, she absolutely HATED the vet. He had a very distinct deep voice, and even the sound of him talking in the other room started her growling. She became a DEMON when he came into the room, and actually bit one of the nurses one visit. We made an early choice to make things as easy as possible for her, and since the vet was uber-stressful, we just kept her home. Soon, it became obvious that the reason she would not eat was because her teeth hurt...the result of years of eating the soft food she needed for her kidneys. Ironic, but not unforeseen. The food that helped her stay alive, also contributed to her demise. Alone, I shed my first tears as the prospect of losing my friend became real.
Her condition improved slightly when we changed up her food...we figured taking away the healthy stuff at this point would not make much difference. When she stopped eating that, it was on to deli meat....ham and turkey had always been favorite treats, and whenever I made my lunch, she was right there to get her bite. That lasted a couple days, and then she just stopped eating altogether. We did what we could...hand feeding her, attempting to force-feed her (if you can avoid doing this in your life, I recommend it...who would have thought a dying cat could be so strong?). She spent her days on a couch in our living room, often not moving an inch from when we left her in the morning. Eventually, jumping onto the couch became an impossibility, and she found repose in one of her seasonally traditional favorite spots...under the Christmas tree.
I stopped giving her treatment when she stopped eating, the idea was to make things as comfortable as possible for her, and we were beyond the point of it helping, anyway. In the final week, she could no longer make it up the stairs to our bedroom, and when we went to bed, she would cry. I set up camp with a pillow and a blanket, and slept on the living room floor with her cuddled in my chest. Her final steps were taken as I lay down in front of the tree one evening...she came right to me, rammed her head into my chest, and lay down.
That next day, Michelle stayed home from school to be with her, keeping her company and grading papers all day. At night, we watched a movie with Mojo on a pillow between us...at one point, she was sleeping so soundly we thought she was gone. We brought her to bed with us on the same pillow, and I kept vigil over her all night...I don't think I slept at all.
We had decided that the next day would be the end, and I stayed home from work to be with her. I held her in my lap and thought about all the times I had I had envisioned the end. I remembered all the times we had played outside in the yard (her all-time favorite thing), I remembered her kills (she was a great hunter, claiming a pigeon, a sparrow, several cicadas, and earthworm, thousands of houseflies and two chipmunks among her victims, even though her outdoor activity was mostly "supervised" and she was mostly white...not too stealthy). I remembered how proud I was to have been able to treat her and keep her alive, and how happy I was that she seemed to know it. I remembered how I was never out of her sight, and how much she loved cuddling with me. I remembered how she had fallen asleep in my arms on that first day. I remembered how great it felt that Mojo had adopted me as her person.
She passed away in my arms. I am not sure what was worse, listening to her last heartbeat and her last breath, or telling Michelle that she was gone when she came home from school 20 minutes later. I do know that I will always remember my first pet, and I will always love her. I do know that tomorrow we will be celebrating the first birthday of our new kittens Sonny and Rico, and giving them an extra treat and cuddle in honor of their predecessor. I miss my Mojo.
