Losing a Friend

My cat died this morning.

That may not sound like a big deal to some of you, and I can understand that, but it is to me.

Several years ago, I bought a house. The house that I bought had been used as rental property for a number of years before I moved in. Not too long after moving in, I noticed scurrying sounds in the attic at night. At first, I thought that a bird had gotten into the attic somehow, and I went up and searched for it, even though I wasn’t entirely sure how I would get it out if I found it. I never found any bird, though. Over time, the scurrying noises got louder, and more frequent. One day, I turned on the microwave, only to have several mice come scurrying out of it. Then I began to understand the scurrying sounds I had been hearing at night. I went out and bought several traps. Of course, I did the research. I found out that mice aren’t really big fans of cheese, they’d really rather eat peanut butter. So, I loaded up the traps with peanut butter, and set them out. The traps worked very well, at first. I was emptying traps on a daily basis. After a while, though, the traps seemed to become less effective. For a while I only had to empty traps three times a week, and then it got to the point that I wasn’t emptying traps at all. Unfortunately, I was still hearing the noises, so I knew that we still had mice. Cash was not in abundance at the time, so I didn’t want to call an exterminator, so I prayed about it.

One night, I and my two sons came home from an evening out, and I paid no attention to the stray cat camped out on our porch. I went into the kitchen to get a glass of milk before going to bed, and my younger son came in, grabbed a hotdog out of the fridge, and started feeding it to this cat.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at him. I know better than to feed a stray animal; once you feed them, they are very difficult to get rid of, but my son was young enough to not understand that.

My son looked at me as though my understanding was deficient, and said, simply, “He’s hungry.”

About this time, it occurred to me that this cat might be an answer to prayer, but I had to object to the hotdog.

“Well, you don’t give a cat a hotdog.”

“Well, we don’t have any cat food.”

“No, but we do have tuna.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

I let the cat finish the hotdog, but he still looked hungry. It occurred to me that a hungry cat might make for a better mouser, but I opened a can of tuna anyway.

After eating the hotdog, he polished off the entire can of tuna. My son was right; this cat was hungry.

Within three weeks, we no longer had mice.

We had some discussion about what to call this cat. I started calling him Lucky, because he was predominantly black. My son wanted to call him Butler, because he was a tuxedo cat (if you aren’t familiar with the term, Sylvester on Loony Tunes is a tuxedo cat. Basically, a black cat with a white bib, giving the appearance that he’s wearing a tuxedo). My older son didn’t really care what we called the cat, but eventually he decided that the cat was lucky that we let him stay with us, so Lucky became his name. Two or three times, during the first few weeks with Lucky he brought me the back end of a mouse. I always thought that a cat was supposed to bring the whole mouse to acknowledge the leader of the pack, as it were. I don’t know. It seemed to me that he was bringing me the part of the mouse that he didn’t want anyway. I don’t think that would have gotten him very far in a pack of cats. Somebody told me later that if a cat brings you a gift like that, you should pretend to eat it, and never, ever let the cat see you throw away that gift; it makes the cat feel unappreciated. I made a point of thanking Lucky before throwing the mouse remains in the trash, but I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to let him see me dispose of his treasure. Perhaps that’s why he stopped doing it.

My sons have grown up, moved out, gotten married; I have two grandkids now.

Lucky has always been a very docile cat; well, almost always. There was a dog that lived two doors down for a while that used to harass Lucky on a regular basis. That’s what dogs do. If this dog did it when I was around, I would chase her out of my yard. One day I was coming home from work, and, I don’t know what happened, but I’m driving up the street, and I see my cat chasing this dog down the street.

Even more recently, the neighbor’s preschooler was in the yard, and Lucky came up for dinner. This preschooler grabbed Lucky’s tail before I could stop him. I thought this kid was going to get hurt. Lucky didn’t even yelp. He just looked at me as if to say, “Please rescue me.” I tried to explain to this preschooler that it isn’t a good idea to pull an animal’s tail. I don’t think I got through to him, though. I took Lucky in the house, and Lucky avoided that particular kid for a long time thereafter.

Lately, Lucky has been slowing down. I chalked it up to age. I don’t know for sure how old he was, but he was not a kitten when we got him, and that was over twelve years ago. I think he’s around eighteen, which is 126 in cat years. Over the weekend, I found him napping on the bath mat, which is fine; I understand that it’s warmer than the cold tile floor. While I was watching him, though, he stood up, wet the mat, and then lay back down in it. That’s when I knew that he needed to go to the vet.

I took him to the vet yesterday. The vet quickly ruled out diabetes and hyperthyroidism, and started worrying about kidney failure. I thought he wouldn’t have been able to wet the mat if his kidneys weren’t working, but I guess there are varying degrees of kidney failure. In any case, he was dehydrated and anemic. She put him on an IV to try to deal with the dehydration, unfortunately, that exacerbated the anemia, which we weren’t aware of until lab results came back anyway. It’s the iron in the red blood cells that carries oxygen to the cells; anemia makes the heart and lungs work harder to deliver the oxygen to the cells. With the dehydration, though, the effect of the anemia wasn’t as severe, because a larger percentage of the blood is red blood cells (only because a smaller percentage of the blood is water than should be). Rehydrating poor Lucky, though, dissipated the red blood cells, forcing his heart to work harder. This morning his tired body just gave out.

In any case, this was a cat that was an answer to prayer, and that taught me a little something about making sure that one’s offering is something valuable to the one making the offering. Sometimes it’s more important that the offering be valuable to the giver than to be valuable to the recipient.