Mommy cat is 22 years old as far as our family can estimate. 21 or so years ago my sister read an ad in the paper placed by St. Francis (I think…it was a St. operation, I know that much). The ad was asking for foster parents for a mother cat and her 3 kittens in exchange for one of the kittens when they were old enough to be weaned from their mother.
Erin decided then and there that we WOULD be the foster family, and that she WOULD get her kitten. I’ll never know how that happened, but it did, and not long after that, a beautiful young tortoise shell mother cat and her three eyes still closed tabby boy kittens entered our lives…and of course our hearts.
The story was this mother cat had run out of the rain into someone’s closet and had her babies right there. Weird. But I think that mommy cat must have known that her babies had a better chance of survival in a human house (as opposed to UNDER a human house as our last cat Tammy had decided to give birth – whole different fiasco). In any case, this mother cat was so beautiful and so friendly, while Erin and Timmy had babies themselves playing with three fluffy kittens, my mom and I fell in love. The shelter had named her Callie (because she was a calico) which I immediately thought was LAME because she was a tortie and such an awesome cat she deserved more than a name that didn’t take her personality into account. So I un-named her. She became the mommy cat temporarily…and when the kittens were old enough to go back to the shelter, Erin selected the roliest poliest of the three (the one we called Pudge), I asked my Mom if we could also keep the mommy cat and amazingly (to me) she said yes. In case you haven’t figured this one out, we never re-named her.
Mommy Cat. The Big MC. Mama. Mommy. Never had Renata Court seen such a wonderful creature (and that’s saying a lot since our next door neighbors had taken in ALL the strays of the neighborhood and had them fixed. Additionally they had dogs, and a local turkey vulture who came to the name “KittyKitty”). Having a pet named Mommy was also pretty amusing when you were on the phone with someone who didn’t know the owner of the name Mommy but could hear you reprimand Mommy for sitting on the furniture or going somewhere she shouldn’t.
friend on phone: Do you want to go to a movie?
me: Totally! What’s playing?
friend: Cry Baby with Johnny Depp
me: Totally! Hold on a sec…Mommy! Get off that! No! I mean it! Sorry. Yeah what are the movie times?
We assume Mommy Cat was about a year when she came to us. We think she may have been younger, which is why we’re a little sketchy on her age. But 21, 22, 23…they’re all pretty awesome numbers representing exactly how long this wonderful cat has been in our lives.
As we recall, I must have been in about 8th grade when we got Mommy and Pudge. The rule in the house was “Pets outside” because Mom got flea bites on her ankles. My theory was that they were psychological flea bites because I only heard of them after Mom had actually seen a cat inside every few weeks when one of them (usually Pudge) made a mad dash past the front door. In actuality, both Mommy Cat and Pudge lived in my bedroom (via my window) every night when I went to sleep. I’m telling you: Psychological Flea Bites.
When I went to college, despite the no pets rule in the dorms, I begged mom to let me bring Mommy to school with me. No go. Mom was rather attached to the pair and was not going to break them up (let alone allow me to force a cat to live in a dorm room), which was smart. When I moved into a house off campus in Live Oak I called home once more to request Mommy Cat, but Mom was not willing to part with her, and besides, it would be mean to split Mommy and Pudge up. That was 1995.
While I was away at school, and after that when I was not living at home at all, Mommy became the belle of the town, and the gracious Queen. She had routines that she kept religiously, such as meeting Louis or next door neighbor every day when he got off the bus and walking home with him. Legend has it, one day Mommy and Pudge delivered a little more than the usual rodent or bird to the neighbors, in the form of a huge fresh off the grill steak…cooked only on one side.
Mommy and Pudge were World Class Mousers, and even though they were not allowed indoors (those flea bites you know), they were always there when mom stepped outside for a smoke. As a matter of fact, since Mom was perched on the steps from the house to the garage so frequently throughout the day (back in the day when Mom smoked outside), that became the place of gifts…none of which Mom was EVER excited to receive or encounter.
My friend Paige and I were eating Thai in Mill Valley when I got the phone call that Pudge had died. Mom thinks he drank radiator fluid or something. It was sudden. He was such a love bug. Mom was devastated. Pudge got a nice burial next to Mary (the goat) and Louis and Caroline (the next door neighbors) planted a lovely rose bush on top of his grave, just as they had when Mary passed. I’m thinking it was about 2000 because Joey and Paige were recently engaged, but I could be off and I don’t feel like looking it up, so I’m just going to pretend. It was somewhere around there in any case.
Mommy Cat moved indoors. Mom either got over the ankle biting fleas in her mind or developed a tolerance (in her defense, she is horribly allergic to flea bites and she WOULD get horrible scars…I just thought the initial bump was in her mind), and when I came over to visit, Mommy Cat was always there, always affectionate, and always very obviously interested in getting a good rub, which I was more than happy to give.
Mommy was getting old. She was rickety and slow and shaky. She had little cataracts on both her eyes, but man she wouldn’t miss a petting for the world! Timmy moved back home and got a pit bull named Lucky. Sweetest dog on Earth, and when Timmy moved to Florida, Lucky became Mom’s, and the two are inseparable. Unfortunately, Lucky liked Mommy Cat to stay in one place, so Mommy decided that one place would be the back of the chair my mom sat on when she smoked…thus ensuring multiple petting sessions throughout the day.
The day I got the phone call from Mom asking if I wanted Mommy Cat was a wonderful day and a very scary day. Courtland and I had just signed a lease on a new house in San Anselmo (on which we stated we had only one cat – Rira). That wasn’t the problem though. I was afraid Courtland would say no. He always surprises me. He did not hesitate. He asked if Rira would be okay and I said we would introduce them the right way (different rooms over a very long period of time according to my research).
When Mommy arrived, however, it quickly became apparent that she would not be with us long. We had stairs. Those were difficult for her. She couldn’t jump up on furniture. Mom had left me with some kitty prescription steroids that I was to administer every time she started wheezing and throwing up. Court and I concluded we had gotten her simply to make the last days of her life more comfortable. I took both cats in to my vet for their shots, and 2 days later I brought Mommy home minus 11 teeth (only 2 remaining) and an equal number of hundreds of dollars less in my bank account. A day after that, Mommy started running around and jumping up on furniture. She’d been nursing a hideous infection in her jaws with rotten teeth that I guess my mom’s vet had decided (and he was right) she couldn’t afford to have extracted.
Flash forward three years. We live in Belmont. Mommy still hunts every night. in the morning we get to see what she has “caught” and lined up by our bedroom door. Keys, ipods, cel phones, scissors (she loves scissors), pens… Over the years her kidneys have started to go. I know this because when she goes to the bathroom she GOES and the clumping litter does not lie. She drinks like a fish and pees like a racehorse. I have not brought her to the vet because I do not want to put her on kitty dialysis and make her last days or months needly and uncomfortable for both her and us. But Mommy has been losing weight, and just recently, has not been hunting as much (granted I have been sleeping all over the house post-surgery so it gets a little confusing where to bring things). I am concerned, but I still didn’t want to take her to the vet because she is eating lots, drinking lots, purring lots, demanding lots of petting…and we know she’s old and we just try to enjoy every moment we have with her.
About an hour ago I woke up because Mommy was meowing. She doesn’t do that. She makes funny noises when she has things in her mouth, but she doesn’t meow, per se. It scared me. I got up, went into the bathroom (she always follows) and turned on the light. I sat down and pet her…and the non-pigmented mole she has had above her eye for a very long time that has always concerned me, but that didn’t seem to be changing at all caught my eye because it looked angry. It’s bigger and red, and when I brought her face up to mine, well, it’s not a mole…I would guess it’s a tumor.
I know I didn’t want to be one of those pet owners who did anything they could to extend the life of their pet and spent the last part of their pet’s life in treatment and emotional pain…and I still hold firm that if/when Mommy’s health starts to deteriorate and she does not seem happy, I will not do everything in my power to keep her around for my own needs. But I have to take Mommy to the vet tomorrow. I just have to. And I do not want to know what they have to say. And I have guilt that I have not taken her sooner. And I have remorse that I have done wrong by her. And I know I feel badly because I also feel defensive, like I knew what I was doing and that’s what I did and she’s happy so I’m not ashamed…but I know I could have done better. There’s always something you could have done better. And it doesn’t matter how much you treasure the time you have, it’s never the right time to say goodbye.
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