JOURNAL
The Loved One
Bill Barksdale, Columnist
The other evening I looked over at the sweet, soft cat curled up between us, sleeping peacefully. I’ll call him Spot, not his real name. A beautiful boy with a safe place to relax as the cold rain poured down outside. I’m really more of a dog person but our last dog died a couple of years ago at an old age. I still miss her. One of the lessons of these little ones is their, usually, shorter lives. We learn about love, affection, loyalty – and death, grief and eventually some sort of healing with any luck.
Spot came into our lives as a kitten, a neighbor’s kitten. Cute, playful, wild. He had a good home. Slept on a child’s bed. I’m sure, teased and played with as kittens and people do. No doubt some sweet-talk and eventually falling asleep together. Cats are known for that, being cuddly and affectionate – also for scratching suddenly for no known reason. They are, after all, wild things by nature.
Domestic cats are raised to be dependent on their humans, for food and shelter – even kindness. Dogs too.
As Spot got older and lost his kitten-ness, his status in the household changed. Other things became of interest to the child and the adults. His food bowl was moved out onto the front porch. There are many cats in the neighborhood that have free-reign, too many – way too many. Studies have shown that the songbird population in human-occupied areas, humans with cats, has declined at an alarming rate.
Anyway, Spot was a gentle cat. As his importance to the neighboring household became less important, and his food got eaten by the more aggressive cats in the neighborhood, he found a high perch on a set of shelves on our covered patio. I put a soft blanket on the shelf for him which he seemed to like. Since he was getting skinny, I began to feed him and since he felt safe and comfortable on his shelf, he began to gain some weight and enjoyed this home-away-from-home.
When the weather got cold, I got him a heated cat bed, since he no longer went into his old house. He was still treated like the neighbor’s cat and he went to them for petting. They seemed to care about him. Always put that bowl of food on the porch. He was still a little skittish around us. We weren’t his humans after all. But eventually, he would let me pet him as I fed him and finally just let us pet him for mutual affection.
He and our own old cat got along OK and even played in our backyard, rolling around and doing those cat-things that amuse them. I couldn’t seem to entice him into the house even when the weather was cold and wet, although he showed interest, probably because our cat lived inside only venturing out to be in the sun or to poop or to see Spot. Our cat has his own pet door but Spot couldn’t seem to figure it out.
A couple of years ago the neighbors moved. They are good people and we had a friendly relationship with them. Their child now grown to a young adult in college. Spot was about 7 years old at the time. I had told them that we didn’t want another cat so when they moved they would have to take Spot with them or find him a home. Apparently, whatever efforts they put into finding him a home were unsuccessful and when they moved – they left him. Some people should not have pets. They don’t have the empathy it requires. We reluctantly said we would look after him for a brief time till they could come and get him, but now, 2 years later he was still here with us.
He learned how to use the pet door and took to sleeping on our sofa, curling up between us. Our other cat didn’t like that particularly but they came to some kind of a cat-agreement and got along with this arrangement. We would pet him and he would roll over playfully, liking his belly tickled, sometimes rolling around with such exuberance that he would fall off the sofa and have to jump back up.
Both boys liked their cat treats and when Spot would come inside in the evening, he would first sit at my feet looking at me with an intense stare letting me know he expected a treat, not just “cat food”. I always gave in. Each boy had their own place for their treats so there would be no argument over whose treat it was.
Spot was an early riser and when I would get up in the morning he would be outside on his heated bed, waiting to detect my morning movement and staring at the back door for his breakfast. I would feed him and pet him and tell him what a beautiful boy he is, for indeed he had grown into a beautiful adult cat, lithe and easy – he seemed to know this was his home now. I’m convinced after a lifetime of sharing my life with dogs and cats, that they truly appreciate the humans that share their lives and care for them. They are sentient beings that feel and give back.
Recently, Spot was attacked by an aggressive cat that badly damaged his ear so I took him to the vet. Since he was still a bit of a feral cat because of the life he’d had, he was traumatized about being put in a carrying case and taken to the vet, like many animals. It seemed more extreme with him, so I asked them to give him all the vaccines he needed and a good checkup. It was discovered he had Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), the cat version of HIV/AIDS. Incurable, ultimately fatal, transmissible to other cats – which is how he obviously got it.
We were told he had to be kept inside for the rest of his life, a way he had never lived in his 9 years. There was our other cat to think of, still healthy. Spot was showing signs of declining health. As a former caretaker for AIDS patients in the early 80’s, I knew that a death like that was horrible. Something I didn’t want my, by now, beloved Spot to have to go through. After a long consultation with our vet and hours of agonized conversation, we decided to euthanize Spot. It seemed the kindest thing to do for him rather than a few years of ever more opportunistic infections and vet visits and suffering.
As I write this, days after his death, I’m still in deep grief. Every time I think I’m past it, I look out and see his empty shelf, tears well up in my eyes. My chest constricts. Perhaps I have PTSD as my vet suggested from all the death I saw in the 80’s as I helped dozens of young men die, horribly from HIV/AIDS. Some begged me to help them end their lives, which of course I couldn’t do – but wanted to. Spot wouldn’t have to suffer that kind of death. His death was quite, gentle, literally an injection to help him go into a deep sleep – then a heart-stopping injection that ended his life in seconds as he rested peacefully.
Now, my anger. “Pets”, dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, birds, fish, mice etc. – are NOT TOYS to be discarded, neglected, chained up or locked in a small pen as people sometimes do with dogs! They are living, feeling beings. They literally put their lives in your hands. When you adopt an animal, you are making a commitment for the lifetime of that animal. The exception, your own severe ill-health or death that prevents you from fulfilling that commitment. If you don’t agree with me, that says a lot about you in my opinion. Not anything good. Animal cruelty is a crime. People who are cruel to animals have a mental illness, often dismissed, which also manifests as cruelty to spouses, children or people that are just different.
The last couple years of Spot’s life were relatively good. We did our best to make it that way. He was still easily frightened. Still afraid anytime I went near a broom, perhaps he was beaten with one. Yet he had his last years of evenings curled up safely on our sofa, loved and cared for. He deserved a better life than he got.
