it’s K-Rad y0!   Starting from scratch

It seems like yesterday, when I brought Andrea home from work and surprized her with… an empty litter box. Yeah, the idea was to bring home a Kitty for her, as a 1 year anniversary gift, and to have someone to be part of our new family. There were no cats up for adoption in Richmond at the time, so I had no choice but to give half the surprise at home, after which we headed out to Coquitlam and adopted Kitty.

When we were deciding which kitten to adopt, most of them didn’t pay much mind to us. They were all either sleeping, or terrorizing each other. However, Kitty responded to us by purring and snuggling when we pet her. So we brought her home.

Just short of 10 years later, we found ourselves at the veterinarian’s office last week. Kitty had developed a massive tumor on her head, and she was starting to get really sick. She had only eaten a little bit that day, and she seemed very lethargic.

The vet told us that a biopsy would be necessary to determine if it was malignant or not. But really, it didn’t look good at all. We all want to do whatever we can to keep our pets around, but at some point you have to consider their quality of life. Those who know Kitty, know that she does NOT like being outside her home. She panics immediately, as soon as she is in an unfamiliar environment. We didn’t want to subject her to sitting in a kennel for days, getting biopsies and being force-fed only to likely find out that the tumor (which had grown at an alarming rate to double the size of her head) would not be operable.

We decided to take her home, and try to make her comfortable for her last days. We weren’t sure how long that would be, but it wasn’t looking good. Eventually she lost the ability to hold down food and water, and she could barely walk more than a few steps. It was time for Kitty to go to rest.

I can’t describe the feeling of losing a beloved pet, so soon. So I won’t bother. Instead, I would rather remember what we loved about Kitty. She is a big part of our lives together – we had her for 10 of our 11 years together. There is much to remember.

We’ll remember that her original name was actually “Poopie” because, well, she was a poopie cat. From day 1, she had some poo on her leg, and had to be bathed before we could take her home. The poo problems continued, as she pooed on our pillows on the first night. Then she pooed on the bed after that. Sometimes, she would walk up to us when we were watching TV, let off a fart, and then walk away. As it turns out, the food we were giving her was not agreeing with her; as soon as we switched brands this problem went away.

We’ll remember turning around in the middle of the night, only to have Kitty’s little butt sticking in our face.

We’ll never forget the day she decided to leap off our 3rd storey balcony, landing on concrete below. It was her first ‘heat’, and we weren’t sure what to expect. What we didn’t expect was that she would start sprinting all over the apartment, and just take a flying leap out the open window. She grabbed onto the wall with her claws, and I head Andrea scream “OH NO!” Before we could react, her grip let go, and she fell to the ground. We ran outside, and found her hiding in a corner. She was in shock, and we took her to the emergency clinic. She turned out okay – she didn’t have a concussion or any broken bones. She was just a bit scared.

I remember how she used to love sitting in my pants when I was on the toilet taking a dump. I guess it made for a comfortable hammock-like experience for her… Whatever!

I’m sure a lot of people have similar experiences – Kitty used to love getting our attention while we were trying to type. Her best method of doing so? Walk across the keyboard, smashing random keys. Somehow, she was always able to hit Enter when she was done.

We’ll forever remember her first meeting with Myrtle, the turtle we adopted from Andrea’s Mom when we moved to a new apartment. We weren’t sure what to expect, since Kitty never really had experiences with other animals. As it turned out, they got along very well. We used to let Myrtle out of his tank to walk around, and Kitty used to LOVE just following him around, watching him. You could tell that she wasn’t hunting or stalking him – she was just really curious.

Kitty was naughty sometimes, and would let us know when we were being bad. For some reason, we hadn’t cleaned her litter box for a few days. Kitty would have none of it, and one day we came home to an excruciating stench. The source of the smell was – sure enough – a giant mushy turd she left on the top of our bed. Unlike normal cat poo, it wasn’t a hard log that you could pick up and toss in the garbage. No, this was a soft one that had soaked into the blanket a bit. We didn’t even bother washing it – we just threw it in the garbage. We couldn’t be mad at Kitty though, because it was our own fault. Her plan worked though – we made sure she had a nice clean litter box at all times!

Kitty never liked scratching posts. Maybe that’s because I stepped on hers and broke it. However, she found the next best thing – an old couch. From that day on, she would never touch any scratching posts we bought for her.

We’ll remember how much she loved going outdoors when we moved to a house in 2003. When she was in her own environment, Kitty was fierce. And there was nothing we could do to placate her besides let her go out every day.

This lead to problems as, well, Kitty doesn’t really get along well with other cats. We heard her fighting in the backyard many times, and more often than not would come back with tufts of orange and white fur in her mouth. One time there was so much orange and white fur on our lawn, I thought our neighbor’s cat had exploded or something!

Kitty had hairball problems on and off, and would cough up hairballs in the weirdest places. The strangest (and most inconvenient): Inside Andrea’s Mom’s baby grand piano (sorry!). Eventually, Kitty figured out that she should cough up hairballs in a convenient place for us to clean up.

As you can guess, Kitty was a bully. Her favourite target was not another cat, or a hamster, or anything like that. It was Andrea’s brother, Aaron. When we moved in together, Kitty liked to hang out on the staircase. If you walked by her, she would just ignore you. But for some reason, she didn’t really like Aaron walking by her – I think it was the huge baggy pants he wore. Kitty would always chase Aaron up the stairs because of those pants – for years!

Kitty had full access to the whole house, except for one room – Andrea’s Mom’s. Mom kept the door closed, just to make sure Kitty didn’t ‘destroy’ anything or leave any presents on her bed. But for some reason, Kitty wanted nothing to do with any of the rooms, except that one. She would wait and wait in front of the closed door, and as soon as it was ever opened, she would try to run inside to check it out. Don’t tell anyone this, but sometimes when Andrea’s Mom wasn’t around, we would let Kitty in to roam around. She loved to just sleep in the closet. Of course, we supervised this to keep her out of trouble.

Like many cats, Kitty was confused by mirrors. Just as she wanted to see what was in Mom’s bedroom, she also wanted to see what was behind that invisible barrier that was in the bathroom. We would often find her in the bathroom, trying to find a weak spot in the mirror to get through… I guess she didn’t realize that it was her own reflection she was looking at. Ooops!

Kitty didn’t like toys very much, but there were a few things around the house she loved to play with. When we came home from the grocery store, she would quickly claim any shopping bags, and use it as a bed. The same goes for empty boxes – if she can fit inside it, she will sit in there for hours. She was also fond of cardboard tubes from paper towels… The only actual toy that she ever liked was a little mouse attached to a spring. Eventually she just kept the mouse, and it stayed with her until her last days.

We could go on and on, but I think I will stop right here. It feels a lot better to go through just a few of the happy memories we have of Kitty, which will be with us forever, even though she is gone. After all, that’s what Kitty did best – she made us feel good about our little ‘family’ and gave us something to look forward to when coming home from wherever we were.