Note: Continuing the perusal of the old blog archives.
I love Nancy, and Bess, and Mow. They are good cats.
Not a single one of them are Cricket. She still has a big, big corner of my heart despite being gone now nearly 13 years. She was beautiful, she was just my level of antisocial, she was elegant, aside from the single necklace she did not destroy my stuff.
She helped me grow up and she kept me company in times when I felt like the rest of the world was falling apart in my young adult years.
And, I still miss her very, very much.
________________________________________________________
In July of 1996, I worked at Six Flags. It was my first job. That summer, my parents and I were in the process of moving to a new house and I had my first taste of freedom: I had a car. I had a boyfriend. I had great — really great girlfriends. It was before symptoms of my bipolar disorder had manifested. I was 16 years old. To this day, that summer remains one of the best of my life.
We had a dog — Daisy — and over the years we had hosted multitudes of outside cats. However, I’d never been allowed to have my own cat inside. With the money that was rolling in from my little job, I petitioned my parents to let me adopt a cat. I promised to pay the adoption fee, all vet bills, and to pay for its food. They agreed that when we moved into our new house, I could have a cat.
I started watching the local cable station animal shelter segments; you may have seen them — at the time, they posted photos of animals available for adoption from our local shelter. The day before moving day to the new house, I saw her… a photo of a beautiful Calico cat with yellow eyes. That was her! That was the one I wanted!
So, I drove down there when they opened that morning. To my surprise, the cat wasn’t a full-grown cat like she appeared on TV. She was a little kitten, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand! I was smitten from the start. So, I went to the desk and asked what I had to do to adopt her. The attendant asked my age, and I was crestfallen when he explained that I had to be 18 before I could adopt an animal myself. I explained that I had my parents’ permission, but there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t take her home with me.
I panicked. She was gorgeous. She was a kitten. I couldn’t imagine how the next person walking into that shelter wouldn’t want to take her home with them. She was going to get adopted and I couldn’t do anything about it!
I called Mother at work and while she sympathized with me, she couldn’t leave until 5 pm to come with me to adopt the kitten. She promised that we would make it to the shelter, though, before they closed at 5:30. That’s all she could do. I continued to panic and obsess all day long.
We got there as fast as legally possible after 5 pm. Driving up that long drive to the shelter, I was biting at the bits to get there to see if my precious cat was still available. In the distance, we saw a light blue truck coming the opposite way…it was my Daddy’s truck! I smiled big once I realized what had happened. My Daddy had taken off work a few minutes early to come adopt the cat for me. Both cars came to a stop in the middle of that drive, so that I could get the cat. I don’t remember now if I got in the car with Daddy or if he passed the cat over to Mother’s car. It was one of the happiest and most memorable moments of my life to that point.
She was so little! I’d never seen a kitten that little that didn’t have blue eyes, but hers were already bright yellow. It took me a little while to name her. After spending some time with her, we discovered she had some ridiculous traits, even for a kitten, like trying to jump way up high for the ceiling fan cord. She could jump at least a foot and a half up in the air, too — pretty high for a small little thing like her.
I named her Cricket because she jumped. She got to spend the night in our new house her first night with us — the night before we even spent the night there ourselves.
Cricket was a good companion. That’s an understatement — she put up with some crazy antics on my part. Later that summer, I decided I wanted to train her to walk on a leash like a dog; I’d read somewhere that some cats could do that. It lasted maybe a week and then I gave up. But she had crazy antics of her own. Her entire life, she LOVED marshmallows. When she was younger, she’d bat them around for ten or fifteen minutes before finally eating them. There’s no telling how many marshmallows my parents cleaned out from under their refrigerator when they moved away from Carrollton. And her whole life, she loved to get in the shower after anyone was done and lap up the leftover soapy water.
I only got mad at Cricket one time in my life: my boyfriend had given me a beautiful sapphire and diamond necklace that September of 1996 for my birthday, with a dainty chain that was perfect for my crooked neck, not too long. Cricket, that first Fall, found my open jewelry box on my dresser and found that chain and chewed it to bits. She didn’t actually eat it so she didn’t get sick, but she destroyed the chain. I was livid. Eventually, the chain was replaced, though, and I forgave the cat. We decided she liked “pretties” too, so they were kept out of her reach from then on.
Cricket was there for me during one of the most trying times of my life, when my boyfriend of six years moved out of the apartment we shared together, in 2001. Mother brought her up to Atlanta to my apartment and I remember that large two-bedroom apartment being so big and lonely by myself. But I was so glad to have my precious cat with me as I began the healing process after that tumultuous relationship ended.
When I moved back home with Mother and Daddy, she found her long-time home. She loved going out and sunning herself on the big deck. She loved the big windows. And she still loved marshmallows.
In 2005 when Jared and I married, Cricket and I had to separate for a while. Jared had his cat Murphy and Cricket had proven herself to be an only sort of cat. We introduced other cats to our new household. I was fairly sure Cricket would live out her days with Mother and Daddy.
But over the years, the other cats found other homes for various reasons. Last summer, we lost Murphy at a fairly young age. My first thought was to bring Cricket home and we did just that. She was 16 years old and I wanted her to live the rest of her golden years with me.
She was a social kitten but not so much as an adult. I liked her so much primarily because she liked to be in the room with me but she wasn’t clingy like other cats I’ve experienced. This last year with her, though, she became more and more kitten-like. She slept in the bed with us. She slept more and more during the day. And when she wasn’t sleeping, she was insistent on drinking both the water out of her dish and shower water. These past few months we’d gotten to where we turned on the shower even when we weren’t using it, just for a few seconds, just to humor Cricket so she could have her precious soap scum water.
In March of this year, she separated the nerve cluster in her shoulder jumping from top of the couch to the floor. She howled in pain and surprise for a few hours and I just knew our time had come, suddenly and too soon for me. I wanted her ending to be in her sleep, not in pain and fear. I was in such a state of upset that Jared had to take her to the vet for me. I couldn’t deal with it.
There was talk of amputation of that entire leg and shoulder. An impossible surgery for a cat of that age. I mean, possible, but recovery and quality of life in a 16 year old cat are really, really difficult to predict and the odds were against Cricket. I refused to consider amputation. I promised that we would watch for signs of infection and sores in the bad leg, as she dragged it around the house.
May 2013 came around and one day, she started putting weight on that paw again. She started grooming it again. She started jumping up on our bed again. She was a cat that had come away from the brink. She still slept a lot, but she was a happy cat and seemingly not in pain. A miracle for a now 17-year old kitty. The vet who had seen her two months before admitted how against the odds it was when we took her in for her annual shots. She sent us home happy to have seen a good ending to that ordeal. I was so proud.
This past Sunday morning about 5:30 it started. Cricket vomited 15 times in the span of less than 30 minutes and that was just the start. I got out my camera and took this picture when it had subsided and she had, shaking, climbed back in bed with us:
I hoped it was just an isolated episode, but it started up again. I called the emergency number for our vet. The doctor on call just happened to be the one who had treated Cricket in March and May and she remembered us. She met us at the clinic twenty minutes later.
By that time, Cricket was all but foaming at the mouth as she yowled in discomfort. The vet said her digestive system was really tense but that there was no sign of any foreign bodies that she could have gotten into her system. No masses. She was a drooling mess and hobbled around, unsteady on her feet. She wasn’t a happy camper but she let me hold her still as the doctor gave her a shot of anti-nausea meds and got some fluid into her. That’s how I really knew it was time: Cricket, letting someone hold her peacefully while she was treated? The doctor had to sedate her to the point of sleep to get her treated each time we’d taken her in for the past year. But in that office, Cricket let me hold her head and look her in the eyes. She seemed unaffected by it all, just overwhelmed with how bad she felt. The drooling continued to get worse. I kissed her and told her that I loved her and that she was the best cat I’d ever known. I was there until she went to Heaven, around 7:30 am.
What else can I say about the cat that I knew for over half my life? She was ageless; a beautiful soul. It was a privilege to care for her and to know her for nearly 17 years.
She’s joined Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Murphy in Heaven. I hope they were ready for her.
