We had two wonderful weeks together before Titus started declining, and they were a precious gift. He is buried next to One-Eyed-Jack, for they were always together in life, and it is fitting they should be near each other in death. I truly feel he died of a broken heart, the stress of losing his partner triggering the virus that had probably lain dormant in his system for years.
They were my office cats, and were always with me here as I worked on the computer. I miss them terribly.
I have neglected the usual courtesies of wishing readers a happy Holiday Season since the year ended with such difficulties crowded into December the season seemed irrelevant. But now, things are looking up a little, and I offer wishes of hope and happiness for the New Year.
This morning everything was coated with frost, and I crept around the garden trying to take artistic pictures, and pretty much failing. All I have ever learned to do with my little digital camera is point it at a flower and shoot, since photography has never really interested me. For me, fiddling with a gadget and trying to think about settings, exposure, light, etc., detracts from my appreciation of the scene. I have friends who are very expert, and I am sure would say the opposite, but I have little patience with or interest in technological things. I have an excellent almost photographic memory for the natural world (not so other things), and can remember in detail the sparkle of frost on leaves and stems, and don't really need a digital image to prompt my memory. Like the New Year, dawn always makes me feel optimistic and hopeful, and the dawn was a pretty one with the slanting rays making the world sparkle like diamonds.
After I had One-Eyed-Jack put down, my other healthy cat, Titus, stopped eating. At first it seemed his problems related to a broken off tooth, but as he got sicker and sicker, and with visits to two different vets, it turned out he has something called feline infectious peritonitis, which is fatal. For two weeks I fed him with a syringe every hour or two, giving him medicine and subcutaneous fluids. Now he has improved on steroids, although the vet tells me not to be optimistic, that he will start to decline again and will die. I can't help hoping, though, and right now he seems almost normal. While I have a rather easy going temperament, I turn into a mother bear when my pets are sick, so I am rather hard on vets and have gone through most in my immediate area, but I have found a clinic about 20 miles away that I am satisfied with, although I wonder when I make an appointment if the vets don't draw straws to see who gets me ("oh, no, not HER - I had her last time", etc.) Here he is in better days.
Christmas, for me then, was a rather sad affair, losing one cat, then close to losing another, and with friends who are suffering much worse things than I am. I spent a lot of time trying to find things to do that I could manage with a cat in my lap, like reorganizing my oxalis files or watching movies in the evening. By now Titus has seen two different full length versions of Pride and Prejudice. He liked the BBC one best, since it last about five or six hours. At this point I am resigned to losing him in the not too distant future, and I try to treasure each day I have with him. Over Christmas he suffered terribly (and so did I), and I would have had him put down then if I could have, but there weren't any clinics open. But then, the steroids worked their magic, and now he feels happy and well and is eating prodigiously. I won't let him get really bad like he was over Christmas. The vet gave him about a week, but that was ten days ago, so I am hopeful I will have a few weeks with him.
I have hope for my friends, too, and I am not at all resigned to losing them. Things are looking up for them, with one or two on the road to recovery, while others are still struggling. Their courage and dignity is a lesson to me.
So, let us have a hopeful New Year, for happiness is an elusive thing, but hope makes everything possible.
I had dreaded so much the day when I would take One Eyed Jack into the vet for the last time, but it is a gentle death, much better than most of us will ever have, and he lay in my arms purring before he lost consciousness. Without intervention, he would have died in a very horrible way, the cancer eating up his nose. The vet had records on him that predated the time he came into my life, when I brought him home from an Indian reservation, all bloated with parasites, most of his fur missing, scabby skin, and missing one eye. He was 19 years old. I said back then that he was the ugliest cat I had ever seen. His tail took two right angles, and he had already lost an eye to cancer. A few months later he looked like a different cat, and his crooked tail and one eye gave him character.
I had him for six years, and now there is a space in my life bigger than I could have imagined. I buried him in my front garden in a place he liked to hang out. I have put a big planter over his grave, and I will fill it with spring blooming bulbs, for spring is the time of resurrection, and I am sure another cat will have found me by then.
Goodbye, Jack.
