When I was working at the law library during my grad school years, my coworker and dear friend Jane went through a phase of adopting cats, then getting in trouble with her husband for bringing another cat home, and having to find new homes for them. It was September of 2000, I was living alone in a 3-room apartment, and when she needed a new home for a 3-month-old tuxedo kitten, I decided it was time to have a cat of my own. Another woman we worked with had found a tiny kitten on the side of the road and had taken it home, but her other cats were bullying it. We convinced her that it would be happier with me. So, on the same day, from two different coworkers, I brought home two kittens. Gink was the 3-month-old tuxedo cat, and Gytha was the roadside rescue.
The woman who found Gytha had taken her to the vet, and their estimate was that she was maybe 6 weeks old. She shouldn't even have been separated from her mother yet, and she was so tiny I could have put her in a coffee mug. I actually did once, and to this day I have wanted to smack myself dozens of times for not taking a picture of it. It would have been one of the best pictures ever. I fed her kitten formula out of jar lids since they were the only thing in the house shallow enough for her to eat out of. Her first litter box was a Tretorn shoebox lid that was about an inch deep. I had a regular litter box, which Gink could use. But the sides were too high for tiny Gytha. She was so short and Gink had such long legs that she sometimes walked right under him, much to his annoyance. I had to create a ramp of pillows on the side of the bed so that she could climb up to sleep with me. Once she was up, she often went straight for my face where she wanted to curl up between my chin and my neck. It was pretty uncomfortable for me, and I didn't let her stay there very often. But it was just the most adorable thing ever, so sometimes I would let her stay until she decided to move to another part of the bed.
In 2003, when I prepared to move halfway across the country from Illinois to New Hampshire, I had to leave a number of other pets behind in the care of someone who would try to find them new homes. I knew the parakeets would be fine, but I thought having to leave our old family cats Knight and Grimm (who I had inherited when my Mom moved to Minnesota) in a barn was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do. It still haunts me. But I was moving into an apartment with my Dad, and he couldn't allow the entire menagerie. I was able to just get through it at the time by being in a semi-numb state of shutting down my emotions and focusing entirely on the practical problems of the move. There were so many heart-wrenching endings and goodbyes during that time, it was my only defense. But Gink and Gytha were my babies and they were coming with me. So, I found hotels to stay at during the trip that allowed pets, figured out how to deal with the need for temporary overnight litter boxes, got some medication from the vet to help calm the cats during the long car trip, and ended up listening to Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits almost the entire way because the only time the cats weren't howling was when that cd was playing.
In December of 2005 I met Tim. This was potentially going to be the most life-changing event of my…well, life. But, I had certain requirements. Did he like cats in general? Yes. Was he good to my cats? Definitely. Did they like him? Yes. We're good to go! A little less than a year later we moved into our first apartment with "my" cats. In some ways they remained "my" cats for a long time, but as the years went by I realized they really had become our cats. They'd only spent the first 5 years of their lives without Tim. He was there for 8 1/2 of Gink's almost 14 years, and he was there for over 10 of Gytha's 15 1/2 years. And during that time he was a damn good cat daddy. Gytha was his baby girl. At some point after we'd bought our house, he went through a phase of carrying Gytha upstairs at bedtime every night. No reason, other than being silly and cute. She started waiting for it, looking up at him at the bottom of the stairs. It was amusing and heartwarmingly adorable. I imagined him doing that someday when she was old and too tired to be comfortable doing it for herself. I don't know whether to consider her lucky or not that she never got that old and tired.
A year ago Gytha was diagnosed as being in the early stages of Chronic Kidney Disease. We started her on a couple of medications and made some modifications to her diet to slow the progression. I wasn't sure if we were looking at a year or two or four or what, but I assumed we'd have at least a couple of years with everything we were doing. Later we added blood pressure medication, and I continued finding ways to get these medicines in her so I'd have as many years as possible. I knew she was fairly old in cat years, but she still acted more like a young cat. She was still leaping onto the dining room table and trying to get a share of our food. She was still chattering at the squirrels and birds, watching them intensely from either the bedroom window or her radiator shelf in the sunroom. She was still trying to sneak a taste of my plants when she had the chance. She was still following me around the house, hanging out in the bathroom with me when I took a shower, cuddling up next to my face for a little while every night when we went to bed. She was doing most of these things until just a few days before the end.
Last Wednesday she had an ultrasound to find out why she had recently started throwing up a lot more and was always nauseous. The diagnosis was an inoperable stomach tumor. The doctor prescribed a new medicine to help protect her stomach from the damage the tumor was causing and I picked up more of her nausea medicine. I thought maybe with the drugs she would be comfortable for a few more weeks. She was still eating and acting normal, other than being traumatized by the hospital visit. For a couple of days things looked okay. She hated the new medicine, and I hated having to force it on her. But I had bought her new treats in an effort to get her to eat more and she was gobbling those up.
Saturday she refused the treats and barely ate anything, but she was still jumping up in my lap and eagerly accepting all the petting. She got excited when I got the catnip out and seemed to enjoy rolling around in it. She came to bed with us and we had one of our "family snuggles" where all 3 of us spooned together under the covers. She spent a good chunk of the night sleeping around my legs as usual. By the time I got up Sunday, she was downstairs in her blanket cave, which isn't necessarily unusual. She didn't come upstairs when she heard me get up. She didn't come out of the cave when I came downstairs. She didn't come out of her cave when I prepared her a fresh dish of her wet food. She did come out and sit on my lap for a little bit while I talked to Dad on the phone. She spent most of the rest of the day just resting or sleeping, but at least she was doing it near us. She came to bed with us Sunday, and snuggled next to my face for awhile like she usually did before deciding to move somewhere else to really settle down for the night.
But by the time I got home from work on Monday, it had been two days since she'd eaten anything and she had started hiding. She might have had one or two days left before she got so bad she would have been hiding all the time, but I was worried about leaving her alone all day anymore. So we made the call and tried to appreciate the last hour at home with her. She didn't make it easy, rallying some energy to act normal in her carrier on the way to the vet's office. She even tried to jump down from the table in the consultation room. Which, of course, made me doubt whether we had made the right choice. And that's the absolute worst of it: no matter how much I try to convince myself that we were right, I still don't 100% believe it. With Gink it was so obvious; there was no doubt at all. I try to tell myself that waiting until she was 100% miserable and there was absolutely no sign of normal behavior left would have been the crueler thing to do. That she had so much personality, maybe she just couldn't stop being Gytha even at the very end. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't. It was always going to involve hard decisions, and the end was always going to be the same. And it was always going to hurt.
For 15 1/2 years my entire life has been shaped to some degree by being a cat mom. Every home I've lived in during that time has been furnished and decorated with the cats and their accoutrements in mind, and with each move what would work best for them gained in importance. When we bought our house I liked the radiator covers that would give them warm places to sit and watch the outdoors; 3 floors and stairs that would give them more exercise and more places to explore; good locations for their food, water, and litter boxes; a sunroom which was THE perfect place for Gytha's cat tree. Every time we rearranged furniture or started spending most of our time in a different part of the house, I made sure the cats always had somewhere to sit comfortably with us or near us. They might have been bratty to many of our visitors, but they were our children and they were embedded in every part of our lives.
She was even part of our answering machine message. After we got home last night, someone called and the answering machine picked up: "Hello, you've reached the home of Angela, Tim, and Gytha Morgan. Angela and Tim aren't home right now, and Gytha can't answer the phone because she's a cat..." I spun around and said, "Oh god, no!" Tim immediately stopped it, but that's something I have to change today.
When Gink died, my sense of loss was deep. But, we still had another cat to focus our love on. It was painful for a little while to be putting out only one bowl of food instead of two, but at least I was still using the food dishes. We went through food more slowly, but someone was still eating the food we already had. I didn't have to clean the litter boxes as vigilantly or empty the litter trash cans as often, but we were still using them. I didn't have to negotiate two cats pinning my legs to the bed, but I still had the reassuring weight of one of them on cold winter nights. And with Gink gone, Gytha stepped up and filled in with enough personality for two cats; she loved not having to share us anymore. Losing Gink also made us more aware of the precariousness of our time left with Gytha. And so the three of us grew even closer.
Which all makes things so much harder this time. We have lost a truly unique personality who was only surpassed by Tim in terms of importance in my daily life. She was my baby and my buddy. She cannot be replaced, and she's going to be a hard act to follow. Right now it feels like no other cat will ever be worthy. And so in the meantime, what do I do with all the empty spaces? So, so many empty spaces. Everywhere I look I see a place where she once was, I hear a silence she once filled, I have a need to do something for her that no longer needs to be done, I have a need for interaction with a part of my heart that isn't here in the physical world anymore.
So many "little" parts of our lives gone. No more playing Q-tip Fetch. No more paws racing up and down the stairs. No more fake conversations with one of us pretending to talk for her using our Gytha voices. No more love attacks when I put on chapstick with peppermint in it.
I debated whether to wait awhile before dismantling the cat parts of our lives. Should I go to work today for the distraction or should I take the day to give myself the space to keep crying when I need to and to start tackling all the physical changes around the house? Should I slowly get rid of things or do as much as I can at once? Will it be harder to look at the physical reminders of what used to be or to look at the spaces where they once were? Will it give me any sense of peace to throw out all the partially used medicines, empty the litter boxes and throw them in the basement for now, start a box for the unused food cans and anything else I can donate to the shelter?
I think it will help. If for no other reason than because doing something feels better than sitting around drowning in my grief. Leaving everything the way it was will accomplish nothing and it will be like pouring salt on the wounds. I don't need reminders of what I've lost. I need to do whatever I can to keep moving forward, holding Gytha (and Gink) in my heart always, but allowing the rest of my heart to still keep loving everyone and everything else in my life that makes it so worthwhile. I know it will eventually get easier. It sounds kind of trite, but when you're face to face with the reality of it, you realize that it's true that sometimes you just have to take things not only day by day, but hour by hour and maybe even minute by minute.
