Bookending An Entire Cat Life

 

My pretty girl in the snow in 2018, about a year before her health started a slow decline. She always had an alert gaze.

My beautiful girl Griselda's life has come to an end. I've lost pets before but this is particularly painful. She was seventeen years old. We were together from the time she was small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. It feels like I've lost my best friend of seventeen years.

Griselda, or Zelda as I mostly called her, was a cat's cat. Fiercely independent, adventurous, and in her youth an aggressive predator. I referred to her as The Inimitable Zelda, like there could only be one Zelda. I have memories from her first day home. She was joined by a slightly older cat named Hogan who was already grown out of the fluff ball stage.

Zelda with Hogan. July 19, 2014. Despite his massive size she was the dominant cat in that era. Hogan preceded her in death in 2016.

I went to bed happy to have kittens in the house and when I got up in the morning Zelda was guarding the food and water, holding off Hogan at standoff distance, despite the fact that he was at least twice her size. They eventually became friends, as much as possible with Zelda. She only ever really tolerated other cats.

As far as I can tell, Zelda loved me, though it took about five years to get her to willingly sit in my lap. She had been found on the side of the road and was apparently a feral kitten. I believe this explained her personality. She grew affectionate and liked to be tended to and served, though her affection could be transactional at times. If I gave her part of my meal, she would climb into my lap after we finished eating.

I allowed my cats access to a screen porch and my garage at my house in Georgia and for the first few years she was always bringing in her latest kill and dropping it at my feet. This included a variety of grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects, as well as mangled salamanders and on multiple occasions, tiny ring-necked snakes about the size of a pencil. I took the wriggling snakes away from her and released them outside.

The Zelda was ever interested in my food as much as wild prey. She had a habit of hiding around corners and pouncing my ankles when I was carrying my dinner. I don't know if it was symbolic stalking of prey, or a prank, or if she actually hoped to make me drop the food. I took it as a prank. Some people would be angry about this, especially "dog people," but to me it was hilarious. You have to realize that cats do have a sense of humor, though often subtle.

Usually I gave her scraps of any meat I was eating, but one time it slipped my mind. I had cooked salmon in a baking dish lined with aluminum foil. When I finished, instead of placing the foil where she could get to it, I simply folded it up and put it in the waste basket.

That night I awoke to the sound of a disturbance. I decided I had better check on things. When I rounded the corner to the dining room, I flipped on a flashlight fearing to see a burglar but instead saw Zelda looking back at me.

"Oh, it's you," I said and went back to bed.

In the light of day I rounded the corner and saw what had happened. Zelda had dumped the entire trash can to get at the discarded foil I had denied her and scattered trash everywhere. She was sitting exactly in the middle of the mess and made an aggressive trill of a type I heard many times from her both in play and in apparent anger, then she ran off and hid under a chair and gave me the evil eye.

That taught me I guess. I was annoyed but amused.

One other time Zelda was trying to get some of my food and became so irritated that she threw a literal hissy fit, her tail raised straight up and shaking accompanied by a four legged dance and an irritated rowwwrrr! Then she swatted me and again ran off and hid under the same chair, giving me the evil eye again. I sat fork in hand, jaw hanging open in shock. Reflecting on it later I realized where the term "hissy fit" came from.

I realize this eulogy may sound like she was a lot of trouble but I was mostly entertained by her antics and have many other happy, affectionate memories involving Zelda. Playing with a string until I tired of the game. Chasing a toy mouse when I threw it. Batting paper wads under the door in a game of cat hockey. Approaching me for help when she got her head stuck in the handle of a plastic bag while playing with it. Running back and forth in the screen porch chasing a squirrel that was chattering away and climbing figure-eights on the outside of the screen.

One day Zelda refused to come inside when I was ready to leave for work. She was at the screen looking down. I went out to pick her up and saw a turkey with three chicks walking into my back yard. She looked over her shoulder at me and I could almost hear her saying, "Big chicken."

After we moved to Flagstaff I woke up from a sofa nap and found Zelda wrapped around my calf for warmth in the cool apartment, her arms clinging to me. And yes, eventually she did start sleeping in my lap, enjoying the stroking of the soft hair on her head and the attention for up to an hour or more at a time.

After Hogan died Zelda acted forlorn for a few weeks so I adopted Ada (right). Soon they were frenemies.

So many memories. Mostly good memories. Some minor offenses but nothing I couldn't roll with. We lived in mutual affection and respect for over seventeen years.

Because Zelda and Ada didn't always get along, I adopted Shadow in 2019 (foreground). I referred to this as The Triumvirate, because I often felt they were in charge of the house.

Every year on her birthday for the last five or six years I would say, "Well you made it to twelve, are you going to make it thirteen?" The next year I would ask if she was going to make it to fourteen, and so on.

Alas, we came to the end of the road. Last April I asked her if she was going to make it to eighteen. She did not make it.

April 24, 2023. Her seventeenth and last birthday.

The vet found cancer in her lungs last Sunday. I knew she was suffering and had a persistent cough, but after hearing the diagnosis I realized we needed to bring things to an end. I arranged for a few days at home and a house call so she could die at home and so the other cats could be present. Fortunately this worked out fine and the other cats had a good look at Zelda, especially Ada, who laid right next to her in her last moments. It was more than I hoped for.

My heart is broken.