He Lived His Life Lengthwise

Eight years ago, when we first adopted him from the Humane Society, Tigger The Wondercat was about a week away from “The Big Sleep”. We had found him in the back of his cage, a three year-old nervous wreck of a yellow and orange tabby cat. His back was towards us and he refused to eat the food in his little cardboard dish. We knew this because we kept coming back every day after we put a hold on him until our adoption day rolled around. The same portion was always there, sometimes with the same hairs in it. During those first few days, there was nothing in her personality to definitively say he was a keeper. We were going solely on the fact he was already neutered and declawed, which was going to save us money in the long run. Plus he was three years-old and all the cats that had come in around the same time as he did seemed to mysteriously vanish overnight. Personality be damned. We were they guy’s last shot. But on the third day, he rolled over on his back and let Lynn rub his belly. It was at that moment he adopted us.

He was not without his little defects, though. He had seasonal allergies that got very bad once or twice a year. If the climate changed drastically, he start having sneezing fits that required a week of oral Prednisone to get over. His eyes watered and filled up with gunk on a constant basis, and I would have to get in there with my thumbs to clean them out. The tip of one of his fangs had broken off at some point and his teeth were yellow and stained. “He needs to quit smoking cigarettes,” our original veterinarian said once, which made us laugh. “He’s nothing but a dirty, old street cat.” Which was basically true. His adoption papers stated he had been living on the streets when his original owners found him at six months old. She had held onto him for another two and a half years before giving him up because (supposedly) her new roommate was allergic to cats. But we suspect the sneezing was the most likely culprit. We never got how anybody could give “the boy” up after really getting to know him.

We’re not sure what went on at his previous residence, but we can only speculate. I learned very early on he wanted nothing to do with me if I had been drinking. He also didn’t like loud noises or people dancing. And he would get jittery if I took off my belt, walked by with a rolled up newspaper, or was carrying coat hangers around. I’m not saying he was abused, but I do think maybe he was taunted a lot. And still, through all of that, he had developed the sweetest personality ever bestowed on a cat. He didn’t like to play with his cat toys as much as he liked to snuggle up close to us. He also didn’t like to be left alone for long periods of time. If we were gone for any more than three or four hours, we would get “The Business” whenever we did get home. “The Business” was a string of vocal cries, warbles, ticks, and grunts that would last anywhere from five to twenty minutes, depending on how long we had been gone. For the first year we had him, “The Business” didn’t manifest itself, almost like he was afraid we would retaliate by taking him back the Humane Society lockup if he voiced his displeasure. But once our routines were firmly established and he was dug in, he let us have it. He would start off sharply with a loud “Meck!” and then he’d grumble each word in his vocabulary until he felt we’d had enough.

His “words” were also used in conversation quite frequently. You’d ask him a simple question and he’d answer back with a cry that would seem appropriate in length and volume. Because of his art for conversation, we always suspected he might have had a little Siamese in him, but his lineage was a complete mystery to us. His yellow and orange coat was splotched with white spots in places, and it would often seem to change shades depending on the lighting and the season. Sometimes it was bright orange. Sometimes it would seem almost coppery. If you leaned in real close, though, you’d notice he had fine black hairs mixed in there as well. His nose and gums were dotted with dark freckles that had no discernible pattern. One black whisker would always poke out amongst a sea of white ones. His body was big and blocky, but his head was just a tad too tiny for it. And somewhere along the line he seemed to have been given an extra segment that started someplace after his shoulder blades. Because, while not an exceptionally large cat at thirteen pounds, he was extremely long. It wasn’t unusual for him to start with his front paws on the edge of our queen-sized bed and sprawl himself out lengthwise until his raccoon-striped tail punctuated the middle, forcing Lynn and I to jam ourselves into the other half. In fact, he lived most of his life lengthwise and we let him.

Tigger was also skilled in the art of time management. With Lynn and I on opposite sleep schedules, he adopted ways of dealing with both of us separately and then somehow managed to find completely different ways of acting whenever we were all together. For example, if Lynn was sleeping and I was awake, he’d either sleep with her and then come downstairs at around 1 a.m. to check on me. Or if it was summertime, he’d start getting antsy and would want me to go downstairs with him around 8 p.m. until maybe 1 a.m. Then it was time to go upstairs and check on her. He would sleep on Lynn’s lap. With me, he sprawled out on my chest. He slept on my right. With her, it was the left. If we were in bed together, he’d position himself in the middle for maximum belly rubbing potential. To be honest, the boy was a belly rub whore more than anything else.

But he did occasionally like to play. With Lynn, flossing her teeth was always an adventure as he had a serious string fetish. He also liked to burrow deep within the clean laundry whenever she dumped it onto the bed and started folding it. With me, it was goofy shit like having me chase him up the stairs. We’d always start out the game with me taking on the stance of an exaggerated boogeyman and going, “I’m going to get you!” To which he’d start sprinting up the stairs, turn the corner into the bedroom, and then turn back and peek around the door frame to see if I was actually following him. He was never scared during any of this. His tail was always straight up and never puffed out. He loved this game, which would often end up with me finally sprinting upstairs behind him where he would then jump up on the bed and flop on his back for a belly rub. But this was a tit for tat kind of situation. In retaliation, he would playfully touch my lips and/or nose with one of his front paws if he even sensed I was starting to wake up in the morning. Sometimes he’d poke at me a dozen times before I’d roll over on my back, groan his name, and see him sitting there alongside of me with this goofy, antagonistic look on his face, as if he was totally satisfied with the outcome. This was something strictly between us. He never did it with Lynn. In many ways, she was his mommy. I was his brother. How he managed all the little differences, I don’t know. He was a lovable little goofball, but he was also a lot smarter than he ever let on.

On July 26th, we took Tigger in for the second half of his annual vaccinations. In recent years, our regular vet had sold the practice and the new doctor had different ways of administering the shots. We pretty much figured out that Tigger couldn’t handle the new stuff all at once, so we broke this current round up into two different appointments. The rabies vaccination had gone fine the week before and we didn’t notice any ill effects afterwards. And we thought the same after the feline leukemia shot on the 26th. But on the 29th, he threw up a hairball and wasn’t acting right afterwards. We took him in later that day and the vet on duty didn’t really find anything wrong with him. He wasn’t blocked in any fashion, so we pretty much came to the consensus the shot had maybe made him feel a little puny and he probably wasn’t drinking as much as usual. Hence the hairball (he usually passed his hairballs, so him throwing one up was weird in itself). We took him home Tuesday night and he seemed to improve a little. We breathed a sigh of relief.

On Wednesday the 30th, though, things took a turn for the worse. The day started out with him eating well and doing all of his normal Tigger things. He still wasn’t drinking water, but the people at his clinic didn’t seem too concerned. We were to keep an eye on him and see how things went. So, knowing Lynn was coming home an hour and a half later, I left for work feeling he was on the mend. But a phone call from Lynn later that night told a different story. He had been trying to go to the litter box and had been straining in there and not accomplishing anything. Then once he stepped out of the box, he threw up. Knowing that our financial situation was dicey because of my hours cut at work, emergency care was out of the question. We were going to have to wait until the morning until our regular vet opened up on Thursday morning. This, out of everything that was about to happen, was probably the worst decision I made out of them all. I got home at 10:30 at night and sat up with him all night. He was obviously feeling like crap and was hiding behind his favorite chair in the living room. He would occasionally come out and snuggle, but then find a new hiding place. When Lynn got up and took over for me, she noticed his belly was distended and placed a call on the vet’s voice mail. When they opened up at 8:30 a.m., Lynn and Tigger were the first ones through the door.

The next few hours were a blur of bad news mixed with good. His urethra was blocked with a crystallized plug and this, apparently, is a common situation for a lot of male cats. Nobody knows what causes it, but the common fix is a complete change in diet. Tigger steadfastly refused to eat anything but dry Meow Mix, so this wasn’t a total surprise to me. However, when they couldn’t clear the blockage with a catheter, I started to worry. His bladder was filled and pressing against his colon. He couldn’t pass any waste out of his body at all. The vet assured us we had caught the condition within the first twenty-four hours and she had seen many cats who had it worse than Tigger. But they still couldn’t get the blockage passed. They aspirated some of the urine out through his side and it looked fine and had no blood in it. It still wasn’t enough, though, so they sent out to another practice for a special catheter. They also called in my original vet, who now lives on a piece of property right behind the practice she sold off a year or two ago. Knowing Tigger well, she rushed right over and offered another set of hands, but they still couldn’t get him unblocked. They started talking about a costly surgery to amputate the tip of his penis so the blockage could pass, and at that point we started preparing for the worst. There was no way we could afford the surgery, which would start somewhere in the realm of $2,500.00. As it was, we didn’t know how we were going to pay for the work they were doing on him at the time. We had banked our economic stimulus check, but that was all the cash we had on hand. After that, we were busted. Right as we were ready to give up, though, our original vet got the catheter in and things were looking up. For many in that office that day, that urine flowing freely through the catheter was the most beautiful pee they had ever seen.

Tigger spent two days at the clinic with IV fluids going into his front arm and the waste coming out of a tube stitched to his crotch. The blockage had been pushed back up into the bladder, but there was hope the IV fluids was going to break all of it up. All the tubes came out Saturday and we took him home. And, like before, I was encouraged by how he was acting. He was out and about, cleaning himself, and sitting in the sunlight by the front door. He still wasn’t eating or drinking, but things seemed to be on the mend. Again, I left for work. And again I came home to a drastic decline. We were right back to Wednesday night’s symptoms. Extreme straining in the litter box followed by vomiting. He had been prescribed Valium to help relax his urethra and I was a bit overdue to give him one (I’m the only one who could get pills down him and I had been at work), but not by much. So I told a sobbing Lynn that we would try to give him another pill and see what happened. Three or four hours went by and he eventually crawled into bed and sprawled out lengthwise with Lynn. I made a little crash spot on the floor next to the bed and tried to get some rest. A little bit later, he got up, went to the littler box and managed to push out exactly two drops of urine before leaving and throwing up on the bathroom floor. I knew then we had lost the battle. I told Lynn to call the emergency clinic (our vet’s office was closed until Monday) and find out what our options were. The surgery price was discussed and they wanted it up front. We had spent $1,000.00 getting him this far. There wasn’t anything left except just barely enough to cover the cost of euthanasia. We were out of options and he was growing weaker by the hour. He was suffering. So at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, we put him in his carrier and headed out. Usually a very vocal cat in the car, he didn’t cry once on the way over.

When we arrived at the emergency clinic, we were completely devastated by raw emotions. A veterinary technician buzzed us into an empty waiting area and got our information from my totally grief-stricken wife while I placed the carrier on the floor and opened the door to pet him. He kept his back to me and I started to choke up when the radio started to play “Sail On” by The Commodores. That was the point where the dread of what we were about to do rose up and strangled any words I had in me. From there on out, I could feel my face contorting with sadness. It was almost too much to bear. But eventually I was able to get him out of the carrier and hand him over so the technician could put an IV port in his forearm. She led us into a room that was obviously set up to help adults and children cope with the loss of a pet, but none of it helped alleviate the grief and guilt we were feeling. As owners, we had failed him. That’s what we thought at the time. With more money, he could’ve had a chance. But we didn’t have it. We couldn’t care for him and we had let him down. It was our fault and it was as simple as that.

The technician brought him back a few minutes later and placed him on a low sofa bed that was draped with a Scooby Doo blanket. The animal dander that was built up in the room started to play with my allergies and I accidentally let go of him and he bolted in back of me and tried to get behind the couch Lynn was sitting on. This freaked Lynn out somewhat as she felt he was trying to escape this unspeakable punishment on him. I managed to wrestle him out from behind the couch and get him back on the sofa bed. He started to relax a little, so I held onto his sides gently as the doctor came in and explained everything to us. He was a nice, sensitive guy who explained each step to us in a quiet tone. He administered the first shot into the IV port and Tigger’s body relaxed even more. He then injected the second shot and then listened to his heart with a stethoscope. After only a couple of seconds, he quietly said. “He’s gone,” and I nodded to him. “I did examine him before and you guys were right, he was blocked. It probably slid back down and his bladder was pretty distended. I’ll go ahead and leave now. Take all the time you need. He was a handsome guy.”

As soon as he was out the door, Lynn let loose with some sobs that shook my soul and knelt down beside him and kissed him. “You were mommy’s boy and the bestest cat ever,” she said. “You brought us a lot of happiness and I’m so, so sorry. Mommy loves you. I’m sorry.” After that, I couldn’t say anything. The words just stuck in my throat and I couldn’t get them out. It was all I could do to take a drink out of the bottled water I had and swallow. Managing words was impossible. So instead, I scratched his ears and chin, and kissed his little head. After a few minutes, we could feel the heat dissipating from his coat and we decided to leave. We said a few more words to the technician and thanked her and walked out. I had disassembled the carrier to get him out. I didn’t even bother to put it back together. I threw the screws and the door into the two halves and placed it into the back seat of the car. Lynn and I didn’t talk the rest of the morning. There was nothing to say. We went home and tried to sleep.

On Sunday morning, I got up and Lynn was gone. She sought refuge at her local Starbucks and I decided to clean up the house. I started with my little crash spot on the floor and then washed some of the towels we had put in some of his favorite spots around the house. He had come home from his two day stint at our vet’s office smelling of urine and spotting a little bit of blood from his penis. This was normal, but the smell was making more depressed. Plus I needed to do something, anything at all, to try and help me with the guilt. Laundry would do. I decided to go into work for my shift, even though my heart and head was definitely not into the idea.

Monday was worse for both of us. Tigger wasn’t around to greet Lynn when she got home and he wasn’t around to keep me company on the living room floor as I watched my shows. He and I had kept the same position for the last eight years as we watched TV. He would curl up against my right arm, which I would eventually wrap tightly around his shoulders. His head would poke out from the crook of my arm and he would stick his right arm straight out in front of him. To anybody seeing this for the first time, it would appear like I was choking him. But he loved it. You could squeeze that cat until you heard him sigh, but he would never move. Instead, he would start purring loudly and just go to sleep. He loved to be touched and held more than any other cat I’ve ever had. I don’t expect the next cat to be the same.

In the last twenty-four hours, Lynn and I have talked some more about it and have become more philosophical about things. We’re even starting to believe we did right by him. It’s still hard, though. He was such a gentle and loving creature, we just feel he deserved more near the end. He deserved more of a warning from us and definitely more words from me. I know I held him and stroked him in his final moments, but that’s not enough for me. I should have said all the things I’ve said here. I just can’t vocalize it for some reason. So on Monday night, I started erecting a sort of shrine where his food and water dishes used to be. I’ve taken his favorite towels, blankets, and toys and arranged them around my favorite photo of him. A white candle burns in his water dish every night now, and Lynn has written little notes to him and put them in one of his food dishes. Also in the food dish is a MUTTS comic strip that shows a cat named Brando in a cage at an animal shelter. In the first panel, Brando says, “I’m new around here.” The second panel is a pause for effect. Then, in the third panel, Brando asks, “Do you know where I can find a good lap in this town?” This particular strip was in the paper shortly after we adopted Tigger, and Brando always remind me of our boy. So I cut it out and it has been hanging on our refrigerator ever since. I plan on burying it, along with a couple of his favorite toys, with his ashes. He’ll be placed in the same spot at Eagle Creek Park where we scattered both Bruce and Sarah, but we will wait until the fall when it’s not so buggy and the vegetation isn’t so tangled deep in the woods. For us, this is the only way it can be done. And we will make sure we bury the ashes lengthwise, like he would want if he were here with us.

Goodbye, brother. You were one of the good ones and you will be missed, especially between the hours of 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, but I’m sure there’s plenty of Meow Mix wherever you’re traveling. Take care and be sure to knock over any full water bottles in your path. Y’know…just on general principle…

“Sail On”
by The Commodores

Sail on, down the line
‘Bout half a mile or so
And I don’t really wanna know
Where you’re going
Maybe once or twice you see
Time after time I tried
To hold onto what we got
But now you’re going
And I don’t mind
About the things you’re gonna say
Lord, I gave all my money and my time
I know it’s a shame
But I’m giving you back your name
Guess I’ll be on my way
I won’t be back to stay
I guess I’ll move along
I’m looking for a good time

Sail on down the line
Ain’t it funny how the time can go
All my friends say they told me so
But it doesn’t matter
It was plain to see
That a small town boy like me
Just wasn’t your cup of tea
I was wishful thinking
I gave you my heart
And I tried to make you happy
And you gave me nothing in return
You know it ain’t so hard to say
Would you please just go away

I’ve thrown away the blues
I’m tired of being used
I want everyone to know
I’m looking for a good time
Good time
Sail on honey
Good times never felt so good
Sail on honey
Good times never felt so good
Sail on sugar
Good times never felt so good
Sail on