I'm pretty sure I threatened to kill her a hundred times. Mack took her to the vet to see what was going on with her, why she wasn't using her box. Well, she had bowel loops, her kidneys were shriveled remnants of organs, her thyroid was a disaster and she didn't have that much longer to live. The vet clearly did not know of Miss Kitty's defiance.
When I first met Kitty, Mack and I had just started living together. He came back from a visit to his parents' house with this fluff ball with enormous chunks of matted hair, and suddenly we had a new pet. Kitty was a fine addition to our family, even if she was very clear about the fact the Mack was hers and I was number 2. She and Mack spent hours on the porch swing in the carport, she laying in his lap while he slowly clipped and pulled her mats out. I'd never seen a cat so calmly surrender to someone with barber shears before, but Kitty gave her life over to Mack and he delicately freed her from bad grooming. It was trust and tenderness all wrapped up in one unlikely little package. And I was jealous.
She was an old cat when I met her, probably 15 or more years old. Kitty chose Mack when she was younger, probably after she'd already had a litter of kittens or two in her life. He was camping in the backyard when up walks this puffy hunk of sass who decided to move in. His parents let him keep her.She ended up being pregnant or getting pregnant -- I'm not sure of the details -- and when she gave birth, it really solidified her union to Mack. In the middle of the night, while he slept with her on his chest, she started to deliver her kittens. He says he woke up and froze, afraid to move and hurt her or her babies.
Every night when Mack and I would go to sleep, Kitty would assume her place, perched right on top of his chest, secure in his line of sight. And sometimes, just to really drive home her place in his life, she would lay between us, a 6 pound wall of fur that kept me away from her man.
When we took her to California with us, she rode in the cab of the pickup truck, most often on the center console next to her boyfriend. At night she would walk around on top of everybody and interrupt their sleep. Mack would put her in a little cat box when we stopped so she could do her business, but other than that, she was an amazingly good traveler. I was shocked at how well she did on that trip.
In Los Angeles, she settled right in. Aside from that one time she was arrested, she seemed beyond content with her life. She slept the necessary 20+ hours a day, liked potato chips, and demanded we rub her tits by plopping down on her side and rolling around.
She also liked to have her butt spanked and would often discuss the founder of the People's Republic of China with Mack. When I decided to put a bird feeder outside and attracted a family of cute little mice, Kitty used it as an opportunity to hone her hunting skills and wiped out the entire clan. We tried to make it so she didn't have to jump -- something she hated -- and Mack and she spent hours every day less than 2 feet from one another.
After she went to Mack's parents' house, she seemed to be doing well... not as well as she'd have done had she gone to live with Jen, but well enough. She liked being outside and got endless attention from the neighborhood kids and passersby in their apartment complex. Shahin fed her turkey and Tom gave her milk and that, combined with hundreds of pets a day, made her happy.She was losing weight, but we knew she was old and sick and didn't have much time left. In fact, we'd been telling ourselves she didn't have that much time left for about 6 months (the vet had said she had a couple months max). When we knew for sure we were moving, we decided to leave her with his parents, unsure she'd survive the road trip a second time.
One day before we left Laila and I were coming home from a walk, and we saw Kitty on the porch. "What is she doing?" Laila asked, and seeing Kitty twisted around with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, I told Laila to go get Mack. I scooped her tiny body up in my arms and rubbed her dirty little nose, and by the time Mack got out, whatever was happening had stopped. She was shaking, disoriented, barely able to walk, but she was back. Her eyes were tired but she was behind them. Two days later, it was like nothing had ever happened. Leave it to Kitty to improve by having a stroke.
We left California a few days later, and knowing that would be the last time we saw Miss Kitty was rough. Mack did his usual hurry-through-goodbyes-so-they're-not-as-hard as we were heading out, but I picked her up, nuzzled her little face, came to peace with my biggest challenge for getting Mack's love and attention. I took her picture, and off we went.
Miss Kitty continued to deteriorate. On June 25, she was put down. She really was an angel of a cat.
