Great And Small

She was not my idea.  I think I've said that before.

Our son wanted a dog. Our next-door neighbor at the time was a lonely widow woman who had called the police on the former owners of our house about their dog.  We asked our son if he would like a cat.  He was always a compliant child and he said yes.

My wife and son (who had just turned seven) went to a local cat shelter called Good Mews and found a gray female kitten who had a white chest and white paws. Her brother was with her. His name was Picasso.  Her name was Dali, as in Salvadore Dali. Some cat people are pretentious.

My wife and son got Dali. They brought her home and changed her name to Gracie because she was gray. I think it was a better name than Dali.

The President at the time was Bill Clinton.  We had just learned the name of someone called "Monica".  I think a certain New York Real Estate developer was still married to his second wife, but I'm not too sure. I didn't pay much attention to him at the time.

From that time on, we had a little gray cat in the house.

Like a lot of men, I never really thought too much about cats, one way or another.

We had one cat when  I was growing up. My mom ran over it.

I know this sounds like that toxic masculinity that is supposedly so wrong but I thought cats were sort of feminine. So I thought we would just put up with the cat until we could get a dog like God intended.

Of course, the little gray cat had another idea. While she liked my son, whose pet she was and she liked my wife, as a fellow gal, the stupid cat literally adored me. So much so I have said, "There have been three females that have loved me unconditionally: my mother, my wife, and this stupid cat".

I tried to act like I didn't like her. But my wife caught me cooing at Gracie, "Who loves his Gracie girl? Daddy loves his Gracie girl. I do, I do, I do love my Gracie girl".  It is hard to look macho when you are saying this.

She would always have to sit with me. She would come up, purring, stand on my stomach and place her legs on my shoulders like she was hugging me.  This ritual went on for years.

Like they say, the days drag on but the years fly by.  The seven-year-old was soon in middle school, then high school, and then college. One day, he brought home a tall blonde that was crazy about cats. Then, on another day, he married that blonde and he was out of the house.

It was Lori and me and Gracie makes three.

Gracie scratched our furniture to death.  She would have these killer hairballs, too. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night and stepping barefoot in a hairball on the way to the bathroom.

But she made it up to me by licking my nose while I'm in a deep sleep to make sure I knew that her plate is empty and she needed some food in it. I would get up, walk downstairs, and put out a plate of Fancy Feast, which is neither fancy or a feast.  Gracie would watch me, walk up to the plate, take a couple of charity licks and walk off.  The clock  usually read 4:30. In the morning. On my day off.

She could be funny. One time, my next-door neighbor (same house, different person) brought over his new puppy to show us. Gracie comes walking around the corner and sees the puppy.  She turned to me and had the most incredulous facial expression. I didn't know cats had facial expressions except for their general condescension. Her expression said, "What the hell is this dog doing in my house?" She turned around and walked out of the room. 

Six years ago, I had a blog post about her kidney disease, which is very common in cats.

The vet prescribed a pill to be given daily. Giving a cat a pill is truly a skill and I'm happy to say my wife mastered it. How my wife did it, I will never know.

As the years past, Gracie basically peed a lot.  However, in the past year and a half, she started missing the litter box on occasion. As you can imagine, it created a big mess.

Then this past April, I went to the bathroom where we kept her litter box. There was blood on the floor. The vet said it was a Urinary Tract Infection and gave her a shot.  She seemed to get better. But then she got worse.

Most of May and June, Gracie was up all night going to the litter box. She was not peeing as much. When she did pee, it landed on the floor, somewhere in the general vicinity of the litter box.

But, she was still eating well, two cans of cat food a day.  Then it was once can a day. Soon, the food on her plate was half-eaten.

This past Tuesday I realized she hadn't eaten in two days. She was up a lot, going to the litter box, trying to make it, but most of the time failing. There was blood  She was walking like she was almost bow-legged.

We decided to take her to the Vet.  We didn't know if it was "the time" or not.

I got out her cat carrier. For 19 of her 21 years, it was the biggest pain to get her into her cat carrier. Most of the time, she would run off and try to hide. It would take weeks to get her into the cat carrier.

I put in on the floor and opened the cage. I said, "Do you want to go see Shelia?" (the front office staffer at the Vet). Gracie strolled in.  Right then I knew it was "the time".

That still didn't make it less painful when the Vet told us we needed to have Gracie put down. Gracie was two months away from being 22 years old. In human years that is 104 years old.

It was quick.  Gracie was given a sedative. She growled when she was given the shot but it was the last time she felt pain.

She was absolutely the sweetest cat I've ever been around. Of course, it was because she was my cat and I was her person. There is no greater love than between the grumpy dad and the pet he didn't want.
 
She was just a little kitten from a shelter. The shelter told us she had feline HIV and probably wouldn't live to 7 years old. She lived three times longer.

She didn't have to worry about predators, cars, or dogs. She had her run of the house and could basically sit anywhere she wanted. She didn't have to hunt for food. She had a house full of humans who would play with her and love on her.  She basically won the cat lottery.

We did too.