Half a Month There on Foot

You will find me at the corner of Speed and Power

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I've never seen a cat that acts like a dog



On Tuesday my mom put our cat of fifteen years to sleep.

Technically, she was my cat.

Some how, legally, the cat's name was "Sweet Baby," which is patently ridiculous. Some how I changed "Sweet Baby," to "Butt Butt," which is slightly less ridiculous to me.

I get how people really love pets. My earliest memory questioning my Judeo-Christian upbringing dealt with some Sunday School teacher explaing to a group of us that pets wouldn't be with us with heaven because they didn't have a soul. What the hell kind of "heaven" doesn't have your dog or cat or horse or hamster or lobster?

My house was rarely without at least a cat and a dog. Our typical configuartion was two dogs and two cats growing up. And four horses (which are often included in the stream of names when my mom yells at/for me: "Prince... Robyn... Blaz... Joey!")

You can see she had a little smudge of black on her nose that reminded you of Chaplin or Hitler, depending on her ear position. She was about twelve lean pounds, spending a lot of summer nights outside.

Out of all our animals, there was something unique about Butt Butt. She was so un-cat like. She was chatty but not lippy, affectionate but didn't need to sleep in your lap, and she behaved like a dog. She would team up with the golden retriver to chase away other dogs. She followed you to the mailbox, stood back from the road, watched you get the mail, then walked the fence back with you while you seperated the junk mail from the bills.

Technically, she was my cat.

I went to college and took Finn, a cat from an ex, with me, a refugee of my mom's dislike because her fat, fluffy cat "Pretty Eyes" ("Fatty" to you and me, and it should be obvious by now that despite other abilities I may have, animal naming is not always spot-on *coughBigDogcough*) hated Finn and would attack her on sight. And in the house the world revolved around that fat, lippy cat. So Finn got to live with me in a small closet on Patterson Street.

When Bill started dating my mom, he was pretty straight-forward with his feelings on cats: didn't like 'em. "Hate" is too strong a word, but "dislike" is pretty good there. He and mom used to split their time between houses and cities, and when Bill sold his house and moved to Raphine, he got all the animals too. Including Butt Butt.

The transformation from smoking, Harley-riding, workaholic to the Bill we knew must have been just as jarring as his afinity for Butt Butt. She pretty much adopted him and became his cat, though he was more or less her Bill.

And he wasn't shy about telling you either. "That cat is more like a dog! I've never seen a cat like her." Didn't mean he liked cats, mind you, just meant he liked her. Mom would always point out how much Butt Butt favored Bill over her. "Follows him in the mornings, stays with him while he" and then filled in the blank with whatever project Bill was working on at the time.

Bill, ironically taking care of the animals, died that snowy morning in February while feeding the horses. The morning was such a rush of activity and emotion I didn't ask mom if Butt Butt had been with him, but I'd guess she was.

Mom struggled with the decision to put her down. For the past few months, Butt Butt ate less. She was still just as active, but losing weight. It had been three weeks of not eating.

Last week we got the diagnosis: renal failure. Up until Monday, mom was going to try medication and treatment, which would have meant shots, IV, and special food. Thing is, mom had been trying EVERY kind of food for the past three weeks, and all Butt Butt would do was drink a little milk. She was literally wasting away and was eating less.

I saw her the weekend before last and she acted the same. She meowed at me, raised on her hind legs to meet my hand. When I saw her I asked her if she was eating. She rubbed my leg and lied to me, because she was that kind of cat.

Mom struggled with the decision to put her down. I would've to. It's hard to kill one of your best friends. It's even more difficult to lose another piece of the big puzzle that is your life, to have that section of the board go grey. We're moving into winter again, and that might mean another horse will die. Winter means another February is close.

I've always dealt with animal deaths much more publicly than I have human deaths. It's funny, I hit a point in college, that I began to celebrate where and how I grew up. If friends came with me to my mom's house I was stoked to show off the mountains, the horses, how big our garden used to be, and my cat that acted like a dog.

I'm taking a second of right now to say I had a great little cat.

Technically, she was my cat. You would've liked her.

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