We were still in the afterglow of a wonderful Christmas spent together with our beloved cat Chooch. She was given to me as a Valentine's Day present 15 years prior. She always loved Christmas so much.
We had no idea that this would be our last Christmas with her.
On February 17, 2018, Cat Depot began posting pictures of Zoe on their website in an effort to get her adopted. They must have found out fairly soon that she was not compatible with other cats. She was moved to a separate wing in an office. This was out of the usual traffic path of people coming in to adopt. That, combined with the fact that she wasn't a kitten, made her a bit of a tough sell. This is her first picture.
I had been talking a lot in the last few years about "if" something ever happened to Chooch that I wanted to adopt an adult cat as fast as possible. The idea being that there were so many animals in need of a home. Gina was on board with this idea.
It's amazing how powerful that word "if" is.
It creates a level of unreality in your mind. Instead of acknowledging the inevitability of the life cycle, we protect ourselves from the most painful parts by tossing in the word "if".
I had been inspired by my Facebook friend Joan Dark and the story of Masher the cat.
I remember seeing a commercial several years ago. I don't remember what the commercial was trying to sell. It was a street corner and some people were gathered around a garbage can. There was a piece of wadded up paper laying on the concrete next to the garbage can. The people pointed at it and complained about how lazy and inconsiderate other people were. There was the garbage can. There was the paper. How hard could it have been to just toss the paper in the trash? A young man wearing headphones strolled through, picked up the piece of paper and tossed it in the can and kept walking. The people who had been complaining stood there slack jawed.
This left a powerful impression on me.
In September of 2015, a post began to go viral. FACE had rescued a 13 year old Masher from death row. His family of 13 years had moved Masher's litter box to a place at the top of a set of stairs that was hard for him to reach. He had one accident. One. They took him to the pound. The FACE post elicited powerful reactions. Understandably. People were upset at the lack of apparent humanity. There were long posts of outrage. People were pissed.
While the firestorm raged, Joan Dark in concert with her partner Dill decided to do something besides rage at the darkness.
They rescued Masher. They became my heroes. I told their story over and over again to everyone who would listen. It's a story of action. Of finding light in the darkness.
On March 8 2018, Cat Depot again posted a picture of Zoe, no doubt hoping for a response.
She had been there for 3 months by this time.
They posted a final picture on March 10, 2018.
Still no takers.
On March 31, 2018 (21 days later) we took Chooch to the Southgate Animal Hospital. She had been vomiting. A lot. We thought her system was out of whack. We had been switching foods in an effort to find something she could keep down. We talked with friends and tried different ideas. Her blood work came back normal. We breathed a sigh of relief. We redoubled our efforts to find something she could eat.
On April 7, 2018 we took her back for an x-ray. It showed that Chooch had an enlarged stomach. We didn't know what that meant. The vet gave her a shot and two prescriptions. For about a week there were no sounds of vomiting in the night. We breathed a sigh of relief. Then it came back with a vengeance. I tried jamming pills down her throat in an effort to get her to take her medicine. Gina would sit with her next to the food bowl pleading for her to eat something.
On April 28, 2018 we took Chooch back to the vet. I had been frustrated and agitated. I don't like feeling helpless. I'm a proactive person, but I was out of ideas. The last x-ray was conclusive. There was a mass growing in her stomach and causing her liver to shut down. She had lost a pound in a week and couldn't even keep water down. I looked at the vet and at Gina and I said, "I think we've reached the end." We were taken to a quiet room. A candle was lit at the main desk. We hugged Chooch and tried desperately to convey to her how much she meant to us. Her last act was to reach up and put her arms around Gina's neck. The vet, who had laryngitis, said, "My god... she's hugging her." She was given a sedative and then an injection and died peacefully on the table.
I felt at that moment as if some omnipotent person had reached down and picked me up and shook me vigorously. When I was sat back down I was not the same person as before.
We left. I drove. The first words I spoke to Gina were, "I wouldn't have traded one f---ing second of it." We pulled up to a stop sign. We saw a woman exit her car and pick up a turtle and carry it off the road to safety. Nobody honked. Everybody waited patiently. I was reminded of my pledge.
We had tickets to see Avengers: Infinity War that day. Neither one of us felt like being in the empty house at that moment so we went. Gina curled up in the chair and wept. I sat there watching the film with about 13% of my brain.
Later that day, we went to Cat Depot. It was about 30 minutes before closing. We just went into one of the enclosures and sat there petting cats.
That night Gina was so inconsolable that I reached into the closet and tucked a stuffed animal under her arms so that she could sleep.
I had a dream that night. I saw Chooch and talked with her. I asked her if she was sick and she said she wasn't. She told me she was sorry she got sick and I began to cry and say that it wasn't her fault.
On April 29, 2018 I awoke and had a long conversation with Gina. I told her that what we were about to do was not about circumventing our grief. Indeed, it hasn't served that purpose at all. We are still grieving and will be for quite some time. The human heart is capable of remarkable divergent things. It can absorb great loss while at the same time reach out with hope and compassion.
So we swept up the shattered pieces of our hearts and set out once again to Cat Depot to fulfill our promise. We immediately went to the enclosure that we had gone to the day before. A woman named Margrit came to talk to us. I said that we were there to adopt. She must have noticed something about us. A gravity. A solemnity. A purpose. She asked if we wouldn't mind coming to the other wing. She explained that some cats had to be kept separate from the others for various reasons and as a result were harder to adopt out. We walked into one room and met a cat with a bare patch on its nose. We were told that it was a benign tumor. This scared both of us. We couldn't handle another loss if it turned out to be something else.
We went into the next room. Gina's defenses were up. Understandably. We were both in a highly emotional state. She asked why we were taken from the other enclosure and Margrit explained that we seemed like the kind of people who might give one of these cats a chance. Gina looked at Zoe who was curled up on top of a counter in her cat bed. When Gina looked into Zoe's eyes, Zoe softly head-booped her face. Gina looked back at me. Her eyes were saucers of tears. I looked at Margrit and said one word. "Sold." Margrit immediately burst into tears. Gina's defenses evaporated and they both hugged.
After just under five months, Zoe had found her family and her forever home.
Gina explained to her that we are a bit sad right now and asked that she be patient with us.
She is a Little now. She is part of a triumvirate. That is a powerful thing. She gets 1/3 of the vote.
I told Gina a couple of things that I would like to share. First, I told her that Chooch had sent us a circus cat to help cheer us up. Zoe stands on her hind legs when you leave a room. She plays fetch with her mouse. I've woken up a few times now with her staring into my face and meowing when my eyes finally open. She walks up and head-boops you while you are reading.
The other day, while we were both at work, she knocked a bunch of books off a shelf.
So I decided to turn the shelf into a cat bed.
We are grieving and broken but we will heal and become stronger at the broken places.
The other thing I told Gina was that I wanted to start an Instagram page called 1000actsofkindness. It is still in the early stages, but Gina and I have decided that the best way to express gratitude for the 15 years we had with Chooch is to put 1,000 specific acts of kindness into the world. We have already done 4 of them. 996 to go.
1. We donated the remainder of Chooch's medicine.
2. We adopted a hard to adopt adult cat.
3. We made a $25 matching donation on top of our adoption fee.
4. We started a fundraiser on Facebook for Cat Depot and have raised $63 so far.
Not all the 1000actsofkindness will be cat related. Today, for example, I plan on buying a bag of birdseed and tossing the contents into a field in a park near where we live.
I'm at a point right now where I am at a convergent place of great emotions. I have miles to go and promises to keep. When Gina and I got married I told her that the greatest thing that I would ever do is to love her. By being a caretaker to my family and by learning from past mistakes and growing as a human being, I hope that I am fulfilling my pledge.
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