The Trouble with Cats

I have always had cats.

As a child in Cerritos, we had five fluffy white long-haired Persian cats. Then there was the black cat that wandered into our yard in Moreno Valley, who my mom named Lady and who made it to age 21. When I lived in Virginia, I had two cats, Ashley and Pandora, who I flew back to California when I moved home while I took a Greyhound bus. When my oldest son was about one year old, we adopted our first Porter family cat, ostensibly named “Bubble” (per tiny baby Jacob) but who we just called Kitty.

Then came the mama in the backyard, giving birth to a couple of litters which we did the trap-neuter-release on. We adopted out what we could, adopting in one kitten from each litter: Spooky, who had gotten trapped between our fence and the neighbors’ and presumably abandoned, and then Cheetoh who had a habit of just sitting in the middle of the yard and staring up at the sky—a readymade coyote snack.

Spooky and Cheetoh are brothers. Same mother, different litters, about a year apart before my mom adopted their mom, aptly named Mom. They were close, the way one might expect, until we introduced a foreign element: the third cat.

Here they are attempting to wrap and regift her.

Eventually, Cheetoh and Kitten bonded and that left Spooky out in the cold.

We even have cats at my office, Drake (b&w) and Cleo (tabby) who keep me company while I work—e.g., get in my face, disturb my papers, and so on. Sweet distractions.

And we have an outdoor cat, Millie. She showed up one day, had a litter of kittens—all rehomed to good homes—and was spayed and ear-tipped and given her daily rations of kibble and love and pets. She gradually warmed up enough to come inside occasionally, but we were never sure if she would know what to do with a litter box.

Here she is, coming to greet me at the back door to the office, waiting for her food.

It’s been a hard week. Or two weeks, I guess.

It started on December 8 with a text message from the Inlandia office neighbors’ landlord (aka my friend Charlotte) about a deceased cat they found in the yard that morning. It looked like it had been attacked. Could it be our outdoor cat? Nah, I thought. Why would she have been in their yard? But I said I’d go look and take care of it if it was. I was kind of in denial, fully expecting to find Millie in the backyard at the office and this other cat to be some emotionally-neutral unknown neighborhood cat. But: nope. It was her.

So that was a tough Sunday. But we got through it.

The following weekend, I was lying in bed reading Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by book light while my husband slept. Then I got a text from my older son asking if I was up. I should come downstairs. So I did.

Thus began a night of death watch over our middle cat, Cheetoh, aged 15. His breathing was rapid and there was audible fluid in his lungs. We each took our turns sitting with him, keeping an eye on him through the night (while also dozing on the floor nearby) to be sure he was comfortable and not having an overnight emergency.

The next day we visited the 24hr animal hospital and after testing found out he had congestive heart failure and additionally there was a mass in his lungs, presumably metastasized from his G.I. tract which had been the bane of his existence for most of his life. (Longer story for another time, but he had a near-death experience at age 2.) By the end of the day—another Sunday—we knew we had to say goodbye.

Meanwhile, our eldest cat, Spooky, has had a slowly progressive condition affecting his conjunctiva— e.g. the inner eyelids of his left eye, and a little of his right eye.

We’ve tried prescription antibiotics and antivirals; ointments and eyedrops; pills in pill pockets; saline solution to cleanse his eye of crud. His behavior is generally the same but he doesn’t like us touching his eyes. Of course. Why would he? It hurts.

We’ve been seeing a veterinary ophthalmologist and yesterday they did a biopsy. He has a little shaved spot on his leg from the I.V. and he is still a little loopy from sedative. It was a long day in Upland, waiting. We were sent home with liquid gabapentin and prednisolone plus continuing with the eye drops. Now we wait.

Anyone who has Zoomed with me has at some point been introduced to Spooky. Here he is, on my desk, being camera-shy but otherwise in my way and waiting for pets.

What is it about pets that makes people want to have them? They sure are a lot of work. They make a terrible mess. They’ve ruined furniture, scratched up one hundred year old woodwork, made the house smelly, put holes in my clothes with their claws, cost significant amounts of money in prescription cat food, and at the vet.

When we lost Cheetoh this week, I thought for sure the other two—Spooky and Kitten aka Frankenstein aka Goose—would be in mourning, but they haven’t even seemed to notice. Are they really so self-absorbed? Are we simply projecting onto them what we would expect of humans? Yes, they are warm and cuddly and affectionate, but are we anything more to them than feel-good feeding and petting machines?

Now that Cheetoh is gone, the two of them have been going their own ways. I keep waiting—hoping?—that now it’s just the two of them, they will become closer.

But here I go, projecting human behavior onto the cats again. But there have been times when they seemed closer. Like here, waiting for a phone call.

The trouble with cats—or pets in general, not to mention people—is that everything ends. Sometimes it’s an easy end, sometimes hard. Long and drawn out, or quick.

In the meantime, it’s the holidays. We got our decorations up on Wednesday. I put the Christmas cards in the mail on Thursday and Friday. I still have to ship out presents to our back-east family. I want to enjoy it but frankly I’m also eager to be on the other side of them. I used to sorely dislike January because it meant the best part of the year was over, but the older I get the more I like the fresh start.

I don’t know what to expect for 2025, but I think I’m okay with that?

Maybe.