A Tuxedo for Valentine’s Day

For Father’s Day in 2011, our youngest daughter who was a student at UC Davis, and roommate with several Veterinary school students, adopted a Bengal from the campus research colony as a gift for her dad, who has been a “big cat lover” most of his life.

When I met my husband, he’d wallpapered the study of his house with lion wallpaper, and we made a special trip to pet baby lion cubs at Game Park in Bandon Oregon on our honeymoon.

My husband cuddling a baby lion on our honeymoon

Cuddling twin lion cubs on our honeymoon

“Dad, this is the closest you’re ever going to get to having a lion or tiger for a pet!” our gleeful daughter announced.

A Bengal is a cross between a striped domestic cat and an Asian wildcat. Their offspring are known by F numbers. In most states it’s illegal to own a wild-domestic cross that is an F1, 2, or 3. Our cat, a female, is an F4, meaning she is the fourth generation descendent of the cross between domestic and wild. 

Researchers at the UC Davis vet school breed and study these colonies of cats. Bengals have a tendency toward deafness, and when that occurs, those particular cats become objects of continuing observation. A healthy hearing cat, on the other hand, is adopted out from the campus, free of charge, and evidently to anyone who’ll take them.

Our female Bengal, who is a 7 pound runt (this breed is usually large 13-14 pounds and very powerful jumpers) arrived with unsuitable name of “Tigger,” which did no justice to her exotic origins or markings. We changed her name to the Persian, “Malika” meaning Princess, because she is sleek and regal. She also has all the instincts of a wild animal—to hide from anything she perceives as a predator, not just the vacuum cleaner like most cats, but humans as well.

Malika, playing in wrapping paper Christmas 2011

Malika hid under the quilt on our daughter’s empty bed her first month with us, then discovered a rip in the fabric below the box-springs and hid up inside them for another month. Since she never let us see her, I was often worried she’d somehow sneaked out of the house and had disappeared into one of many hiding places in our two acres of fenced-in yard. When we sealed the hole under the box-springs, she climbed inside the back of our couch for another month, and I could rest easy, seeing a small lump in the leather, knowing she was safe.

When she finally came out from hiding, she came straight for Theo, a rescue we’d had 7 or so years by then, a feral, who’d been much more easily tamed, since he was a domestic cat way down the gene pool. Malika shadowed Theo everywhere; she pawed on his belly and nuzzled her mouth against his fur as if she were nursing, soothing herself to sleep. Or she grabbed his head and kicked him. Whatever her action, snuggle or wrestle, he responded in kind: it was his nature to adapt.

Theo and Malika grooming each other 

When we moved to Washington and built an enclosed cat yard our first spring here and installed a cat door we thought Theo, who’d had years of experience, might teach Malika how to nudge through headfirst. Instead, he mimicked her ineffectual pawing at the flap while balancing on hind legs, an arduous process that didn’t always produce results.

Theo and Malika sharing a cat perch 

Because Theo loved us and cuddled in our laps, Malika would sometimes sit by our feet on the couch or bed, but always out of arm’s reach, and if we leaned too far forward to stroke her, she’d rocket away. It wasn’t until this January, when Theo died, that Malika, after four and half years of living with us, came voluntarily to my lap and allowed me to pet her.

Malik sitting just out of reach

Not only did she come to me for affection, she spoke to me all day long, loud, plaintive. She missed the love of her life, and I was a poor substitute. Even though I was laid up from injury and sitting much more than usual, I wasn’t what she needed. Her cries told me so.

January 2016, the first time she came to my lap voluntarily. The zebra pjs probably helped disguise me!

I thought we might try being a one cat family for a spell; it’d certainly be easier to remodel our house with one cat than with the 3 to 5 we’d had since moving to Washington (two of those are “grand-kittens” who live with us for months at a time). But Malika, rubbing against my wobbly legs, nearly tripping me while I crutched around our house, needed a cat, a young malleable cat who’d look to her, as she had to Theo for companionship.

And so I set to looking at cat rescue websites and Facebook pages. I knew the second I laid eyes on Theo’s online photo that he was meant to be our family’s cat; and was waiting for the same zinging feeling. There was a little darling named Velcro I thought was the one. My husband helped me into the car along with my crutches and we drove to a pet adoption fair to find out Velcro was promised to a couple who’d been looking for a kitten for a year.

But less than a week later, I found a rescue near Tacoma that posted this photo along with the message: “Hi, my name is Tux. I am looking for a forever home that has other kitties. I am a little shy around people, but I love other kitties. Looking for someone that will take me in as a buddy for their kitty, but won't care that I'm not very much of a people kitty.”

Tux's Facebook ad

And I knew Tux needed Malika as much as she needed him. We brought him home two weeks ago today, and call him Tuxedo because the extra vowels and syllables are easier on the tongue, and I hope on the ear, as our new feline family member learns his name.

Tuxedo was a feral rescued at three months and fostered for another three months in a home with two cats. His foster family said he’d hide for a few days, which he did, and so Malika was shocked to find another cat in the house with her when he came out from hiding. After two days of half-hearted hissing and chasing, their friendship began, and Malika quickly became the object of Tuxedo’s affection and adoration.

Tuxedo enjoying a sunspot and computer cords

At six months, he is almost Malika’s size, and he walks alongside her, rubbing against across rooms, down hallways, as though they’re one creature. Their camaraderie and resemblance harkens to mind Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg’s 1978 album Twin Sons of Different Mothers. Like those musicians, these cats belong together.

New best friends

Though feral, Tuxedo is not wild; he has all the makings of a domestic housecat, lounging in plain sight, looking at me as I call to him by name waving. He even allows me to come within a foot or two before scuttling away. If I weren’t still hobbled, he’d find me reaching under beds, sliding him into my warm lap, pressing him beyond his comfort as part of my acclimation efforts. But with my immobility comes forced restraint, and I suppose that works in Tuxedo’s favor, the relationship developing on his terms not mine.

In sight, but out of reach

In this transition, Malika has decided, to my great delight, that I still must pet her, and this is a conundrum for Tuxedo. He must be near her, even if it means standing on my legs while I’m pinned under a bed quilt, carefully keeping his body just beyond reach of my fingertips, leaping down when I squirm, his weight is too much for my sore muscles. Most often, Malika jumps down to join him, and they slink way linked like the Siamese cats in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, without the bad attitude.

  

Walking in step

So close, their tails are crossed

The voids in their lives have been filled by the presence of another. Love wears a Tuxedo and has come home to us.

It’s Time for Success!

For the past six weeks, my life has revolved around my living room couch. I succumbed to a terrible cold the last days of 2015, my first in over five years. I huddled under a blanket and watched DIY shows on HGTV, wrung out from worry over loved one’s health scares, Christmas travel, and a return home to a dying cat. After blogging about Theo’s life and passing, I received an email of condolence from my writing friend Laurie Skiba who posed this question:

“Each year I choose a word to guide me. Do you do this, too, or choose a particular way to frame the year ahead? In past years I've chosen trust, leap, Magnificat, fear/less, and for 2015, distill (given the need for much downsizing, still an ongoing project). In every case the word has figured significantly, and I have learned that it's a good idea to choose wisely. (The year I chose leap was pretty wild.) This year I'm choosing breakthrough so I may be in for a rough ride, but I think it's a necessary one.”

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. When my children were of school age, I always used the beginning of the academic year as a new beginning—forming the schedule and activities that would shape the life of my family and me for nine months. So when Laurie presented her question, I blew my nose and set my congested brain to thinking. If I were to choose a word to guide me for the coming year, how would I discern that word? Would I take it to prayer, meditation, or thumb through a dictionary?

Well, my process didn’t matter, because Success popped into my head almost instantly. I have to say that I was initially resistant, that I wanted a less materialistic and more spiritual word. Something like Openness or Journey, and then I realized that my husband and I have been living those words for the past four years of constant change. I hadn’t labeled our life, but I’ve been very conscious of our intention, of trusting the unknown, of risking our finances, time, energy, and spirit since moving to Puget Sound four years ago.

Framed that way, Success is the perfect word for 2016. It’s time to stop losing money (a condition we share with many entrepreneurs and small business owners in their first years of business). It’s time for my husband to succeed as a licensed general contractor, a real estate investor, and business owner. Time to work for clients rather than always on speculation that someone might buy what we build. It’s also time for his vision of hiring veterans to become a reality, allowing him to continue his excellent mentoring of his young adult employees.

It’s time for me to succeed in the new role of real estatebroker that I’ve taken on; to recoup the money I’ve spent on education, licensing, and professional memberships, to find a client who isn’t me, or our company. And, it’s time for me to succeed in making writing time a serious priority, remembering that writing poetry, essays, and short stories are also endeavors that I am passionate about and feel called to.

So on New Year’s Day I upped my zinc intake, waited for my cold to abate, and for success to arrive. Now we’re a week into February, and I've been laid up by injury, unable to participate in my usual activities, finding that Success is a slippery fish, darting in sea filled with many other species: loss, illness, even failure. I have more to say on the subject, and I will soon, but right now, I’m ready to tune into the Superbowl, where success or failure has nothing to do with my own life.

Spraining My Way to Stillness

Two Saturdays ago I was attacking Himalayan blackberries by the roots, crawling under bushes to get to their thick giant canes with my Hori knife and clippers, feeling like a conqueror, until I tweaked my back trying to toss the canes out into the yard from inside the branches of the bush. I said a lot of “ouch, ouch, ouch” while my back rebelled as I clipped the roots from the final canes before maneuvering out from the branches, and hobbling into the house. I took a dose of ibuprofen and one of my prescription muscle relaxers and felt fine until late that Tuesday night when my husband and I were pushing furniture around our living room in order to set up a ladder to determine the source of a sudden roof leak. I felt a sharp twinge when I stood up from the couch, but forgot about it by the time I went to sleep.

Wednesday morning dawned, and I couldn’t stand straight when I got out of bed and couldn’t put weight on my right leg. So I hunched way over, bent my knees, and shuffled to the bathroom. It was a painful trip downstairs to the couch, where I spent nearly all day, except for the agonizing moments when I hobbled to the kitchen or bathroom. That evening, my husband drove me to Urgent Care where they suspected I sprained the iliac ligament on my right side, causing inflammation of my sciatic nerve, through the groin and down my leg.

I was given a shot, prescription anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxer, crutches, and instructions to rest—bed rest, but I can’t lay down comfortably, so I ensconced myself on our reclining couch (as I had all day) with pillows and blankets, pills and a water bottle, heating pad, earplugs, all within arm’s reach so I might get a decent night’s rest, which I couldn't.

I was supposed to spend the following day in real estate classes, but Thursday came and I felt worse not better, I couldn’t imagine trying to hobble around the MLS office on crutches, or sit up straight and lean toward a monitor, when any motion caused pain. And so I spent that Thursday much as I had Wednesday, trying to remain as still as possible, waiting for my husband to return home from work to take me to the ER where I got stronger painkillers and steroids. At home, I watched TV and typed on my laptop only my fingers in motion, no shifting or fidgeting, movement only as a last resort. And most of my typing involved cancelling activities: not just the real estate classes, but a trip to Florida to see my soul sister as well.

For the past two weeks I’ve experienced what friends and loved ones with chronic pain experience daily. And in my temporary disability, I can say that pain makes me tired, grumpy, weepy. It’s not a contemplative stillness that leads to creativity, but a stillness that when breached brings waves of bodily insult and the hard accompanying breath of trying not to crumple in place, or break down in sobs, or give into hopelessness of ever feeling better. Pain is a thug, threatening to pummel if we’re not completely obedient to its demands.

I’ve been told the only way through pain is acceptance, to embrace it—and I thought that meant psychic and spiritual pain, and that seemed true enough. But I've always tried to dull physical pain: I take Chinese herbs and rub arnica on my neck at the first sign of a neck or headache, and I try to “stay ahead of it” with painkillers after surgery. I’ll do anything to avoid physical pain, but there are moments when my “pain body” (to use a phrase from Eckhart Tolle) is all consuming, when my consciousness is solely focused on my pain, my world spun so small it’s no bigger than the sensation of spasm and heat slicing through my thigh.

I know I’m supposed to ask why this injury showed up or what it has to teach me, but I’d much rather distract myself with HGTV home renovation shows or reading all those links about literature and life I save from my Facebook feed and forget about. Only when my body is completely still can I find pain-free moments. Media helps me forget about my circumstances—being unable to walk or work, and having to cancel a trip this weekend to Whidbey Island with the Chrysostom Society, an amazing group of Christian writers.

Sitting on my couch reading these past few weeks, with only my own mind’s chatter to contend with, I've taken an awful lot of naps; another method, I suppose, to cope with pain and disappointment.

My dear husband has been preparing all my meals and waiting on me, bringing down clothes and toiletries down from our top floor bedroom, in addition to working full-time. When I try to care for myself, pouring a cup of tea, or carrying a plate, my body rebels with a sharp zing, a high voltage warning that I’ve overdone it. So I sit and stare at the growing pile of clutter on our kitchen table and floors in need of vacuuming, and I resist the urge to clean.

It is though I’ve been given a prescription for stillness along with my cyclobenzaprine. Will I follow the instructions, and if so, what will my life look like when I’ve been healed?

Memento Mori for Theo

Today's sunrise

The sun came up blazing near Mt. Rainier this morning, jack frost shimmered on the neighbor’s lawn, and in our house the smell of death lingers on blankets, clothes, and bodies, as our cat Theo labors to breathe on this, the last day of his life. 

Beauty and loss have been especially twinned in my mind and heart this Fall as the days grew ever shorter, the brief glory of fiery leaves punctuating the leaden sky before their descent to the compost pile, as I received news of the precarious health of those I love.

Theo in our Christmas tree 2014

And yet I know others who carry burdens and sorrows more dire and devastating with an acceptance and strength that towers like a grand mountain over my tiny hill of hope. For though I am a believer now (and for the past 30 years), I was a worrier first, and that deeply grooved record can begin spinning before I’m even aware of it: how will I know when Theo's time has come? How will our wild Bengal Malika get along without her Theo? How will any of us get along without our affable affectionate Theo?

Malika and her Theo before our move to Washington December 2011

Theo and Malika enjoying the view from our Bainbridge Island home Spring 2012

Malika and Theo enjoying the second floor deck at our Gig Harbor home Summer 2015

Last night, I wasn’t sure if he would be with us this morning. After the vet sent him home with some fluids under the skin so that our family had time at home to say goodbye, we set him in his heated cat bed in my lap, underneath a blanket, and he was so still, his breathing so shallow I had to put my finger in front of his nose to feel a faint whiffle of breath. Part of me wanted him to slip from this world while we all slept, sparing us the heartache of the injection that lies ahead of us late this afternoon. Another part of me is grateful for the hard gift of companioning him into death, whether he his aware of our presence or not.

I remember visiting my grandfather in skilled nursing less than two weeks before he died. It was my first encounter with death, and I took my cue from maudlin Hallmark movies, holding his hand, looking deeply into his eyes, and saying, “I love you Grandpa,” my big declaration that would somehow bring him peace. His response, “I know. And I love you, too.”

Of course he knew. We were not estranged. We’d had 35 years of history. I spent holidays and a week at my grandparents’ each summer as a child, and held my grandfather’s large warm hand while he prayed over our meals. He was present at my wedding, the baptism of my children, Thanksgivings and Easters, driving 500 miles two or three times a year to visit my growing family in a VW Vanagon that always broke down. A stroke and immanent death would not erase a lifetime of love demonstrated and uttered so thoroughly that it had lodged in our bones.

Today I held Theo against my chest while the late morning sun streamed in the living room. He raised his weak head to the rays, began to purr and nuzzle my face—his trademark move set aside these past weeks. Then, worn out from the effort, he inched away and I returned him to his own bed. He shifts uncomfortably, and I offer blankets and a heater, small succor as dehydration, kidney disease, and infection slow his heart and temperature, and usher him from my life. Today he suffers. Tomorrow he will be memory. And, oh, how I will remember him.

Cat pile on my husband Winter 2012

I first saw Theo in 2004 in a photo on Project Purr’s website. Our dog and I were mourning the loss of our cat Roscoe, looking for another companion. He was named “Angel” at the time and stared at the camera with his one eye open wide. I knew he was meant to be mine and went to visit his foster home, a small room above a garage secluded from humans and other pets. He was about one-year-old (an estimate our current vet feels is 3-4 years short, given his health crisis), and feral, one of 20 found on a ranch near Santa Cruz, California. A veterinarian who worked with the rescue removed his eye, damaged beyond repair by respiratory disease, and replaced it with a ball (an unusual reconstruction in a cat) before sewing the lid shut. The impression is a permanent cheerful wink.

My family and I picked up Angel and returned home only to find a message from the rescue on our answering machine, saying they’d decided against giving him to us since we lived in Boulder Creek—home to coyotes. In earlier years, we’d had two cats go missing, assumably snatched by coyotes, and my husband erected two acres of deer fencing that kept out all predators except rattlesnakes. I guess Project Purr didn’t have the heart to say no to the four of us when we showed up eager for our new family member, having left our house before they called.

We promptly renamed our adoptee Theo—after my father whose middle name is Theodore, and who lost one eye in his successful battle against sinus cancer. Then we began household desensitization—showing Theo that running taps, flushing toilets, dishwashers, television, and human laps posed no dangers. We succeeded on all those fronts, though we never could convince him about the vacuum.

The rescue told us Theo had hip dysplasia, and that combined with the loss of an eye, would relegate him to a quiet sedentary life. The first time he slipped out our backdoor, into our fully fenced yard, he climbed high into an oak tree, and never looked back. Soon he was taking full advantage of the cat door, slipping out to walk the top of our deck rails, 14 feet off the ground, and successfully capturing blue-bellied lizards while they basked on sunny rocks.

 

Enjoying the fenced at yard on Bainbridge Island

Once, unbeknownst to us, Theo caught a garter snake that slipped into a heater vent and lodged in our ductwork. I will never forget the horrendous odor that greeted me when I switched on the heat, nor my husband’s attempts to locate the source, nor the sight and smell of the maggot infested carcass he finally located. We closed the cat door after that, becoming door monitors who refused to let Theo or our other cats in until they released their prey.

For nearly 12 years, Theo lived the life any two-eyed cat would envy. And his “eye-niqueness” led our youngest daughter to adopt her own one-eyed cat and its sibling five years ago. The “grand-kittens” are frequent visitors at our home, and when two friendly one-eyed cats greet visitors at the door, our guests often do double-takes. Last year, a repairman said, “What’s with the one-eyed cats?”

  

I muttered something about them both being rescues, while I ushered him to the water heater. My explanation was inadequate, as it always is when we talk about love and how it alone has the power to save us, no matter our fate.

Farewell furry friend