"Mittens...

YOU are a very nice pussycat."

text and images by Larry Dudock

I really shouldn't have even liked this cat, much less become attached to her.

I didn't choose her, and I didn't select her name. These were 'family' decisions at the time, and I was one voice in five. My sister Alison had spearheaded the drive to get a cat. I didn't object to the choices made, but her input seemed to count more. There was this young, grey cat in the pound, very frightened by all the barking dogs around her, sitting at the back of her small cage. "Let's get her," Ali said.

She had splotches of white fur on the top of both forepaws, hence her name.

Until her final years, Mittens was a nasty, assertive, aggressive cat, never one to let us off easy for anything. Mostly, she wanted to be left alone, and she let you know that through her meows, which carried the unmistakable tone of, "If you touch me, so help me, I'll fix you so you'll use up your whole band-aid supply in one night!"

But, I usually had other plans.

I developed a fast set of reflexes over the years, learning to anticipate how she would move and react, learning to handle her and pick her up in ways that minimized the possibility of getting hurt. But perfection here was unattainable and every so often her claws would connect. If I had a nickel for every time I was bitten or scratched by her, to the point of blood being drawn, I'd be a rich man.

She awoke from her sleep with a start, to find my nose two inches away from her face.

"Well, hello!"

"MEEOOOW!"

"How are you doing?" My fingers went to the top of her head for the opening greeting. She closed her eyes. "You are getting your nice head scratched." My fingers went back and forth on the top, occasionally stroking the sides behind the whiskers. "Not too old to get your head scratched!" My fingers moved to caress the ears. "Very nice ear! ...very nice other ear!" My hand moved down to her chest. Her eyes followed. "Very nice belly. Very nice belly." Suddenly my hand was underneath her, separating her from her warm spot on the couch, rotating her paws to face the ceiling while I placed her in my lap.

"REEEOOW!"

"Yes, now you are getting your head scratched and your belly tickled." My right hand went to her favorite spot behind the whiskers while my left hand rubbed her underbelly. She stretched out her hind legs at me, separating her toes. "Yes, you like that. Getting your nice head scratched and your belly tickled. YOU will stay here all day as long as I scratch your head." I could hear sounds of purring. "Mmmmm. Yes, feels very good." My left hand moved over a few inches. "Very nice tail. How did you get such a big, loonnng tail?" She opened her eyes and watched me. "Such a nice tail. Such a nice coat. ...You have these nice toes." Her front paw swiped at me, grazing the back of my hand. "OOWW! Nasty pussycat!" I gave her a mild swat on the head. "Don't do that!" I looked at my hand. A tiny trickle of blood, maybe not even enough for a band-aid. I went back to her head. "you still have a very nice head." My fingers went back to her favorite spot behind her whiskers. "Yes, a very nice head." I gently lifted her off my lap and placed her back on the couch, then gave her head its 'goodbye' pets. "See you later, mitacle!"

That's what I miss most: 'to have and to hold,' my outlet for physical affection is gone.

She ran away once, in her younger days. After several weeks went by and she didn't come back, we thought she never would, so we went out and got another cat, Patches.

Then, a month after she disappeared, she turned up again, at our front door, looking up anxiously, wondering why we were taking so long to let her in.

Although we called Patches "your little playmate" when talking to Mittens, they never liked each other. Mit was not above taking an occasional swipe at her fellow feline, and always gave her dirty looks when they passed in the hallway. I have a picture of the two of them, standing on opposite sides of the glass door leading from the kitchen to the deck, eyeing one another curiously.

I always thought Mit would be the first one to go, but it was the other way around. Patches died on Columbus day, 1996, at the age of twenty-one. She had been sick for a week; We'd been preoccupied with a sick relative, and by the fact that another had been in a serious car accident earlier that day (no injuries), so we didn't give Patch the attention we otherwise would have. We regret letting her suffer that long.

After Patches died, we spoiled Old Mit rotten. Turkey, lox, bits of steak, you name it. Mittens was already a full-grown cat when we got her, and that was in 1975. She'd lived more than four times the lifespan she would have had in the wild, and about double the lifespan most cats have living with humans. It is almost unheard of for a cat to live this long. We attribute it to three things: We fed her better food (especially during the last year) than many people get; She got an extreme amount of physical affection... and we almost NEVER, in her whole life, brought her to a vet.

In her final months, she'd been going visibly downhill: increasing difficulty in climbing onto furniture, emitting loud, blood-curling meows in the middle of the night for no reason, an increased liking and tolerating of petting, an inability to digest cat food delivered in chunks (no grinding teeth left), an occasional loss of bladder and bowel control. We rigged up a makeshift stairway of books and cartons to enable her to get onto her favorite couch more easily. We also lined it with multiple layers of tablecloth, towels and bed sheets, to protect it when she began losing control more regularly; a wise decision.

Towards the end it accelerated. One day I looked at her and noticed she had a stomach that she didn't have a week ago. We took her to the vet. He said he noticed an enlarged liver and a rapid heartbeat, but the blood tests came back negative; there wasn't any one glaring thing wrong, just general deterioration. "What's her lifespan," my dad asked the vet during that visit. "Twelve to sixteen years," he replied. Mittens was twenty-three.

The vet gave us some medication for her, which didn't help much. One day I looked down at her and noticed that one of her front paws was twice the size of the other one! She was becoming increasingly unable to remove fluid, and it was collecting in the extremities. If it wasn't so ugly, it would have been laughable.

Towards the end I kept wishing that she would let us off easy; that we would wake up one morning to find that she had died peacefully, in her sleep. But Mit had never let us off easily for anything in her life, and wasn't about to start now.

My dad and I decided that we would wait until she was in physical pain, and then act. As long as we could keep her comfortable, could give her days some measure of quality, we'd let her along for the ride as long as she was able. But we would not neglect her as we had her playmate.

Finally it got so that she couldn't walk, not even a few steps. She had put on a pound of fluid in two weeks, and looked like a balloon. One evening her meows changed, sounding like cries for help. I knew what we would have to do. ...My big fat lump, my beautiful pussycat Mit, was dying and I couldn't stop it. I sat next to her, stroking her gently, easing her discomfort, for thirty-five minutes, weeping openly.

"Heart has not beat for the last twenty seconds," the vet told us; the injection had done its work. I looked at her, laying perfectly still. I picked up her tail and let it go; it fell down immediately, and did so when I tried it a second time. Her eyes had developed that familiar artificial, glazed-over look I had seen the night Patches died. I was able to get through it by continually telling myself that she'd have died anyway. The vet speculated that she might have had three to seven days of pain left, had we done nothing; It was best for her this way.

"You're dying, small one," I had told her, several minutes before the injection. "We know you're in pain, and we brought you here to stop it." She lay there, breathing quietly, not even bothering to nibble at the lox we'd brought along for her. "I can remember when we first brought you home," I told her, "You were looking all around, exploring, going from room to room of this giant house -- so different from the tiny cage that you'd been used to at the pound. ...When you became our pussycat, it became our job to look out for you..." I stroked her head gently.

"...to make sure nothing bad happens to you."

"Well, we can't make you all better, but we can make the pain go away, and that's what we're going to do. ...I want to thank you for all the years of pleasure you've given to me, to us. ...I love you very much, Mit."

We took her home and buried her in the backyard, next to her little playmate, about twenty inches below ground. They call those "Shallow graves," I think, but I don't see why. What is the point of digging so far down that when the remains rot, they have no chance to fertilize the ground and give birth to new life? It was Sunday, November 23rd, 1997 -- Grey skies, overcast and cold... fitting weather. We placed two plain square stepping slates over the graves to mark them. Writing seems unnecessary, at least for the moment. *We* know what's there; that's all that matters.

The house is like a tomb now, huge, dead and silent; I wish it weren't.

I miss you terribly.

Larry Dudock December 1, 1997

Top of Page

Library

Human Touch Museum