Clarycat has died (2009-2023)

How she looked a few minutes after the anesthesia was injected — she is no longer alive but for a few minutes she is as alive, and retains her beauty; note the IV in her paw: it enabled her death to be peaceful, gentle

1 a.m, 11/21: My bed feels very empty. Half its intended occupants are gone. Ian sleeping on his cat tree nearby — temperamentally he keeps a little distance. There are 3 cat comforters on this bed. I sleep on the side where Jim spent his years of sleep. A haunted bed.

Dear friends,

This past Saturday night Clarycat’s condition worsened. She stopped eating and drinking, she seemed to be no longer able to stand steadily; her walking was a continual falling and tumbling over. Friday night on my lap I felt her trembling intensely. On Sunday I had her in her cat-bed by my side as I sat at my computer where I work (read, write, think). Next to her the electric radiator (with a towel on it so if I need to wipe her it will be a warm towel), to the side of the cat-bed, some food and water. She lays there very still but sometimes I can tell she is awake. Someone suggested to me she was trying to live on for my sake; she has been staying very close for the last few days. And it so worries me because it is such an effort for her to follow me. The baby-wrap doesn’t work, so I try to carry her in cat-beds, which I decided to rotate (as she wets them and is uncomfortable).  When she trembles so, I fear she is in pain. So Izzy finally agreed.

This morning at about 8:10 I called the local Vet (the Mobile vet was much less accommodating), and I had a “walk-in” appointment at 10:30 am, where I was assured I would be holding her as the euthanasia proceeded, and could have her ashes in an urn in a few days. She did cry out from her carrier as we were walking from the car to the building — some instinct? but beyond that she made no sound, maybe mild mews. They took me right into a room in the back so my crying state would not disturb the other patients (people and pets waiting to be seen). The young man took down data and then I paid with a credit card ($417). Then the super-kind Vet who took Clary away to the “treatment” room to have the IV (which they called catheterized); you can see it in her paw. She brought her back and placed her in my lap. She asked if she should go out and I could have a couple of minutes with Clary. I said no. Then what she did was twice inject into the tube anesthesia. She was so frail the first dose did it; I saw her jerk and knew then it was over. So as I felt Jim’s heart stop, so I witnessed her lose her life. I held her in my arms as I had held him.

The Vet then started talking of how she had joined Jim “somewhere.” I had told her of how she had been attached to him, how he had died of esophageal cancer and how that and the death of my dog had influenced the way I was trying to the right and best thing for Clary and me and Izzy. I then tried to stop this sort of sort of vaguely religious talk, and said I was an atheist, but she seemed not to be able to stop herself from coming back to her cloud. She said, Was it not comforting? or some such statement asking did I not need some thought to help me through. So I said, “I tell myself no one can harm or hurt her now, she is safe; like Jim free from pain, in her case from that confusion & longing I would see on her face.”

I was thinking of Shakespeare’s song in Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

My heart began to hurt, chest pain as I began to cry. The Vet began to be fearful for me, but I said no, not to worry. The pain did subside. She suggested a cab; did I have a relative to go home to? — I said I had talked with Laura by texting and emailing and Izzy would be home tonight. I did make a mistake when I drove the car out of the lot — I did went over the curb, but I did it so slow and gentle it seems not to have damaged anything. She stepped out for a minute or two and I sat with Clary. I petted her, talked — perhaps I should have done that before but I hadn’t been thinking straight and now I think if I had gotten hysterical perhaps that would have communicated itself to her in her last minutes. So good I didn’t but waited until she was not there any more.

To memory:  when I first saw her. A kitten of some 4 months. She was born April 7, 2009, and we adopted her in June or July, along with Ian, her male sibling. I picked her out of a group of squirming kittens because she looked so intense and nervous, so eager. I bonded with her then. I bought him because we had decided to buy two together and the woman said they were siblings. They had the same face and his ginger and white color was so fresh and appealing. I noticed the woman selling them to me was particularly fond of her as a cat who had been in need of affection.

Laura had driven me to a pet fair in a large pet store deep in Fairfax.  I was buying/adopting the cats partly to bond with Laura whom I could see loved cats. I also hoped they would help bring Izzy out of her autistic shell. Recently, finally, that has been true of she and Ian, though early on I have a photo of them together, she rejoicing

Probably 2012

Clary was ever after not a cat to shy or hide away from people, which Ian did (rather like Snuffy in Sesame Street who thought early on if he could not see us, we could not see him). Clary was nervy after affection and interaction. She would come out to make friends. Bold, trustful.

As a tiny kitten sitting on the one volume doorstop Clarissa

I named her after one of my favorite heroines, Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe (I did my dissertation on the novel) but very quickly it seemed an absurdly long or inappropriate name so I switched to the character’s nickname in the book, Clary, and it was not long before she was Clarycat. Here she is a kitten, around 2010, and in her mature adulthood, 2017:

She was very attached to Jim before she transferred to me and one of the ideas in my mind as I grieve is she was my living link to him. He would sit with her on his lap looking down at her. She grieved for him when he died, going up and down the hall, caw, caw, cawing, sitting on his chair for three weeks, waiting for him to return.

Her life was that of a cat in a given household. She loved to look out the windows; she was very possessive over her toys and would not share with Ian what she liked to hold in her mouth. She could be very fierce.

Here she is running across the bookshelves —

She was not that playful but she was very affectionate: I used to think she thought I was a cat by the way she’s lick me all over where she could reach.

She and Ian were constant companions, lying together in a cat-bed, sitting together at windows, taking turns, playing both rough and kindly — it hurt him when she would not play with him after she had her stroke. He would run away and cry.

Sitting in a sun-puddle in my enclosed porch together

It was a stroke in April of this year that began her precipitous decline. She knew she couldn’t play in the robust ways they had. She could no longer control the direction she wanted to go in. She kept moving to the left side. He would then cry and clamor because she would not let him near.

I love remembering how in the morning Jim and I would wake and find her lying inbetween us. For many years after he died, I’d find her lying close to me, snuggled into my side when I’d wake up.

Just leaving kittenhood, clutching onto the table — perhaps 3 years old

Shortly after Jim died: Izzy and I at a JASNA, Clary and Ian left for 6 days, once a day a kind sitter came to stay an hour or so, feed and play with them; the sitter photographed her, you see she is waiting for Jim who had been her perpetual companion at such times ….

I believe she had a happy cat life. In the early years when Jim was alive, he kept them out of my study because when kittens one of them (probably Ian) had eaten a wire to a computer and entangled the whole set up so it took hours to retrieve it. Jim also did not like them sleeping in the bed, but as kittens they were so persistent to come into the room, it was better to let them in than endure the noise of keeping them out. Still I was not able to bond with them until they grew older, calmer and I just said I wanted them to be allowed to come into my room as I spent so much time there. From then on they were hours and hours in this room.  There are two cat-beds here for them.  I also never minded either of them sleeping with me. I let my dog, Llyr, sleep next to me most of her life.

A photo of her while we were in vacation, bewildered where we were and who was this new person taking care of her

She is gone now. I miss what she was when she was well, and I miss what she was when she was struggling to function normally and couldn’t. After her stroke, she never was able to walk properly; her head went to the side (a sign of brain tumor), and one of the Vets who saw her said she had a cancer that metastasized to her “gut.” So she weighed 5 pounds the last time we weighed her. Her body was not strong enough to withstand the aging process. She was actually doing pretty well at first and across the early summer — eating 2 cans of wet food. But beginning this fall she started to lose strength. It was as Johnson said: Decay pursue[d] Decay,/Still drop[ped] some Joy from with’ring Life away.” I kept being hopeful, made plans for what I’d do to keep her comfortable. Warm the towels on the radiator I was using to wipe her dry. I rejoiced when she got up at night and made her way into the kitchen in the dark to ear and drink, used the litter box and then made her way back to her cat-bed near me.  Then two or three days ago another level of stillness set in. She could no longer sit by me and I lay her in the cat-bed taking it whereever I was where she could try to be comfortable. The last day and a half or so she was sleeping or hardly awake most of the time.

I loved her and will love to the end of my time alive. I do believe that in this case I did it right. For Llyr I didn’t behave adequately; for Jim I was stymied, but here I gave her every minute of precious life as long as she was up to it, and when I saw the agon was beginning spared her and me.

She will exist on the way Jim does — through my memory of her I will keep her with me and him as long as my (failing) memory holds out. I have found that tag and placed it where there is a kind of shrine to the right side of my mantelpiece, with an urn for Jim there, photographs and keepsakes (his glasses, the DVD), a toy sheep from Stonehenge. I will have an urn of her ashes and put it there too. Ian is with me now and I will be as faithful to him as I was to her. Here he is no more than a year old captured by Laura openly vulnerable seeking affection:

Clarycat was a very loving cat — from the moment I set eyes on her until the day she died.

Ellen