The Empty House

In September, 2018, I wrote an entry in this blog entitled “The Crowded House”. It was just after Raleigh had come to stay. Neville was not with me yet, but Parker was, still. I had six cats living with me, and the cosy apartment felt crowded indeed. Parker has gone, his place taken by the Nev. Raleigh and Cammie are no longer here.

Despite still having four cats, the apartment seems almost deserted. A third of my roommates have departed. There is space where they were. Not only that, but the two who are gone were the high-maintenance cats of the household. I would gladly have all my concerns and efforts over them back, if they came with them. But they won’t come back, and the fact that I have less to do accentuates the feeling of emptiness.

The remaining four each has his own demands. Each has his idiosyncrasies and individualities, thank goodness, and all together they fill my time. But they don’t fill it quite as densely as it was once filled. There is less stress, less work. Something is missing.

I will grow accustomed to this new situation, and it will become normal. If a fifth cat comes along, the apartment will seem too populous again, and I will complain, as I am complaining at its voids now. However many cats I have, though, they will never fill the apartment completely. When a cat leaves, his space stays unfilled, forever. For me, there will always be corners of my home that will be empty.

Delight Amid Sorrow

Before anything else, I want to thank all those who have described their sympathy and sorrow at the passing of my two friends, Cammie and Raleigh. They were very special to me, and it seems that they were to many others, too. Raleigh especially seems to have touched a lot of people. Cammie had great afflictions but she had the strength and determination to overcome them; she lived fifteen years, half of that time with me. I will miss her in ways I can’t describe. But Raleigh lived a short time, most of it probably unappreciated and certainly some of it alone and very scared. His time with me was a mere twenty-one months, much of it in uncertainty of his new home. But this frightened little fellow found a spot with many of those who read of his adventures, as he did with me.

I have tried to express my gratitude individually to each correspondent who commented on my losses, principally through a response to those comments. I apologise if I have inadvertently missed someone. On behalf of both my departed cats, thank you.

But even in sorrow, there can be delight. My surviving beasts bring me the latter emotion. This time, it was Neville’s turn.

When he came to stay with me temporarily, in August of last year, Nevsky didn’t mind lying on my lap now and then. That changed when he came to live here permanently. He may have realised the changed status, and that affected his behaviour. He was less affectionate with me in the long run than in the short-term, opposite of the usual effect.

But that is changing. Over the last few weeks, I noticed him purring more often, and more audibly, responding to being petted and stroked. Then, last evening, after snack-time, he was relaxing on the couch in the sitting room. I sat down near him and patted my lap. I didn’t think anything would come of it. The Nev stood up, stretched, and walked over to me, climbing onto my lap. There he stayed for about ten minutes.

He switched positions numerous times, as if he couldn’t get comfortable, but he purred the while and seemed to enjoy the attention I was giving him. Then he got off and went to look out the window.

This was a very pleasing development. I know he dislikes his insulin injections, and I feared that that would be a barrier between us. The truth is, though, he seems to fear them more than feel them. He recoils when I approach him sometimes, thinking that it is needle-time, yet when I inject him, he doesn’t flinch; I think he may, like many humans, dread the idea of needles more than the needles themselves. I believe in any case that his action last night demonstrates that he doesn’t hold my actions against me.

Even in the worst of times, there can often be found reasons to smile. Last night, mine was Neville.

In Memoriam: Raleigh

There was much about my boy Raleigh that was unique in comparison with my other beasts. He was that kind of cat.

  

Firstly, he came to me in a unique manner. He was my rescue from the beginning. My other cats came to me through the Lethbridge PAW Society or its affiliated rescue-group, The Last Chance Cat Ranch. Raleigh was part of a project I had started to trap and sterilize cats in a feral colony behind my work-place. Operation Slim Pickens, as I called it, eventually succeeded in trapping a large number of adults and kittens and, with the invaluable assistance of local animal-welfare groups and two veterinary hospitals, neutering and spaying them.

I named him Raleigh even before I caught him. A polydactyl whom I thought quite old, he inhabited the fringe of the colony, but didn’t seem quite to be a part of it, coming at odd hours to where food was disbursed, perhaps hoping to get a hand-out when other cats weren’t present to compete with him. When he appeared with the other, more assured felines of the colony, he still seemed an outsider, and didn’t press in to receive his share of food. He was extremely timid. The first photograph I took of him showed him waiting one evening for food; he looked sad and desperate. I was very lucky during Operation Slim Pickens, capturing numerous cats with less effort than I had expected. Raleigh was trapped two days after the picture below was taken.

Taken to the veterinary the next day, he was neutered, brushed – and discovered to be no more than two; his bedraggled appearance was deceptive. He was also found to have FIV. This disease, which greatly inhibits immunity to other illnesses, is unfortunately almost common among unneutered feral males and, though it is nearly impossible to spread among non-combative cats, it is frightening to many people, and reduces the chances of a cat’s adoption. A foster-home opened up and I, with several cats already, reluctantly took Raleigh there.

I visited him a few days later. I found him scared and very unhappy. Of course he would be, and I, who counsel patience of people who want quick results from their cats, should have given him more time. But I felt that he was my responsibility. He was wedged at the back of his cage, against the bars. Whatever chronic condition he had with his eyes had flared up under the stress, and his nose was dry and crusty. Fortunately, the foster-guardian fully understood my feelings, and a day later, I brought Raleigh to stay with me – for the rest of his life, as it turned out.

Raleigh was very timid, and he never really got over it, though he became used to me, and even came to trust me. I wonder if he was physically or emotionally abused in his previous home – for a previous home he must have had. He was in no way feral, just lost or abandoned, and doing a poor job of surviving. But he wanted a home, he wanted a human, he wanted love. This was proved when I spent time with him one evening soon after he came back to me. I sat on the floor of the bathroom, where he was segregated, and, in the words of my blog-entry of the time – “I urged him to come onto my lap. At first, he just leaned against me. Then, of his own volition, he climbed onto me. He curled up like an expert, and purred. We snuggled for about twenty minutes this way.”

This was my feral cat.

His mouth was crusty, as though he were a sloppy eater. This was due to stomatitis, an acute allergic reaction to plaque on the teeth. This is usually solved by the removal of most or all of the teeth. Though this was done with Raleigh, it did not cure his stomatitis, which was then checked only by liberal amounts of the steroid Prednisolone. This was in pill-form. Crushed, it was added to his food, which he ate lustily, if not neatly. His stomatitis was kept at bay, and his mouth began to look clean.

His fur, especially in the hind-quarters, was matted. Constant brushing and combing, patiently endured by Raleigh, removed this condition. Thereafter, with continued brushing and a healthy menu, his fur was smooth and soft. It was a peach hue, so I nicknamed him Peachy.

Raleigh had other problems, such as his oozy eye, usually his left. It was chronic, but was bettered by eye-drops. He would receive anti-biotic at times, too, and I would periodically have to clean his feet or bum after a visit to the litter-box.

But Peachy’s life improved, I think. He played: he enjoyed chasing the red dot, and string-toys. He would try to scoop up the latter with those big spatula-like feet of his, and I wondered if his toes could bend like those of cats with the usual number.

I noticed early on that he wanted to make friends with one of the other cats. It was at one time Parker, then Renn and, finally, Cammie. The princess didn’t want Raleigh too near but, as time went on, she gave less evidence of indignation and annoyance at Peachy’s proximity. If the two had had more time, they may have become the chums that Raleigh very much wanted.

In any case, it wasn’t long before the other cats were accepting of Raleigh, and saw in him his harmlessness.

Indeed, if there was ever a cat without any mischief in him, it was Raleigh. He seemed truly not to have any idea that other cats wouldn’t like him. It wasn’t vanity, it was innocence. Why would anyone take offence at anything he did? He never hissed or growled, he never fought, so far as I can recall. He now and then hurried over a tail or jumped an outstretched body, but that wasn’t malicious action. It was Raleigh just trying to get somewhere. Such a sweet-tempered cat I had not met before.

(There was that time when Raleigh, in his innocence, sat on the dining table chair that Tucker prefers. Tucker’s world was sent spinning off its axis, and he literally didn’t know what to do. Raleigh was not bothered at all.)

Raleigh also loved having the top of his head rubbed. He would raise his head as I rubbed, the faster the better. His favourite was a chest-rub, however. Most evenings, usually after snack-time, I would come into the sitting room, hold out my fist and invite Raleigh over. He would come, in his usual trepidatious gait, slip his head under my hand and, after a minute or two of preparatory petting, topple over. I would then rub his chest, as vigorously as I could. He would close his eyes and purr.

Two characteristics of Raleigh’s stand out. Once he was used to living in the Cosy Apartment, he would greet me every morning by coming into the bedroom and talking. He was asking for his breakfast. He would come up to me, before I was even dressed, and receive a pet, a greeting, then trot away to await his meal. He knew the difference between my getting up in the night and getting up for good. When it was the latter, he was on me instantly, calling for breakfast.

The second trait that comes to mind is that when he was hungry, Peachy would scratch at the corner of a piece of wooden furniture. Only wood, and only at its corner. Usually, it was the micro-wave oven stand, though sometimes he would use a bookcase. I could have stopped him, but I thought it was too adorable to halt. Did he do this in a previous home? Was this what got him kicked out, if he was at all? Was it something spontaneously developed while he was with me? I’ll never know, but I loved to see it.

When he was healthy, he was evolving, growing more sure of himself. As the warm weather came, I would wake in the night; two or three cats might be on the bed with me, another in the saddle of a bedroom cat-tree and, next to that, on top of the shorter cat-tree, by the open window, a dim shape: Raleigh catching the nocturnal air. He would enter the bedroom while I was on the computer, jump up on the bed, be startled that I was already sitting the other side of it, but then decide to stay nonetheless. He trusted me, but when I was where he didn’t expect me, he became timid again. But each day, that diminished.

But then the retreat came. His health began to decrease. It was, I know now, the beginnings of FIP. His appetite lessened, and he stopped playing. Perhaps not strangely, he began lying on my lap again, something he had not done much of for a while. Indeed, the day before he died, I sat beside Raleigh on the library couch, and he eased over on to me, and lie on my lap, just as he had done a year and a half before. That was our last cuddle.

On Wednesday, May 13th, Raleigh went to the hospital again, and I was told that he had FIP. His remaining days would be few. He was eating almost nothing, which made giving him his Prednisolone, for his stomatitis, difficult. Without it, the stomatitis would reassert itself, and bring pain. There was no point in forcing either food or medicine into him; it would have delayed the inevitable only slightly, at the cost of great stress and anguish. I made an appointment the next day to let him go on Friday.

A good internet friend asked Saint Francis to watch over Raleigh. He must have done, for this time my little cat was not nearly so scared as he always was at the hospital. He seemed curious, not at all anxious. The last thing he heard, smelled and felt was the human who loved him.

Raleigh couldn’t have been more than four years old when he died, cheated by a dreaded disease of the vast majority of his life. But I hope to see him again some day, see him coming toward me, a little less hesitantly than previously, but still calling out to me. Until then, I will remember him, my Peachy, the least feral of all feral cats.

In Memoriam: Cammie

What can I write about Cammie? What can I not?

I suppose I will start chronologically, and describe how she came to live with me, in June, 2013. Cammie, who had a different name at the time, was taken from an abusive home by a woman who was concerned about her welfare. The woman couldn’t keep her, so she called the Lethbridge PAW Society, of which I am a member. We hear this often; how someone takes in a cat, but won’t keep her, and wants someone else to take the cat off her hands. Well, the person’s heart was in the right place.

So, whether we could or not, we had to find room for this new girl, who was unspayed at eight years of age. She came to my home, which at the time was in a house. I was unsure of Cammie. She seemed friendly sometimes, or, rather, tolerant. But she hissed and growled, and I was afraid that she’d cause me injury. To put her in a carrier to take her to the veterinary hospital, not just at first but for several years, required throwing a blanket over her and pushing her into the carrier. Cammie screamed and yelled each time.

She was isolated at first, and when I let her mingle with other cats, she hissed at them, a behaviour which she never ceased. I made better progress with her myself, though it was two months before she purred. I was stroking her fur in the back parlour of my house, and I heard a low rumble. I remember being very pleased at the development, and knew it would only improve from there. The other cats hoped, I think, to make friends with her, especially Renn and Bear-Bear, my foster-cat at the time, but she would have none of it.

Cammie did seem to want to make friends with Tungsten. She would follow the orange one about, not menacingly, but almost curiously. Tungsten, however, adopted Cammie’s attitude, and continually warned her off.

As she progressed in her new home, Cammie taught me things about herself and cats in general. Her hissing, I realised, was not always a sign of hostility, but of over-all dissatisfaction. She disliked disagreements between other beasts: when two were having a growling match or a squabble, she would come racing out of wherever she had been and yell and hiss at both parties. I think she felt that being annoyed with someone was her prerogative alone. I also learned that she became somewhat loopy when smelling onions…

Then, in December, six months after her arrival, she jumped up on my lap. I had been trying to get her to do so for a while, of course, patting my lap and urging her to come up. When she did, it was of her own volition, with no encouragement. I felt that a milestone had been passed.

Thereafter, Cammie started coming onto my lap frequently. She had demonstrated that she could trust. Thus, when an offer to adopt her came in the spring of 2014, I and the PAW Society felt that we could not afford to miss this opportunity. The prospective home was in Regina, which made me a little anxious; in other cases, if there was a problem with the adoption, we could easily retrieve the cat in question. Regina, 624 kilometers away (378 miles) was a different proposition. The adopter seemed a little apathetic to the advice I gave her about time and patience, but there was nothing concrete that made us think there would be anything amiss with Cammie’s new home.

The reality was quite different. There was a reluctance on the part of the adopter to respond to telephone calls asking about Cammie; this worried me. Fortunately, one of the reasons we allowed Cammie to go to Regina was that a colleague in the PAW Society travelled there now and then on personal business. She decided to check on Cammie.

No one was at the adoptive home when she called; she decided to wait. Just as she was leaving, a member of the adoptive family arrived. He described Cammie in unflattering terms, suggesting that there was something mentally or emotionally wrong with her. Cammie was clearly frightened and miserable there, and her new people expressed no reluctance in giving her back. My colleague returned with her the next day, sending me a text-message about the situation.

To be honest, I was not pleased. When I heard the whole story, I knew that Cammie had to have been removed from the home in which she had been put, but when she had left me, she was still only on her way to being sociable, and was quite stand-offish, despite coming on to my lap periodically. I thought of all the times I would have to catch her to place her in a carrier – I was still having to drop a blanket over her to do so – and her misanthropic – or misfelinic – attitude. I little guessed that I would eventually regard her second rescue and return to me as little less than miraculous.

A month after her return, she had settled in again as though she had never left. She was pushing her head against me and purring by this point. She was relenting in her attempts to stalk/befriend Tungsten, but was, in turn, stalked (with, I think, an eye to friendship) by my then-foster cat, Kola.

I loved watching Cammie grow. When autumn came in 2014, she found the relatively new heated cat-beds, and began a love-affair with them that never ended. Early the next year, she startled and delighted me by coming up on to the bed after I’d retired. This was the first time of many when she would lie on me – eventually choosing my neck as her spot – and purr. She did it even when other cats were on the bed – assuming that she didn’t have to be close to them. In a less joyous vein, she developed the first symptoms of what I came to decide was her allergy to almost every food. Lumps grew on the side of her head, eventually breaking like pimples. At the time, I was alarmed and took her to the vet. As her food was regulated, she had them less and less, and they never bothered her; she didn’t even know they were there.

I adopted Cammie in April, 2015.

She was a remarkable creature, my princess. I determined that her full name was Her Serene Highness Camarouska Albigensia. I don’t know why. She suffered much from reactions to food, having ‘episodes’ during which she would vomit, and keep vomiting, even after her stomach was empty. Only an injection of Cerenia from the veterinary would reverse the symptoms and give her ease. She would sometimes have an episode because I was not vigilant enough in keeping her from others' bowls; sometimes, an episode seemed to be spontaneous. It came to the point of feeding her only Z/D, a hydrolised product to which it was nearly impossible for a cat to be allergic. Initially, she disliked the tinned variety, and so was restricted to the bland hard version. How she must have looked forward to meals with a sigh, knowing she would receive the cat equivalent of tasteless gruel. Years later, I tried again with the soft, and she not only ate it, but grew to enjoy it. I still kick myself for not re-introducing it sooner, but dinners were pleasant for her again.

Reading my blog’s past articles, I am struck by how many are about Cammie’s evolving personality. Was she changing, or was I simply noticing it more? Moving to the Cosy Apartment didn’t affect her much at all, though she found new spots to inhabit. She also went through a phase of bringing toys into the bedroom, even up the cat-tree in which she sat. She would announce her successful hunt with a cry of triumph; sometimes, she would sit in front of a toy and talk to it. Her playing was abrupt to start and abrupt to end, and she liked to fight a simple stick with which I would provoke her. She and I both knew it was play but she played seriously.

Her sense of smell was always strong. She enjoyed sniffing my breath after I brushed my teeth; mint is similar to cat-nip and, indeed, Cammie would start purring if the smell was strong enough. Sometimes, she would appear at the bathroom door after I had finished, so I would have to put more toothpaste in my mouth, just for her to smell it. She also liked the aroma of baking bread.

I learned early on that a princess has dining habits different than those of the masses. I had to accommodate them. It was bad enough when she could see, but after her blindness, actually holding the dish for her became the norm.

She and I grew close. She would come up on to my lap on the couch, and lie across my neck, at least for a few minutes, most nights, after I’d gone to bed. It had taken years to reach this point, and I think of how many cats, loving, longing cats, would never find their homes or families because people were not patient enough for them. I cheated, really. As a foster-guardian, a cat would be with me whether I wanted to adopt her or not. She would be given the time and opportunity to evolve as she needed, not as the human wanted. I could provide that for a cat, in a foster-situation. I was able to give that to Cammie, and thus, after a long time, win her trust. That’s the only reason I was able.

The end of May, 2019, brought Cammie’s second great tribulation (following on the mercifully short adoption of 2014.) At three in the morning of May 26th, I woke and found Cammie wandering in circles, dragging her left rear leg. She appeared unable to see, as well. I took her to the hospital’s emergency ward – which will open at any hour of the twenty-four; it costs more, but is worth it – and sure enough she had had a stroke, or something similar. Cammie was blind and, despite beliefs later that she had recovered some of her sight, would remain so. The doctor did raise the possibility of euthanasia, but she did not encourage it. She told me that many of the worst effects are temporary. I brought Cammie home and, within a few hours, she was walking and even jumping as normal. But her eyesight was gone.

How astoundingly resilient Cammie was. She was purring within hours as I petted her, and when daylight came, she managed to climb the shorter bedroom cat-tree to smell the outdoors. She conquered her blindness, as much as anyone could. She found new ways around the bedroom, discovered how easily to climb and descend the cat-trees (the latter direction was the tougher), and soon learned about the new location for a water-bowl, near one of her favourite spots in the corner of the bedroom (soon to be augmented with a heated cat-bed.)

My princess did not restrict herself to the bedroom, but wandered about at least once a day to discover what might be new, or enjoy what was old, in other parts of our little kingdom. Even blind, she commanded respect from the other beasts, and I was amused at how quickly my newest foster-cat, Neville, learned to move out of Cammie’s way, or face her wrath.

So things continued for almost a year. I note that I wrote in March observing Cammie feeling a little under the weather, and she did seem to be moving rather frailly at that time, somehow older. Her appetite remained good, and she continued to want to lie on my chest, where she received her pets and purred. (If she sensed that I was at my computer – and I always spoke to her to let her know where I was – she would sit on the near edge of the bed, leaning forward. That was how I knew she wanted some chest-time.)

There were encouraging signs of a possible friendship between Raleigh and Cammie - or at least Raleigh thought so. But they weren't given the time.

The end was sudden. In the evening of Thursday, May 14th, Cammie suffered another stroke, making her walk in circles again, dragging a rear leg (the right, this time). Now, her sense of smell appeared to have been stolen. The next morning, nothing had changed. There was not going to be recovery, as after the previous attack. While I had been at work, she seems not to have left her beloved cat-bed, even for a drink of water at the bowl a few inches away. It was time to say good-bye to my little Siamese.

The picture above was the final one I took of her. The one below was taken by a professional photographer for last year’s PAW Society calendar. Cammie never struck me as smiling, as Tungsten did sometimes. Rather, hers was an almost perpetually melancholy face, when it wasn’t annoyed at something. But it was a beautiful face, with green eyes, the pattern of which resembled gems. This is my favourite image of my princess – for that is what she was: Tungsten may have been my queen, but Cammie will always be my princess.