No More Cookie

Last week, on Tuesday, our little cookie Oreo Kitty died after eighteen years of glorious life. Right after the event I spent time writing up a detailed account of what happened, and after sitting on it for a while, I realized that no one really wants to read about how she died, least of all myself. So instead, I will tell you how she lived, and what she meant to us as a family, and to me personally.

Oreo has been with our family for as long as we've lived in in this house (1996) -- in fact, you could say she came with the house. Julie and I moved up from Santa Barbara with our one and only dependent, our grey kitty Maxi, who has always been somewhat of a prissy princess, and while amorous from time to time, was not really what you would call a lap cat. We had been considering getting a new cat so that Maxi would have a playmate, but we knew we should wait until we moved before making such a decision. We were here perhaps a total of 3 or 4 nights, when out of the blue there was this mangy scraggly black and white cat meowing at the back sliding glass doors as if she wanted to be let in. Maxi, of course, wasn't having anything to do with this and would hiss at the window, but the cat kept coming back. On the second or third night, we decided to go say hello to this cat in earnest, and while she was totally scabby from her butt through her back, and thin as a rail, she was very affectionate and very happy to see us. We had no idea who this cat belonged to, if anyone, so we asked around our neighbors. It turns out Oreo was left behind by the previous owners of the house due to the sloppy keeping of details after a messy divorce. The long and the short was, she was abandoned and was fed by our neighbors as a part-time stray. We decided that it was fate, and took her in to the vet to get treated for whatever skin issue she was having and to get her up on her shots. After a few weeks, her skin cleared up nicely, and she started putting on weight. We had to deal with months of kitty battles as Maxi was completely unhappy with our new family addition, but eventually they warmed to each other very nicely to the point of them sleeping together and cleaning one another. Within no time, Oreo put on a huge amount of weight, eating like it was her first meal in weeks every single time. It's hard to remember those days, sometimes.

From the start, Oreo stole my heart. She was more affectionate than any cat I had ever seen or owned, and adopted me immediately as her alpha male. She would purr just because she was in the same room, and whenever I sat down, she'd hop right up in my lap. As it turned out, she had love to give to everyone. I don't think there was a person to enter our house that didn't leave just loving our little love slut. She would snuggle up with you on the couch and purr so loud that everyone else in the room could hear it, and she had this thing she'd do whenever you scratched her on her butt right above her tail -- she'd become the insane licking machine, unable to stop licking anything within reach. At night, she'd crawl up and sleep by my head or snuggle up with me near my back. Many nights I'd boot her because she was just always on top of me, but that never decreased her will. She'd be back again in minutes.

My little love cookie really hasn't been the same over the last few years -- her health started to take a sharp spike downward after she suffered a wound to her face, the cause of which we never discovered, but it required stitches and a shave to the side of her face that never grew back right. After that, she became more frail, weaker, lighter and not long after that, she developed hyperthyroidism and reduced kidney function, and for the last eight months she's been needing iv fluids twice a day which Julie's been administering like a saint every single day. Oreo lived the last few months of her life mostly in our bathroom, because she had lost so much ability to know where she was or where to pee, poop, etc., but even at her reduced capacity, she was happy to eat and be petted and purred when she was happy, so I'm glad she had that time, even if it was rough for Julie mostly, and while I was not always fully supportive of the expense and the energy and time put in to keeping her alive, I was glad to have her there. I feel bad that with the birth of Isaac, the time I've had to give to our pets has been severely limited, and with Oreo's decline, she's received the least attention of all.

I hope she felt our love and concern for her in her last day, as we tried so desperately to help her through her pain, and I know she'll remain in our memories forever. I miss my little black and white kitty. You'll never be here again to snuggle me or purr so loud, but I'll always remember you.

We buried her in the side yard, near one of the windows in the living room, and planted a beautiful flowering sage over her grave. It's so odd, I've never actually had a pet that I've cared about so much for so long, and then have to deal with their passing. The whole event's brought up other issues of other losses both recently and distant, and it's hard to focus on too much other than to say, life must move on and I'll keep yet another life in my heart and mind that has passed this mortal coil.