O...just O

[Entry backdated]

After making it most of the way through a very tough winter, my old pal O died this morning. I guess he was around 16 years old. I don't know if pal is the right word. Nemesis is a little too strong. But O was a most irascible cat. I think 'bastard' is the word I used most for him, each time I'd housesit at Keith's for the crew of four. Certainly if one compares the times he drew blood on me compared to the times I drew blood on him, he was the one to be feared. If wishes were drop-kicks that cat would have been in Russia a long time ago. And yet most nights when I'd stay with the kids, I'd wake up in the night to a rumbly white puff on the pillow next to me. (And lie very still, hoping I would not breathe wrong and somehow incur the puffy wrath!)

I'm still skeptical that there really is no story behind O's name. Keith always has said it was "O...just O" and that one could greet him with the word Ohio, as in O, hi, O. In my name ramblings through the years I had begun to call him Oboe or Ocho, which morphed into Ocho de Nueve (as in Eight of Nine, as I believed he might be a Borg kitty).

I didn't know him in his big-cat prime. He'd been sinking for a few years, not much more than skin and bones. We had begun to give him subq fluids last fall and had to gather up some nerve to do it, thinking we'd have a big fight on our hands. But most of the time it went better than expected. And as these last few months progressed and he grew more frail and impossibly thin, his bravado was engulfed in vulnerability and my heart fell for the old bastard cat. More often he'd allow me to pet him a little (but still took a swipe at me every so often on principle), and he'd still come out to greet me even though I was going to poke him with the sharp stick.

Two nights ago I stopped by to do his fluids, and when I inserted the needle, he had a seizure and we agreed he needed to get to the doctor. Last night I stopped in after my FOP meeting, to see what the day's visit to the vet had brought. The orders were to switch to daily fluids and vitB push, and we talked about scheduling and how to make this intrusion as easy as possible on the old man.

But as Keith (not looking all that great himself) sat in the chair with a largely unresponsive white kitty on his lap, I had a feeling we might not ever have to follow through on the plans. And when I touched him, I could sense clearly that he was already going. I was glad to sit there quietly and spend some time before leaving the two of them to their private goodbyes.

I've taken some lovely photographs of O through the years. Here's one of the last ones I got, late last fall. His eyes had been that vacant for quite a while, and the swagger had all but left him.