The Transfiguration of St. Nittnatheus

Well, in the end, I think she went pretty well.

Remember how Nitty Kitty seemed determined to make her last days a sort of middle finger to "death with dignity"? Yeah, well, that was a thing, for a while.

But we took her to the vet, got her some medicine to help with the nausea and constipation, we made her get out of her litterbox and sleep on the nest of soft towels and a rice bag, combed the litter out of her fur, and otherwise tried to make her comfortable and happy.

She continued her round of alternating sleep with frantic begging for food, and climbing into unoccupied laps, and seemed to recover, a bit. She was still desperately stiff and creaky - the cat was about ninety-eight in people years, for Heaven's sake - but she got around as well as she ever had.

The weather let up a little, so she could enjoy her outside-time, something she very much loved. But, slowly, every day, she got a bit slower and weaker.

Last Friday was my company's "winter holiday" thing. Mojo and I went and had a very good evening, but we returned to find a distraught daughter and a very, very weak Nitty on our bed where the Girl had lifted her, having found her curled, nearly motionless, on a pile of laundry in the bathroom. Once on the bed the Nit was too weak to get up, and she had pissed herself and our bedlinens.

My Bride changed the sheets while I made up a soft towel-bed for Nitty, intending to move her out to the living room to the couch where she had been sleeping. I gently moved her, frail and as light as a memory, just fur over sharp bones, onto the towel, carried her out, and put her down.

And the Nit, true to her crotchety self, immediately go up, struggled up onto the television stand and laid down, ignoring my attempts to herd her onto the towel.

Even that wasn't right, because she flopped down to the floor, tottered over to my wife's sewing table, squatted down and pissed on a bolt of fabric that the Bride had left on the floor, and then shuffled under the table and laid down to die.

The whisper-thin remnant of her lasted through the night. Unmoving, barely breathing. I got up several times; she was still barely living at four, but, as so many others do, she fled before the light.

By Saturday dawn she was cold.

The Girl was inconsolable, wet-eyed and grieving all through the day. We went to the local stone seller and bought a flat marker and a little cup-shaped headstone. I dug a shallow grave in the sunny spot near the front fence that Nitty had always slept in when she was outside and the weather was fine enough, and we petted her goodbye, folded her in her cloth shroud, and laid her down. I gently put the cold spring soil back over her, and then her stone one top. We spend a few moments there, and then I had to go about my business.

I returned to find this:

Between them my Bride and the Girl had created this little shrine, complete with saints and flowers and offerings. I simply warned them that if the miracles occurred that they would have to figure out what to do with the pilgrims.

You were a funny little soul. Whether you were Cypress - the name they gave you at the shelter - or Francesca, the ridiculous name my Bride hung on you but that we never used - or Fat Nitty, from your early days as a glutton of all things cat-food - or just Nitty; morning crier, lap-cat, patient companion, quiet, gentle, and affectionate...you were a good cat. You died as well as anyone can; full of years, peaceful, surrounded by your home and those people who loved you.

You were not just a good cat, you were good company, dammit, and I'll miss you.

Seventeen

Seventeen years ago this day you left us.

To this day we are still bereft.

Your mother for the baby she never cradled, the life that grew inside her all those long, difficult months fled before you took your first breath. For her hopes, her dreams, her plans, all the things you were for her gone in a bitterness that she still carries within her heart.

For me it was today.

This today. Today the morning after your birthday, when I would have given you the keys to the old beater Honda, with stern warnings about driving with boys who had been drinking and parking with boy who hadn't.

This today, where we early risers would have shared silent coffee in a darkened house, your hair a tousled halo about your face.

All the todays that we never had; the fights and the cuddles and the excitement and the tears. The skinned toes and the algebra tests and the silly laughs and the midnight fears.

Slowly the pain and the loss has diminished, as your tiny spark of life fades with the years.

Today I can write this without crying. Today I can think of you as just a loss, a grief, the greatest of many, instead of a ragged hole in my chest where this day ripped out my beating heart and held it before my face to taunt me with the brutal randomness of life and death.

Today I miss you with a wet-eyed sadness instead of a huge, remorseless, tearing grief.

But.

That grief is still there, my dear.

That hole where you should be, young and strong and tall and alive, is still in my heart and will be until it runs slowly down and stops beating. The way yours did, this day seventeen years ago.

Goodbye again, my very dear. Goodbye.

Yes. I'll be here again next year.

I'll make the coffee; rich as joy, dark as night, and strong as love.

And I'll sit and sip and wait for you to come. And we'll sit and be silent together, until you have to leave again.

Bryn Rose Gellar.
March 1, 2002-March 2 2002