Nine

This was a hard post to write, and I almost couldn't bring myself to do it, and if that seems strange for someone who writes about his dead child every year, well, life can be like that sometimes.

Because this is about losing a little cat.

This - the cat, not the woman, is "Nine".

After we lost Nitty Kitty our daughter insisted that we were a "two-cat family", and that just Drachma the Merkitty alone wasn't enough. She insisted that we needed another kitty, was the guiding force behind the search, and finally found the Perfect Kitty; a small gray-and-white rescue cat. 

Her name came from the number of the storage unit in which she had to live for years.

Nine.

She'd had a tough life. One of her former families had another cat that objected to Nine, so the poor kitty had to live in a mudroom with a cat flap. 

That was it; the mudroom, the flap, and the yard, was her world.

She'd had a horrific case of ear mites that had given her a savage infection that was so bad that it messed up her inner ear, and thereafter she lived with her head cocked to one side, as though she was faintly perplexed by the entire world.

She was a foster kitty, so The Girl brought her home in hope. 

Drachma was an utter shit, of course, but the little newcomer was so sweet and loving that everyone but the Boy was willing to tell him to suck on it. 

Small Cat - as we started to call her - was a perfectly adorable and immediately well-beloved member of the family.

She had some kind of adorable quirks. 

Dirt. She loved dirt, dry, fluffy, dusty dirt; she'd race outside to wherever there was a delightfully fluffy bare spot and roll in it until she was utterly and happily filthy. So she was thrilled when we started the excavation for the front walkway; the spoil piles were perfect.

She was a cuddler, a real lap-kitty. After going through a series of very cat-cats (when asked whether Drachma was a "good cat" my Bride thought about that for a moment and replied that he "was very good at being a cat.") it was wonderful for the Girl to have a loving kitty who would cuddle with her.

The only snake in Eden was the little one's health. The damn ear infections just never seemed to completely go away. Every so often we've have to clean her ears, and we had to make sure that after her dirt-baths we brushed her thoroughly. But she was such a dear and loving kitty we were happy to take care of her.

So it was concerning but not exactly an emergency when her ears started troubling her again this summer after about a year and a half in our home. 

We took her to our regular vet, who told us she had "polyps" in her inner ears, and recommended a special "skin vet" who could remove them surgically.

So one morning in August I fed her her pre-op pill...

...which turned out to be a kitty-cat Xanax, and it was worth the price of admission to see the little one experiencing what must have been a goddamn amazing cat-buzz, and off we went to the vet. They extracted the polyps, returned the small one, and sent off the polyps for biopsy.

One came back cancerous. 

We scheduled a visit to a cancer specialist in January.

Then right before Christmas the Girl called in panic. Nine's ear was bleeding again. A hastened trip to an emergency vet showed that the mass had grown back in her left inner ear.

After that the end came painfully quickly. 

We tried to get her in to see a kitty-cancer doc and couldn't until after the new year. Between the holiday and January 6th she developed a palpable swelling on the left side of her head and down her neck.

I put her in her carrier and took her to the kitty oncologist in January hoping, frankly, for a miracle.

The oncologist was fresh out of miracles.

I cried in the car on the way home.

We knew it was weeks and not months, but within a fortnight she was wheezing as the cancer invaded her lungs, and though her appetite was undiminished she could no longer swallow solid food. 

We called the people at Compassionate Care. The kind, quiet vet arrived late one weeknight. The small one went quietly, first into drug-induced slumber in the Girl's trembling arms...

...and from there across the threshold of the Great Sleep.

If I ever lose my day job I'll be able to make a living as a cat gravedigger; Nine's was the third (after Lily's and Nitty's) I dug in the backyard.

The small one lay in state on the table for an hour as I dug in the cold wet earth under the drizzle that seems to be a household tradition for burying our cats. 

A final drink of sake' and candles at her head.

We all cried again when we laid her in the ground and covered her little cardboard coffin with the clods of soil that will divide her from us forever.

I told the Girl, and it was the simple truth, that for all the cats I'd known since I was small little Nine was the sweetest, lovingest kitty I'd ever known, and I'd loved her best of all.

The Girl grieved for many days. During her mourning she found a little temple bell at our Asian grocery. 

She hung it over Nine's grave.

So now the gentle chiming of her bell still reminds me of how heart-full little Nine was, and how much we all miss her. 

Your time with us was so short, little one. I wish your warm, soft body still curled on top of mine. 

You had too short a time to be happy and beloved.

Life can be like that sometimes. I'm sorry.

We miss you.

Nine Gellar 2013?-2021