Goodbye, Milky the Cat

Poor kitty.  Becky and I said goodbye to Milky.  She didn't want to stay to see the vet give Milky the shot, but you can see the poor thing was in a very bad way.

We had to put our cat, Milky, down yesterday.  I came downstairs early Tuesday morning, to find her sprawled strangely on the family room floor.  She couldn't walk.  She'd try to scoot herself with her back legs but she couldn't lift her head or use her left foreleg and she'd plop over to one side or the other.  She'd scoot a few inches and then collapse and lie there panting.  She kept opening and shutting her mouth in a silent cry.  Something was really wrong.

I got really sick Easter afternoon.  I'd been fighting something for several days, but it hit me like a ton of bricks around noon, after we'd got home from Mass and had some breakfast.   I just couldn't function anymore.  Actually, at some point in the afternoon, I managed to get the leg of lamb on to roast and stick some potatoes in to bake.  And that was it.  I was bedridden most of Monday and Tuesday.  So I was in no condition to deal with a cat crisis.  Rick took her to the emergency vet where they said she'd probably had a stroke, plus she was ill from all these other underlying causes, we didn't even know about.  We waited a day, but then we decided yesterday it was Milky's time to go.  The vet had no hope of improvement and in fact she had actually worsened over night.  So instead of letting her have a lingering death, we said ok to putting her to sleep.

I have mixed feelings.  Milky was kind of dumped on me by a friend who was going through a marital separation and had to move.  I think she just couldn't handle the cat anymore.  She came by when I wasn't even home and said to the others:  "You've got cat already, how about one more?" and simply left her with us.  So we took Milky in.

I'm still friends with this dear woman, in spite of this.  I think she just was at the end of her rope.  But I've always resented the cat.  And also the move, because she moved a good 35-40 minutes away and J who was best-est friends with her son and could see him often for they had only lived ten minutes away, now suddenly couldn't and didn't see him nearly as often.  His heart broke and he never quite recovered.  I trace the beginnings of his painful introversion from this point in his 9 year old life.

Milky turned out to be a pain in the ass.  First of all, she freaked out Thumbelina, our resident cat, completely.  It took a solid year before they could be in the same room together.  That was fun.  Thumbelina started having accidents in the house out of anxiety.  Lovely.  Her preferred spot was the dining room carpet, which eventually wound up in the trash.  Milky, even though she would go outside, also used a litter box, so now we had one of those to deal with.  Milky also had a habit of jumping on the table and sticking her paw in any drinks that were left there.  Often doing this right after she had visited the litter box.  I'll never forget the first time I went to take a sip of water only to see some litter debris floating around at the bottom.  I still wretch at the thought of it.  Thus began the hardening of my heart.  But it really hardened the day she peed all over the clean laundry.  At the time, I had 5 children, three of whom still wet the bed.  And maybe we had had the flu so that vomit was also a factor.  I can't remember.   I just remember that I had wearily conquered an absurdly enormous amount of laundry and temporarily stored the pile on one of the family room chairs while busy doing something else.  And Milky came by, perched herself on top and peed all over it.  I wept when I was done cursing like a sailor.

After that, that was her chair to pee on.  It was a beautiful wicker chair that matched another one in our family room.  It soon was destroyed.  I threw out the cushion and relegated the naked chair to the basement.  I learned to keep stuff on the furniture to deter Milky from peeing on it.  So we left books and toys strategically placed on top of the couch and chairs, to make it too uncomfortable for Milky to relieve herself on them if we were going to be out for any period of time.

Milky had a problem with hairballs.  Now all cats do upchuck once in a while, but she made a regular habit of it.  I learned to always wear slippers, so as to avoid inadvertently stepping in cat vomit in my bare feet.  She liked to throw up the most on the back of the living room couches.  Many's the time I sat down foolishly forgetting to look first!  I developed lightning fast reflexes.  The second I heard the sound her cat gagging, I'd bolt into action, grab her up and take her outside.  Sometimes, I was quick enough.

Milky also had an extremely loud meow, like a Siamese.  She would meow and meow and meow often late at night.   Once we went away for a weekend and I thought to tell the pet sitter to just feed her on the back patio and not let her into the house.  You know, so when we came home, the house wouldn't be destroyed by her.  Milky spent the weekend under the neighbor's porch, yowling.  My neighbor was not happy with me when we returned!  "I almost called animal control!" She told me.  She resented having to listen to the yowl 24/7 all weekend.  I felt so sheepish about that.  I hate annoying the neighbors.

The good thing about Milky was she was friendly.  She loved to be petted and stroked.  She'd purr at the drop of a hat.  Visitors loved her for her friendliness.  She'd get right up on their laps.  But they didn't have to live with the fact that she never let up.   She constantly pestered you until you thought you'd go mad!  You couldn't get anything done!  No matter how many times you'd remove her from your lap (where she'd painfully knead you) she'd jump right back on.  You could do this 20 times and she'd never get the message.

But because she was friendly, Steve, Rick's brother grew very fond of her.  Whenever he'd visit, she'd become Steve's cat and he'd pet her the whole time.  So after it awhile the idea was suggested that Steve take her.  This was bandied about for a couple of years before somehow, Steve did indeed take her.  And so for a few years, she lived with Steve in his apartment over in Maryland.  She got really fat and a bit crazier.  Then Steve got ill and was in the hospital for weeks before he passed away.  Poor Milky was shut up in the bathroom and a kind neighbor came in once or twice a day to feed her.  The day Steve died, Rick brought Milky back.  By that time we had acquired my dog, Tillie, and B had gotten her own cat, Clover.  Milky was so traumatized by being shut up in a bathroom for weeks and by the move.  At first we thought to keep her in the basement bathroom because she was so crazy and Clover was absolutely terrified of her, and Tillie was overcome with curiosity and wouldn't let her alone.  But she panicked so much that her claws became bloody and I had to clean her and the bathroom up from all the blood.  We took her to the vet's.  She had to be on a diet.  But she did get better and she did settle into living with us again. She didn't have accidents on the furniture anymore.  Her preferred spot was the carpet on the landing of our staircase.  I could never get the stains out, so people would walk into the house and the first thing they'd see was this huge stain on the carpet right there.  Cleverly (I thought) I found an old scrap of the carpet, which I put there to cover up the stain.  It didn't look too bad.  For a while she didn't use it, but then she did.  It was only a temporary fix.

Off and on sometimes I'd think, both before and after Steve, why don't we just get rid of her!  But I knew they'd just euthanize her.  Who would take her? And old crazy not quite housebroken cat?  She couldn't help it, could she?  She was never quite all there to begin with.  She was only a cat reacting to the harsh vagaries of her limited intelligence and life.  So though I sometimes steamed with resentment, I never could work up enough rage to actually do anything about it.  I really am, deep in my heart, pro-life.

This morning I came down to feed the pets and went right into the mudroom to feed Milky first.  She always got first dibs because otherwise she'd frantically pester the other pets when they got fed.  I did it out of habit and then felt sad when I realized she was no longer there to feed.  Whenever I did my morning meditation, she always sat curled up next to me and purred while I said my prayers and did my reading.  She won't be there anymore.

I do miss her presence.  I am sad for her sad little life.  I am sorry I was so resentful all the time.

Poor kitty.  She lived 16 long years.  Rest in peace, Milky.