From This Spot I Can See the Hallway

So let's talk about something besides war and apocalypse and death: cats.

I've been a cat owner for most of my adult life. The reason is fairly simple: I'm rodentophobic. It's not that I don't like rats or mice; I'm sure your pet rat is very nice and sweet in a rat sort of way. It's that I'm terrified of them thanks to unfortunate encounters as a youth and again as a young adult. I freeze up and if I'm feeling brave I might be able to squeak "take that away please". A few years ago when a mouse got into our house, I managed to corral it into a rat trap and felt like I had just won the Battle of the Somme singlehandedly.

So, the rodents being my enemy, I thus befriended their enemy, a predator genetically disposed to rip them limb from limb as a hobby. It has been a mutually beneficial relationship: I get a fuzzy weird little guy around the house who takes pleasure in dismantling any living being smaller than itself, and it gets fed and its litter box is magically emptied daily. Most of the time the relationship isn't much deeper than that.

For example, I had a cat named Ellie who was very chill. As she got older, she got extremely chill. As in, the aforementioned mouse I managed to corral, I was forced to do so because Ellie's reaction to a mouse being in the house was "Ehh. Whatever." Ellie was an older cat and eventually passed away, though it may have been hard to tell. Her passing was, like most cats, very peaceful. Sleepy time now.

After a short period I adopted a new cat. Or rather, she adopted me; when I went to the local animal shelter to see how the locals reacted, she crawled in my lap and then looked around as if to say "Yes, I'll take this one, thank you." Her name at the shelter was Amber; I promptly renamed her Xena because she liked to fly through the air at things. Chill she was not. At the time there was a bat colony near our house and one managed to get inside; Xena managed to FLY AT THE BAT and GROUND IT somehow. She was quite irritated that we took the poor bat away and set it free. I'd be irritated too, that took quite some coordination.

She had a fairly difficult life before we adopted her; she was a stray who had given birth to a litter in a parking lot and a car ran over her hips, causing her to stay in surgery and convalescence for a good part of six months. Once we brought her home, she promptly went into heat and stayed in heat, which for female cats is very painful. A few surgeries later (free of charge from the original vet who, I strongly gathered, preferred the cat's company to my own) she was back to prowling and leaping.

As the years passed, she bonded with me fairly strongly. I would talk to her as I worked and she would quietly nod and occasionally patrol the perimeter to ensure nothing had invaded the house in the past ten minutes. But mostly she would sit at my feet, or perch on my lap, or occasionally pop onto the desk to see what she could contribute to whatever I was working on.

She never lost her hunter instinct; once when baby opposums had somehow gotten loose into our bedroom (look, wild animals just seem attracted to my house, I don't get it either) she literally would "point" at them with her head as I collected them from whatever cabinet they were hiding behind, and watch approvingly as I piled them into a box. (She didn't register disapproval at their being set free, I suppose oppossums not being her flavor of the week.) But mostly she would sit with me and listen, and very occasionally answer back. She was quite intelligent, and could recognize a few cat-oriented words like "food", "no", and "please for the love of all that's holy stop trying to get into the bird cage", but mainly she picked up on emotional cues. When I was feeling down, she would make a point of nudging my leg and demand attention. It was her way of fixing it, and mostly it worked.

The years passed, and Xena aged, as all cats do. She eventually tired of vertical leaps and instead focused on staking out comfortable perches; my PC was ideal for her because it emitted heat, was flat and roughly Xena-shaped, and she could keep an eye on me.

We thought she might like some cat company as she aged, and adopted a white Siamese/tabby hybrid named Gabrielle. (Because, of course.) Unfortunately she didn't really have time for a hyperactive kitten constantly running at her at full speed, and as Gabrielle aged and quickly became larger than Xena, she returned the favor by bullying her when no one was looking. The companion I'd brought home for Xena's old age turned out to be, in retrospect, one more thing for her to endure.

Perhaps from the bullying, but most likely because of some other physical ailment, one day Xena stopped eating. She lost almost half her body weight before we finally discovered food she would eat; instead of her dry kibble she now would only eat wet canned food and the occasional liquid treat. We took her to vets repeatedly, only to have them shrug; her teeth seemed fine, her blood work seemed fine, she's an old cat (our guess was 13 or 14) and Things Happen.

And then, in December, things happened. Very bad things.

While Xena was walking around the hallway, she suddenly threw herself to the ground and began spinning around like a demonically possessed top. This went on for about five minutes; after a half hour it repeated. We immediately took her to the emergency pet hospital; the conclusion was that she was suffering epileptic seizures. There wasn't any apparent cause for these either; we were given some medicine and told to bring her back if it got worse.

A few days later, it was clear that as a result of brain trauma, she was now blind.

Heartbroken, we could only watch as she gingerly did her feline best to figure out how to work with her new parameters, carefully stepping around the perimeters of rooms she knew by heart from living in for over a decade.

Well, I have a blind cat now, I thought. Could be worse.

It then got worse. She suffered another bout of seizures, and then could no longer walk. She would try to stand up, lose her balance, fall over, and meow angrily. And then try again.

My heart was now utterly shattered. It was time to tell my friend goodbye.

The vet was very nice about it and I left in a fury immediately afterwards, part of me telling myself I was a fucking murderer, the rational part of me saying that what life Xena had left would have been miserable and it was my duty to put a painless coda to her story.

I still feel the empty space by my feet where she'd be perched.

Meanwhile, there's Gabby.

Xena was extremely intelligent for a cat. Gabby has two brain cells and very occasionally uses both of them. She jumps at the mirror because she's convinced it contains another cat. One day she discovered ceilings existed and spent the next week staring upwards in openmouthed wonderment at how there was a floor up there and maybe it had things. She will occasionally take off at an extremely fast speed and promptly slam into a wall. I don't think she's brain damaged so much as she is quite profoundly stupid.

She's very different from Xena in other ways. She can take or leave me; doesn't really like being petted but will tolerate it, unless she decides it's time for her to get attention, after 30 seconds of which she will then immediately go do something else.

She's not all bad. She's a cat. As she ages, she'll calm down, and I'm fairly certain, from how she, like Xena, constantly attacks the very cat-proof bird cage, that were a rodent to get into the house she would gleefully dismember it. The eternal bargain remains in place; I get protected from rats and mice by a weird little guy, and the weird little guy gets food.

But there's always going to be a spot on top of my computer that's empty, and a spot in my heart as well.