Sunday, November 22, 2009

Goodbye Tavy



Goodbye Tavy

My sweet little kitty was hit by a car Friday night. Okay, so she wasn’t so little and she was about three years old – she should have lived many more years! I found her early Saturday morning right next to the road in front of the house. She had been dead for awhile. I had been worried when she didn’t come in at night when Seven (our other cat) did; I tried calling her a couple of hours later, and a couple of hours after that, and some time after three in the morning. When she wasn’t outside the door at 6 a.m. I suspected the worst. I was thinking coyote, but when I looked out the door’s little window to the street I saw her on our yard.

We buried her in the back yard, about halfway back on the right next to the tall grasses she liked to walk in. We wrapped her in a nice old sheet we weren’t using, a single with a green pattern, and dug through the clay. We threw all her toys in with her. She had a lot of them. She was a very playful kitten. She even would play a little still as a grown up cat, chasing your fingers and toes under the blankets. We planted several mum plants and couple of bulbs around the place.

Tavy – Octavia – was, I have to admit it, the only kitty I have ever loved. I’ve had kitties as pets before, but I never really connected with any of them. They were responsibilities, and I took care of their needs – minimally, often, and not even that with the two kittens I had for a while when I was a student. Some of my kitties have been closer to other family members; I think I understand better now how they felt.

When we got Tavy – “got!"-- when Tavy came into our lives she was a tiny kitten who had taken up residence in our broken down shed. H had been hearing her meow, and tracked her down. She wouldn’t come out of the shed at first, so H put a dish of food down and when she felt she was alone the kitty came out and ate. We kept putting out food and moving the dish a little closer to the house – the kitty would bolt whenever she saw a human. Finally, though, she was in the house! She dashed back out but came back to eat, and I think her confidence was boosted by seeing our dog, Addy, come in.

This kitty was frightened and starving. She ate every scrap of dog and cat food the other animals hadn’t deigned to consume, wet and dry. She was terrified of people, and if you were in the room with her whenever you began to move she would tear away, flying across the house from tabletops to windowsills. She barely weighed a couple of pounds, I’d guess, and her fur was sparse and scruffy (she eventually would have a beautiful, thick, intricately-colored coat). We got her to the vet, and she was treated for parasites and given her shots. (Getting her to the vet was an adventure. We chased her all over the house till we cornered her and with blanketed arms grabbed her.) I was still pretending that we were going to “find her a home,” but meanwhile I figured we should take care of her. My willingness to keep her was somewhat suspended when it became clear that she had no idea of what to do with a litter box. She pooped in the corner of the chair I usually sat in, which I took as a sort of homage. Luckily the vet’s receptionist had a good idea of how to train her – “Leave her in a closed room with the litter box for a few hours and she’ll get the idea. They’re usually pretty good after that” – and sure enough Tavy became domesticated.

We kept her inside for the first six months, and after that we let her be an outdoor cat. She seemed to prefer the litter box – How exasperating is that, to let a cat in and see it head for the litter box and then ask to go out again! She always asked for wet food, morning and evening, although Addy often ate it, I think.

The cats had an uneasy relationship, full of brief challenges and standoffs. But they often ended up sitting on either end of the back of the couch looking out the window, bookends. Cats certainly like to be comfortable, and Tavy had many places around the house she favored. Most nights, she ended up in our bed, on my lap or cuddled in the crook of my knees. She knew the comfortable chairs, and hiding places in the basement, and the bench next to the woodstove. Just a couple of days ago I came upon Tavy and her dear friend, the dog, lying next to each other on the bed, Addy leaning her head on Tavy’s paw. Tavy adored Addy, and often approached her and walked under her and brushed against her. And Addy reciprocated, a little grudgingly, grooming the kitty by chewing on her back.

The light is turning golden and pink as the sun races for the horizon. The second sunset without Tavy in the world. Is this silly? Ridiculous? I was at a shiva last night – I didn’t dare tell the mourner, who had lost his father, that I was grieving for my kitty, though I did manage to tell a couple of people I know and got some much appreciated sympathy. But we love these pets, they are like our children, in a way – I know for me comforting an infant is the warmest of human acts. Young animals that we take in are completely dependent on us for emotional as well as physical needs. And they take care of us, too, in their way.

Tavy certainly was my caretaker, in a way, my emotional caretaker, at a time when I was very low. The autumn when she joined our household I was undergoing a difficult treatment that left me weak and nauseated. For six months I spent every possible moment in bed. Mostly I was watching tv, unable to eat, and I would have been bored except that there was Tavy. She kept me laughing. She was pretty, too, a calico with curious patterns. Her playfulness and explorations of the house took me out of my misery and brought me happiness. Once she got used to being near humans (and until then she would flash across the house at the slightest movement), she began to love to be scratched on the side of her head and stroked in the ways cats approve – except she had an almost dog-like enjoyment of being patted on the head! She’d be right next to the dog when I came into the house, often, and wait for her pat. Later she would climb onto my chest and reach out her paw to get me to pet her. She did this just about every night, recently. She was incredibly soft, and she would purr as I ran my fingers through her fur. Sometimes at night she’d get on me or next to me and I could feel how cold she was. She needed the warmth of another body, and in the day she and the dog often napped together. I think those days and nights in the woods were a rough way to start.

We never did find out where Tavy came from. Was she dumped with a litter? There were no other kittens around. Was she feral – born in the wild? There was no sign of a mother. One thing’s for sure: she was a gift, and I’m thankful that she lived here for those three years. She taught me that kitties can be really sweet. She showed me that you – that I – could – and did – love a kitty cat.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Poor little kitty . . .

It's not ridiculous to grieve over a cat. Losing a pet is probably the saddest thing next to losing a person.
I remember dreaming that Alpha was alive years after she died.

I think cats are psychic because on Saturday morning a random kitty came up to me and wanted me to pet her and now I think it's because she knew my kitty had just died, before I knew.

You forgot to mention how Tavy used to eat the food off our plates if we looked the other way.

Also, which cat was guilty of knocking over the plant in the picture? It looks like Seven framed Tavy.

Love,

Hannah