In Memory of Chloe, Who Was Not Quite The Worst Cat Ever
(BGM: Great Gig In The Sky - Pink Floyd)
I got to hold Chloe while it happened. She was wrapped in a towel, and she barely weighed anything. I remember she blinked, slowly, and then licked her lips, twice, in a very familiar way. After about a minute, which felt like an hour, she heaved one ragged breath, and she died.
She was twenty-two years old.
I remember when I was twelve, my mother told me, very firmly and despite all my objections, that we would be getting neither a pet nor a new computer in the future. Needless to say, within ten months, we had both.
The computer was a Macintosh Plus. The pet was Chloe.
Chloe was a long-haired calico cat that belonged to a co-worker of my mother’s. He was moving far away, and he couldn’t take the cat. So the five-year-old calico, rather inappropriately named Tigger, came to live with us.
I promptly renamed her Chloe, a name that I’d always thought was pretty. And we got along well enough for a kid and a cat.
Chloe had an extra toe on each of her front feet, which made them enormous and round, like big soft white snowshoes. She came to us with one eye permanently covered by its third eyelid, a souvenir of a fight with a mockingbird. The eyelid never would go down, even after the eye healed. And there was a BB pellet embedded under the skin at the base of her tail. Eventually, we had it removed. I hope whoever shot Chloe with a BB gun grew up to have a pitiful life and a dead-end career. Damn them anyway.
She was almost always calm and quiet, with a very matter-of-fact deep growly meow. Late at night, she would yowl, and I would yowl back, and we would continue to yowl back and forth until she found me, and then she would jump into my bed and suffer herself to be petted for a few moments. Then she would leave again, and prowl off, to do whatever it is that cats do when it’s dark and we’re not looking.
Occasionally she would go ripping through the house like cats do. I remember that she ran SLAM into the leg of the piano bench once, headfirst, having been let down by her blinded eye. She reared back onto her butt, shook her wounded head, and then tore off in another direction, as if nothing had happened.
And so I went through junior high and high school like that. Chloe was always a part of my life. When I went off to college, my mother kept Chloe. Shortly after that, I added Chessie to our little family. After some initial shock, Chloe reluctantly adopted the pitiful little stray kitten, and that was that. They were a pair, although Chloe could only do so much in teaching Chessie to use the litterbox.
As soon as I had an apartment of my own, my mother dumped both Chloe and Chessie on me. They were my cats, after all, she told me. And I certainly didn’t mind.
Boyfriend and I dragged our cats all over. They moved to the Midwest with us from Texas, and moved from state to state. Chloe was always calm about moving, but then, she was calm about everything. She never changed. She never got sick, she never had any problems, even as she turned twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.
Well, except during the last move, when she accidentally got Drano on her fur and then licked it off. She threw up a lot after that, and I had to wash her fur and feed her milk to soothe her throat. She didn’t mind the milk.
People were always amazed at how old she was, and how healthy she was for her age. And she WAS healthy. Amazingly so. She just stalked on through life, calm and quiet, knowing she was beautiful and not really caring.
She was really starting to fade, though, in this last year. She had some trouble keeping her hind claws retracted, so she ticked whenever she walked on the hard floor. She threw up a bit too much. She lost a little weight.
And then just a day or so ago, her kidneys failed. She lost more weight, she couldn’t walk without staggering, she wouldn’t eat, or drink, or do anything. I took her to the vet. They tried to help her, but she was so awe-inspiringly old that they couldn’t do much. She was miserable. She was dying. So we let her go.
Chloe’s been an integral part of Chessie’s life since Chessie was six weeks old. I don’t know what Chessie’s going to do without her.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do without her, either.
Replies: add your comment: currently 7 comments
:( I'm so sorry, Moon. That's a touching and sad story, and I know you will miss Chloe a lot. I'm just very sorry...
It amazes me how people usually have greater attachments to animals than they do to some people! And sometimes when a person dies, people blow it off, but if it's an animal, they find it very sad. I think maybe animals do rule over humans in that sense afterall. Heh...And that's what makes them so special....
Peace and Love, Moony.
Posted by Wolf @ 07/11/2001 02:23 PM EST
Bless your little kitty.
I don't think I can say anything else because you've got me bawling. Best wishes, Moon.
Posted by Andrya @ 07/11/2001 03:35 PM EST
...I think I need to go hug one of my cats now. ... so I'm gonna get my face torn off, but oh well. ;_;
Posted by Ed @ 07/11/2001 03:41 PM EST
Lots of condolences, from one cat person to another.
Ew, that sounds Hallmarkian.
Um, yeah... I think I need to go hug my cat, too.
Posted by Wundy @ 07/11/2001 10:03 PM EST
I've lost some cats before, but twenty-two years?? That's really something. My condolences, and may all your cats live that long. Cat-hugging all around.
Posted by Darkmoon @ 07/12/2001 05:00 AM EST
...I'm sorry. I wish I could say it better, but I'm sorry about Chloe. *reflects for a moment* Gods, I'm missing Sampson again... *sigh*
Posted by Nathan @ 07/12/2001 07:41 AM EST
Good god.. I'm so sorry. I lost my cat two years ago, when he was 21, so I know how it feels ... All the advice I can give is: keep your chin up and remember all the funny things that happened between you and Chloe every time you feel yourself slipping, until you can do nothing /but/ think of the funny things. It's a hell of a lot better than being glum all the time.
Posted by Yscaldine @ 07/14/2001 09:45 PM EST
