Macavity joined our family on
27 Feb 2007. Some students of mine (07A10, if I recall) found him and passed him to me. I remember a frightened little orange kitten that meowed loudly and kept trying to jump out of the box in the taxi to the vet. He was frightened but brave, and when we got him home that day, my fears that the other three cats would bully such a tiny kitten were
unfounded. Within 30 minutes of his entry into the house, all the other three cats had taken to high ground to avoid this
manic ball of energy!
He was such a naughty cat, full of energy and life. In his senior years, he became a mellow cat who loved nothing better than to sleep all day in the sun when alone, and to cuddle in bed with us when we got home. The only thing he liked better than sleeping and cuddling was eating, and he would wake us up every morning at 5am by running across our faces to remind us it was breakfast time. Mac was also the de facto greeter when visitors came calling, and one chinese new year I jokingly referred to him as our guest relations officer, and he seemed to take his new title very seriously, for after that, he would greet every visitor to the house with a solid leg rub. For a bonus, he would lick their shoes - one of his weird predilections! The other was squeezing himself into every cardboard box, however small.
The cancer came suddenly: during a routine visit to the vet in October, they found a lump in his jaw. A lump that grew larger at an unbelievable pace. We found out what they mean when they say a cancer is “aggressive”. Mac had a feeding tube inserted because the tumour prevented him from eating, and we quickly fell into a 3 hourly routine of blended food syringed into the feeding tube. As painful as it was us to watch, but how much more painful for him to endure. The small mercy was that both Kristine and I could stay home to look after him at this time of the year. As October became November, he had good weeks and bad weeks: then, good days and bad days, and soon it was good moments and bad moments. The horizon of his world contracted more rapidly than we could have imagined. Soon, he spent most of his day hiding, either under the duvet in our bed or under a groundsheet on the sofa, and dealing stoically, as cats do, with the pain. The vet told us the cancer would cause pain as it moved into the bone, and though he was on pain medication, you could tell he was still suffering. A cat that can’t groom and can’t eat stops feeling like a cat. He still had his moments though: when a vet called him “handsome boy”, he perked up and meowed back. He knew he was a handsome boy.
I think back on the good times we had with Mac. He was always ready to lean his head on your arm or curl up next to you for a quick nap. Such an open and giving soul: all animals are. They don’t lie to you; they don’t mislead you, they don’t deceive you. They’re honest. When they are there for you, they are there - present. And, of course, when they don’t want to be there for you, they aren’t. But they are honest. And that’s a gift. I’m glad for the Circuit Breaker: we were home all day, and Mac (and the other cats) got unlimited access to the bed, to sleep as much as they liked in what must seem to them to be a paradise of soft sheets and pillows. And Mac got to cuddle with us as well. He even interrupted some home-based learning lessons with my students, and became quite the celebrity.
I hoped he would make it to Christmas, and maybe even new year, but he was suffering so badly. I know it was the right thing to do, but it still feels wrong. I wanted him to have more years: he deserved more years. But it was not to be. The vet kindly agreed to come over and administer the injection at home, so that Mac would not have to die in a strange place. He went, peacefully, surrounded and hugged by his human family, this evening, after a beautiful day.
If there is a Valhalla for cats, I’m sure he’ll be making trouble there until we meet again. Until then, there’ll always be a space in my heart for this special cat.
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