Eleven years ago I brought Chloe home to be a companion to my cat George who was one year old. She was a playful, friendly kitty, she and George became fast friends. She was so tiny and active that I kept her in a cage in the living room when I wasn’t home or paying attention for fear of stepping on her while I worked around the house. Chloe wanted everyone to like her and if you didn’t show her any love she made an extra effort. A memory that makes me smile is Chloe trying to get my highly allergic brother-in-law to pet her as a kitten. He would have nothing to do with her. At one point she made her way to the back of the couch behind him and sat there unknown to him. Her tiny paw reaching down not quite touching his shoulder, looking back and forth from me and my sister and nieces at the table playing cards and then down at my brother-in-law. “I’m almost touching him!” snicker, snicker. You could see the glee in her eyes. We did finally have mercy on him and chase her away.
As Chloe grew her spunkiness grew along with her. She’d boss the dogs and discipline them if she thought they were being inappropriate. They learned to avoid her if not respect her. One time I stepped on my other cat’s tail and it yowled. Chloe came running over and hissed and took a swipe at Buster who was standing next to me. She was in charge and not afraid to dole out discipline if she saw fit.
Like any princess she also developed a love for anything shiny. Keys, lights, tinsel. I’d warn women that came to the house to keep their purses up on a table and zipped or Chloe would search through them and steal any shiny things she could find. It wasn’t fun to find she had run off with your keys when you were trying to go somewhere.
Over the years Chloe put up with a lot of foster cats flowing through my houses. Sometimes gracefully and sometimes not so gracefully. She developed bad bathroom habits that to this day I believe were caused by the strange animals moving through her life. I can remember her shocked look every time she encountered a new interloper in her house. AGAIN??? She’d adjust and get along with most new cats but they had to understand that Chloe was in charge.
Nearly three years ago my not yet husband was the first to notice a small bump on Chloe’s leg. I didn’t think much of it but I took her to the vets anyway. I’d had the same vet for more than 20 years and completely trusted him. He examined Chloe and he told me “Jamie the leg has to come off”. I laughed out loud. I thought he was joking. I looked at him and looked across at the technicians and I realized he was serious. He tells me its a vaccine sarcoma, her leg needs to be amputated and soon or she will die. I’m shocked and look disbelieving at my little Chloe who seems fine. After a bit of drama over the situation her leg was amputated and despite advice that she should also have radiation I opted not to do the radiation.
They will tell you that animals adapt quickly to losing a limb. I would tell you it takes a year for them to fully recover and seem like they were comfortable with their new reality. Sure they learn to walk quickly. But its not just walking that changes but standing, sitting, how you scratch, where you can scratch. Its heartbreaking to watch your pet try to scratch an itch with a leg that is no longer there.
Chloe adapted to her new reality and went on to move in with the second man she would live with, my husband Joe. She’d venture outside on nice days but never go further than 10 feet away and only for a few minutes a day. She spent her days napping and avoiding George who was too rough for her small size at that stage of her life. She’d spend her nights sitting on my lap while I watched tv or read and slept on the bed near or on me. Off and on she continued her bad bathroom habits in our new house despite my best efforts to keep her from doing so. It was one thing for a single person to put up with a naughty, unpredictable kitty but quite another to expect a new spouse who hadn’t known her that long to tolerate it. I waited for my husband to say he’d had enough but he told me he never would and he never did. Chloe was lucky, she had owners who lived with her random behavior. I’d often say she’s hard to love.
A routine visit to the vets a few months ago revealed that the tumor had grown back and it was quite large. I was embarrassed I hadn’t noticed. It was where her leg should have been and Chloe did not like being touched there. I thought she had just put on some weight. The vet agreed we should just let her live what she had of her life and so I did nothing. Over the past month I watched Chloe lose weight and rather than just sit on my lap at night I’d notice her curl up and sleep there. Then Thursday night I get home later than usual and just in time to sit down to watch tv for an hour with my husband before bed. I’m distracted through the show because I hadn’t seen Chloe yet. I mention it to my husband and he says he doesn’t remember seeing her that night.
After the show she still hasn’t appeared and we start searching the house for her. She’s not in any usual spot but I finally find her in the back of a closet curled in a little ball sleeping. I wake her and her head wobbles up and she meows. I pick her up and she feels light as a piece of paper. I take her into the bathroom with me and while I’m getting ready for bed she urinates where she is sitting. I clean her up and notice that the skin over her tumor has broken open too and looks nasty. She’s barely able to walk and I realize her fight is over. We go to bed and I cry and try to sleep with my little cat one last night. I stay home from work the next day and I spend a couple last hours home with her before holding her in my arms while she dies quietly in the vet’s office.
When I tell my sister that Chloe is gone she says at least she has her leg back now and I smile at the thought of Chloe whole and harassing some dog on the other side for misbehaving.
Words of Wanderers 