Meow… Meow… Meow! Those were the first sounds I heard from Christmas the Cat. It was early Christmas morning, December 25, 2009. I was on our deck behind our house on the outskirts of Glasgow, Kentucky putting out holiday breakfast for the many birds and squirrels who lived in the neighborhood.
Having had cats since I married Twila… she is terrified of all dogs… both large and small… but loves cats, so as part of her agreeing to marry an annoying guy like me I had to convert from a dog person to a cat person. After fifteen-plus years of marriage and cat parenting I had learned a little and those Meows sounded like a young cat a bit afraid… perhaps up a tree. I called, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!” hoping not to have to climb a tree on Christmas day.
I looked to the left and there came a little gray striped cat trotting across the neighbor’s yard towards me. I had not seen this kitty before and knew the neighbors on either side did not have pets. Kitty came up on the deck and right to me like she knew me. I petted her and she purred loudly… friendly little cuss. I turned to enter the house… which led into our office… and she beat me through the door… strolled to our leather loveseat, jumped up and made herself at home.
We let the kitty hang around for a while and then put her outside so she could head home. Over the next few days she stayed in the area and we fed her and let her in to visit. By the next week she was staying in more than going out. We spent the next two weeks trying to find her pet parents with no luck. That’s how we were adopted by Christmas the Cat… Chrissy for short.
Over the next 15 years we were blessed with love and friendship that was hard to believe. I told someone the other day… stealing a funny math quote from someone I don’t remember… Chrissy was half cat, half dog and half human. I swear she often knew exactly what Twila and I were saying to her. She would meet us at the door when we got home and sit by us while we worked at our desks like a dog. But when she wanted something… she was all cat!
As she became more and more a part of the family, it became obvious she owned the house and just allowed us to live there. She trained us quickly on when she liked to eat. She loved to drink out of the faucet in my bathroom sink and would sit on the floor and cry if she went in there and it wasn’t on… dripping all the time. No idea how much that added to our water bill over 15 years, but her enjoyment was worth every penny.
Chrissy was an extremely healthy cat and even when Dr. Betty at Greystone found that she had a problem with her thyroid gland she decided on no treatment because she was showing no symptoms and didn’t for at least another year. But, as with all of us, age eventually has a way of magnifying our weaknesses, and so it was with Chrissy.
But even then, thanks to Dr. Paxton and his team, it wasn’t the thyroid issue that took Chrissy from us… it was an extreme case of arthritis. One night she jumped from the bed and caught her leg on the footboard rail. We feared it was broken but it was only badly strained. But the X-ray showed a bad case of arthritis, and I guess the injury woke it up. Chrissy battled it with a great attitude and much purring over the next few months, but it got worse every week. Dr. Paxton tried a wide variety of meds and some helped… some… but nothing really kept the pain at bay.
Then at 3am one morning there was a loud bang that brought Twila and me to a stunned sitting position. We found Chrissy on the floor at the end of the bed. She had jumped and hurt herself badly. We slept on the floor with her the rest of the night and spent the next day watching and loving on her until, in the afternoon, we took the horrible drive that all pet parents dread but all know will likely, eventually come. We had cried on and off all day but that was nothing to the tears and heartbreak we suffered as we walked into the treatment room at Greystone. The staff and Dr. Paxton could not have been more caring, empathetic and supportive. We said our final goodbyes and stood by as they did what had to be done.
It’s been a few days now and as I write this, tears are streaming down my face. “Over a cat?” you say. “Really?” Chrissy wasn’t just a cat. She was a loved and loving part of our family who spent 15 years caring about us. If either of us were sick… she was in bed with us. If one of us was hurting over a family loss… she would be in our laps purring.
When we went through this with our first cat, Ebony, also in the 15- to 16-year range, we were again heartbroken. I asked our pastor at the time if our loved pets might be in Heaven. He laughed at me and made me feel like an idiot. We changed churches the next week. I’m guessing that even if that were an ignorant question, he must have missed the classes at seminary on compassion, grief counseling and such, or maybe he just never had a pet to love and be loved by.
If you have read this far my bet is you have been down this road. Thank you for listening. Writing is one of the ways I deal with the really good and the really bad things that happen in my life and this has been one of the worst. Chrissy, in some ways was my second best friend behind Twila. She never judged me when I did dumb stuff. Never said, “I told you so” and was always happy to see me even when I was in a bad mood.
Will we have another pet? Maybe. As we made this final journey with Chrissy we had decided not. But friends and family who know how much our cat babies have meant to us over the years are already encouraging us not to make a final decision until some time has passed and the healing begins.
No matter what happens I know how blessed we were to have Chrissy adopt us on that cold Christmas morning and I will always believe she was a special Christmas present from God.
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