Serendipity

Meet the newest Gentile, Momo. When one cat crosses the Rainbow Bridge on a Thursday, and the following Monday you heed a call about a kitten that’s about to be returned to the shelter because the new owner is hopelessly allergic, how can you call it anything but serendipity? How could we just up and adopt a new kitten so quickly? Let me tell you, it was easy. Mostly white with grayish markings at the top of her head, rump and tail, she is a dirty white snowball of boundless energy, enthusiastically trying to befriend her feline housemates, but sadly rebuffed at every turn. Not so with the humans. She takes turns sleeping with all of us: a few hours with 98, then on to 96’s room, settling in with me by the time I turn out the lights. I try to keep her away from the other cats' favorite spots, but she has taken a liking to Pixel’s bed by the window and Ada’s towel on the couch. Heaven help her the first time she jumps up into the kitchen box window, the one with the shelf I specifically cleared off so the cats could view the backyard unimpeded by pottery and spices. Pix will go ballistic.

Ada, as expected, hisses at every encounter. Scruffy is more curious than the others, tentatively sniffing, and even allowing Momo to share the dinner plate with him. Pixel runs, terrified by the tornado-vortex-like nature of Momo’s friendly advances, but even he is slowly coming around. I walked into my bedroom today and they were both on the bed. In opposite corners, they could not have been further from each other and still both have been been on the bed, but there they were, on the bed “together”.

Everything's a toy when you're a kitten: anything tied to a doorknob, anything that makes noise ... any bit of paper or a hairband or a dust bunny or an ant on the floor is there for the entertainment - or nutrition - or friendship - of our little Momo. We thought about renaming her after a comet, but Momo suits her, so a momo she is, and a momo she shall stay. 

I hope Momo's first human companion is feeling better, and that her allergies are subsiding. And I hope she knows how much we already love her little peach.

RIP, C

If I’m in your Facebook newsfeed, you already know that we lost C recently. He’d been on the decline for many months, and while I didn’t want him to suffer (he didn’t), I mostly just didn’t want C to die before Tom did. They were great friends, Tom and C, and I didn’t want Tom to endure that loss. So we did what we could and we did what we had to: we brought C to the vet when he had the symptoms of his recurrent UTI (he always had a UTI, and you’re welcome for me not explaining in excruciating detail why he was so prone to them) … We brought him to the vet when we noticed maggots falling out of a small wound on his backside … We brought him most recently for an overgrown claw. Since he was slowing down, he simply wasn’t wearing down his claws, and it had grown full circle, impaling itself in the pad below it. It didn’t seem to cause any pain, and we wouldn’t even have realized anything was wrong except that David was playing with him on the bed and noticed it. Not even so much as a limp.

That vet appointment fixed the claw, but uncovered several other troubles: congestive heart failure and a pancreatic mass, for starters. We opted not to treat the mass, put him on Plavix ($50 for 7 pills, and that’s with the AAA discount –  and no, C didn't have health insurance) and some other heart meds and antibiotics, and commenced with another round of “hurry up and wait”. Dr. Zanotti didn’t have to say it when we had our scheduled follow up visit: I knew we were looking at days, maybe weeks; certainly not months. We would keep C’s days as pleasant as possible, and that meant a lot of American cheese and chicken scraps. Just a few hours after that appointment we noticed he was unable to walk, and brought him back to the vet. He had thrown a clot, not unexpectedly, and his suffering would soon begin. So while the decision was hard to make, we really had no choice. C had lived a long and happy life. He had eaten his share of treats, pee’d his way into the cellar floor hall of fame, and barfed with the best of them. He’ll be cremated and added to my little “collection”. And when the time is right, and the ground is dry, and the air is warm, we’ll take Tom’s ashes, and C’s, and Mr. Gibb’s, and Yeti’s, and Neko's, and those good friends will share a very pretty spot high in the Fells behind the house, watching the planes and stalking the birds.

We owe a sincere thanks to Stephen Zanotti, VMD,  and all the vets, techs, medical and support staff at Winchester Veterinary Group for everything they’ve done over the years to help us care for the pets we so dearly love, as well as all the animals that are lucky enough to cross their threshold.

In the beginning, there were frogs. Lots and lots of frogs.

Today would be our 16th daywemet-iversary. I like that word, and if it didn’t cost $325 to trademark it, I’d be totally there. Since I’m too cheap to spend the money – who knows what product or service I might invent that would need the trademark-protected "daywemetiversary" – I’ll just have to stick with a “first use” protection. And this post is the second time I’ve used the word, so there.


Of course, I neglect to mention that if I’d had my way, Tom and I would never have met. I had heard from so many frogs with the personal ad my cat Neko had placed in Boston Magazine that I had officially thrown up my hands and was not going to follow up with any more responses. Tom’s letter was in the pile labeled “I Give Up!”

I don’t recall the exact moment I gave up on Neko’s ad. It might have been these beefcake shots.  If you responded to my ad with your application form to some random dating service I didn't follow up. Ditto if you couldn’t be bothered replying and simply sent me a copy of your own personal ad. If you had your own phone number that spelled something, and that something was creepy, I didn't respond. And if you invited me for coffie, I didn’t go.

If this was you, then I bet you can guess in what direction I swiftly walked. (But the guy did give me a run for my money in the category of "overuse of parentheses").

Some prisons did me the favor of telling me your letter was mailed from an incarceration facility, even if you forgot to mention it. If you were on an extended vacation in the Adirondacks and your postmark was Ray Brook, NY, you were in prison, and I wasn't interested. Even if you were not incarcerated for long, you were actually incarcerated, and I actually wasn't interested. And yes, you might have been one of those wrongly convicted, but that little infraction was indeed a deterrent, and I didn't respond to you, either. And the creepy quotation marks in your post script only made me run a little faster. And even if your non-traditional incident wasn't wanton, I still wasn't going to date you. And when if your parole is granted, don’t hold your breath.

If your first question was about my weight, I wouldn't have gone out with you. And that was when I was 40 pounds lighter than I am today. Sometimes people don’t mention their build in their personal ads because, well, at $3.95 per word, maybe we think other things matter more?


So I gave up on the ad, and decided not to respond to any more responses. My friend Laura had other plans, though, and thought Tom’s letter sounded perfect. So perfect, in fact, that she nagged me daily: “Have you called him yet, Linda?” “When are you going to call him?” “Why won’t you call him? He sounds perfect for you, Linda.” She was getting so fed up with me she finally threatened to call him herself, posing as me. She really wanted me to meet this guy. And I was getting pretty fed up with her, too.

I truly only called Tom to shut Laura up. So I called during the day, when I knew he’d be at work, and left my name and number. He called and we met at the Bertucci’s in Central Square for pizza. How very fitting that just under two years later, Laura was my matron of honor.

To Catch a Bird ... or a Snake ... or a Vole ... Doesn't Matter, Really: Where's the Food?

C came home recently from a nearly weeklong hospital stay, and he's not doing very well. With seventeen years under his belt (Tom and I met when C and Ada were about a year old) I have taken a stroll down memory lane with him this week. What a lovely stroll it was.

I learned early in my relationship with Tom that the way to Tom's heart was through C's stomach. At nearly 20 pounds when I met him, C rarely met a treat he didn't like. On my way to Tom's I'd stop at the deli counter at the Purity Supreme and buy C one slice from the cold cuts section ... bologna one day, roast beef the next. The deli guy knew it was for my new boyfriend's cat, and never begrudged me his time, even though we both knew it was his smallest sale of the day. C, whom we considered a dog trapped in a cat's body, greeted me with enthusiam. Evil grin ... my plan is working! The only time he turned up his nose at my Friday night special was the one time I brought him a single jumbo shrimp. He wouldn't have anything to do with it. Neither would Ada, for that matter, or Mr. Gibbs. Tom had trained his minions well: Don't. Eat. The Fish.

C also liked to supervise household projects. Tom installed the box windows in the sunroom, and they were - are - lovely. Don't look too closely at the window seat, however, lest you notice the pawprints left in the wet polyurethane. They're still there, still visible, and not going anywhere anytime soon. Also in the house repair department was the time that C was so interested in house trim painting (we had a black-and-white cat for a while after that). Not satisfied with climbing the ladder to join Tom, he proceeded to climb up and over Tom on the ladder, positioning himself in the gutter - where he didn't quite fit but thought he had found the best seat in the house. It took an hour to get him down.

Even on his best days now, he never brings home a snake anymore: Ada was into chipmunk and bird inventory control, but C could never resist a garter snake; and I can't say I miss that particular aspect of sharing a house with a pet, or two, or six, but I hope that C continues to enjoy his daily constitutional, a few minutes of sunshine and fresh air, for a long time to come. Then, at the end of the day, that he'll climb the stairs to the second floor, and then climb the stairs up into the bed, so his still-bellowing purr can keep me awake. Enough with the peeing on the cellar floor, though, 'kay?