We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This

I remember as a young kid, maybe 7 or 8 at the time, bemoaning to my mom my inherent ordinariness. "I'm so ordinary, mom. There's nothing special about me. Jimmy's special: it's right there in his needs!" (My oldest brother, Jim, had Down syndrome.) "Jeanne and Jack are twins, so that makes them special. Andrew's special because he's the baby. But there's nothing special about me."

Feigning shock, Mom replied, "Not special? What? You're special because you're the best and only Linda in our whole family! We'd be so sad if we had a family without a Linda in it!" And somehow that satisfied my 8 year old ego and I took my rightful place on the special pedestal. 

That memory came back to me one day a few years ago when 96 mentioned that, while he was sure I liked him fine, he feared I didn't think there was anything special about Pixel. It was an easy misundertanding to explain:  C was, well, C! And tiny Ada was a gorgeous weirdo, with her ear tufts and her beautiful long coat, and her habit of demanding to be let out the front door, only to walk around to the back and immediately howl to be let back in. One hundred times a day. Momo might have been Tom's reincarnation (based on their shared love of sitting in the warm sun I was never able to fully rule this out), while Scruffy had those crazy paws and that glossy coat. All, by definition, special. Pixel was "just" that tabby I pulled out from under someone's porch.

But Pixel? Ordinary? That was a bridge too far, and an accusation I could not let stand.  Pixel and his siblings, Alpha and Gummitch, had come to us under somewhat false pretenses: A friend put out a call on social media in the summer of 2006 that a cat had abandoned her four calico kittens under their deck. I volunteered my Havahart trap for the low low price of taking two of the kittens. Tom approved, and looked forward to meeting our newest family members. 

Gummitch in back; Pixel front left, Alpha, right

So imagine my surprise when, one by one, we pulled kittens out of the trap that afternoon. Tabbies, one and all. Two grey, two orange, but not a calico in the mix. "Oops," my friend said, upon my commenting something along the lines of, "These aren't calicos at all. They're just ordinary tabbies" because I'm super gracious like that. 

My friend took one of the orange tabbies (she named him Lanai), but what was I going to do with not one, not two, but three POTCs (plain old tabby cats)? I tossed the two kids and the three cats back into the car and headed home, stopping unannounced and panicked at another friend's house with the hopes she might want one or two. Or three. Lucky for us, she wasn't home.

I prepared Tom as best I could. "They're cute," I said. "They're sweet. I'm sure they'll make great pets. But they're not calicos," I told him. I didn't mention that there were three of them. Oops.

Alpha had a brief stint at at a neighbor's house, but their Pomeranian pulled rank and after a few days we were back to a family of four humans and five cats (Scruffy's origin story was written a few weeks later.)

I came to appreciate the charms of all the kittens, and their personalities showed through early. Alpha was the adventurer we predicted on Day One, having escaped the nest I had made for them before any of his brothers. And Gummy was the lap cat, always ready to burrow into a lap or under a couch cushion. 

And I quickly came to see just how special little Pixel was. He had the silkiest, smoothest coat. And a personality that far outsized that tiny kitten body. He was a "woolie," a term I had never heard before, but it describes a cat who, for cat reasons (often momma's sudden departure), sucks on fabric that has some kind of nap or texture to it. It might be a bathmat, or it might be a towel, or it might be an electric blanket. In Pixel's case it was all of these things and more. He chewed through two of electric blankets, right down to exposing wires, before I finally discovered heated mattress pads, which are far more cat-resistant, although anyone who has ever owned a cat knows that nothing on the planet is actually cat-proof.

Poor C learned to tolerate Pixel suckling on him, too; and the others climbing Mount C for play and excercise. Poor, put-upon C. Ada just lurked in the distance, snickering silently, all the while thinking, better you than me, dude. 

When I moved to DC in 2019, Zoet came with me, but the cats stayed with 96; and by this summer it was just him and Pixel. When 96 moved to Oregon a few weeks ago, Pixel accompanied him as a carryon in the passenger cabin, joining Hannah her cat Ezra to began building their own little cattery in Eugene.

A few weeks ago Pixel was feeling under the weather, and his new vet uncovered an array of issues, including diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis. Further testing also revealed lung tumors, and with sad memories of my having likely extended Scruffy's suffering by trying to treat his cancer a couple of years ago, 96 made the wise decision not to treat, to minimize his discomfort and to euthanize. 

So I've had a bit of time to remember just how special Pixel was, and how he was the softest, blanketiest, best damned Pixel in our whole family. Ours would have been an incomplete family indeed if we had not had our special Pixel rounding out menagerie. 

RIP Pixel, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in peace and comfort, with his humans by his side.