Friday, November 14, 2008

Demmy

Oh gawd, a blog post about a cat on a Friday night. I am the working definition of Lame, right?

But there is a story I want to share with all five of you who read this thing.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, about 100 klicks downstream from Chernobyl, there lived a Young Lady in an apartment building with some fellow expats. And one day, some local girls showed up on the neighbor's doorstep asking for some sausage to feed a kitten they'd found. The Man of the House said 'oh no way, we are not taking in a stray cat, we are not encouraging this.' He went out on some errands, and of course everyone else went outside to see the kitten.

The kitten, it turns out, would not have been able to eat that sausage. Her eyes weren't even open. Her mother and her siblings had been beaten to death by some little hooligans, and this little furball had been smacked across the head and left for dead.

Everyone brought the kitten inside. The Man of the House returned from his errands, took one look at the her, and said, "You'd better feed that thing or it's gonna die."

The Lady of the House found a hair-coloring kit bottle, put some milk in it, and tried feeding the little patient. When that was successful, they got some antibiotics from another neighbor, mixed it with the milk, and kept nursing the kitten with the hair-coloring bottle. The Young Lady said that if the kitten survived, she'd take her home when she was strong enough.

That was over fifteen years ago.

The kitten got named "Demmy". The story behind that is kind of long, so I usually just tell people it's because she could fit in a demitasse cup when she was found. No one believes that, of course; in her finest form she weighed nearly 15 pounds. My friends and family call her Monster Kitty, Psycho Kitty, Chernobyl Cat. My husband usually calls her Stupid Cat. I called her "organic alarm clock" for a long time, because she would not allow me to sleep in if her food bowl was empty.

This cat came into my life at the start of my career. I went from Eastern Europe to A Land Down Under, where I couldn't take her because it would have meant six months of quarantine. She lived with my brother during that time, and I think he fed her Purina Elvis Chow. I swear she doubled in bulk during those years.

Then I went back to the mainland to work at HQ for a while. Around that time, I also got hit with the first major depressive episode of my adult life. I hesitated to take Demmy back from my brother, because she seemed quite content with him. I came to realize that my apathy about bringing her home was part of my symptoms. As part of my therapy, I decided to take her back. Since then, she's been one of the barometers for my mental health. If I can take care of her, I can take care of me.

One element of my ongoing treatment was "Recumbent Feline Bibliotherapy": when I got too stressed out, upset, or just plain wiped out, I would lie on the sofa with a book. Demmy would come along within a few minutes and jump up to join me, and stretch out on my tummy or legs or wherever she felt like it. Stress, tension, anxiety (and usually, consciousness) all melt away in this state. She was like Prozac in a fur coat.

When I started dating the man who would become my husband, I almost quit him because he declared that he was Not A Cat Person. In his mind, you are either a Cat Person or a Dog Person, and he is firmly a Dog Person. I disagree: I believe you can be both, because I am. I grew up with two cats, two dogs, and two brothers. Most of them were quite enjoyable to live with. But with the lifestyle I was leading in my 20s (i.e., "Life? What Life, I Have A Job") I was ill-suited to have a dog. Cats are low-maintenance: they don't need to be walked and they can entertain themselves for hours at a stretch. Yes, I can see why some people would rather have a dog, but that doesn't mean you can't like cats too, I insisted. He didn't seem to believe me.

I gave him a chance anyway, and he gave me a chance, and readers, I married him. When we got engaged, I made clear to him that Demmy and I were a package deal. He consented to this, we all moved in together, and they achieved a certain detente. In his speech at the wedding, our Best Man said that he knew the relationship was serious when he heard my husband talking baby talk to the cat. My husband denies it to this day. ("I was using baby talk voice to call her a stupid ugly little beast, I swear!")

One month before we moved to Baltic Europe, I felt a lump near her ribcage. I took her to the vet, who said they'd take an x-ray while she was under anesthesia for her teeth-cleaning. When I went to pick her up, they'd shaved her belly and gone in to take out what they'd found on the x-ray.

The biopsy came back: cancer.

"We got it all, I'm sure of it," said the vet. You'll need to keep an eye on her, bring her back for x-rays again if you detect another lump. There's a little blur on the x-ray that we can't quite identify..." Gee doc, I'm moving to another continent, where I expect veterinary care to be about the standards of 'Medieval Barber', can you be a little more encouraging, please?

I couldn't think of what would be worse: having to put her to sleep before leaving for Europe, or going to Europe and having to put her down there if she relapsed. My husband tried to be sympathetic. He still didn't like Demmy, but he understood why I wasn't ready to give up on her. I decided to take the chance. She came with us.

No lumps came back. No ugly thoughts about Big Needles. Score one more lucky break for Demmy.

Fast-forward now through four years, two small children, and another international move. Once again, my mental health is under strain. Demmy blends into the furniture some days. She still has her routine: wake up the human, get breakfast, disappear; watch human leave; Human comes home! Meet human at door and pester her until dinner is served; disappear until miniature humans go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. During the summertime, she'll climb on my lap sometimes while we watch the Red Sox on TV. Otherwise, we could go through most of the day with five minutes' interaction, max. "Recumbent Feline Bibliotherapy" doesn't happen often with two preschoolers in the house.

Quality of Life: we haz it.

So the creature that was once a Beloved Source of Comfort was yet another entity that needs to be fed, watered, and cleaned up after. She had an edge over the kids: she doesn't usually wake me up in the middle of the night complaining of "bad crocodile dreams". She doesn't need clothing, shoes, or a college education. But when Mommy is working 45 hours a week and trying not to permanently scar two preschoolers, "low maintenance" is still maintenance.

A few months ago, I took a good look at her. She'd lost weight. She was drinking more water than ever. Her litter box was filling up faster, and she was missing it a lot. I felt around her rib cage carefully, when she would let me.

Lumps.

I was crying too much to make an appointment at the vet. I stalled and stalled for weeks. I did the math over and over in my head. This cat is fifteen years old. That's downright geriatric. Maybe it is her time after all.

When I finally took her in, they thought that nine pounds was a perfectly healthy weight. I tried explaining that this meant she'd lost one third of her body mass in a year. I told them about the cancer scare from six years ago. I told them about the water and the litter box. They agreed to blood tests.

Diabetes.

Treatable. Manageable. Still not great but at least it's not cancer.

Still, it brings up issues: Do you seriously expect me to give her shots? Twice a day???? I had visions of having to spend hours chasing her down, dodging and weaving around my kids with a needle in my hand. And having to climb into the rafters to keep the needles away from little hands. And oh, the ick factor of injections: would I have to wrestle with her, searching for a vein?

Then the ugliest question of all: how much is it going to cost? Do I have to add up how much her life is worth in terms of disposable income? Am I going to be the sort of jerk who puts her pet down for the sake of convenience? How many takeout lunches and lattes add up to keeping her alive?

It turns out that her insulin is not that expensive, and the single-use needles are just pennies apiece. I can take the used ones back to the vet for proper disposal. And she's gotten quite used to the shots - especially since she knows that food comes next. She's drinking less water, but she still misses the litter box on occasion. (When 900 years old you reach, pee as good, you will not, hm?) And she still gets weepy goop around her eyes, thanks to the injury she suffered when her mother and siblings were killed. She doesn't spend all day under my side of the bed. She even comes out to let the kids pet her once in a while.

And once again, this cat - who wasn't expected to live two more hours when we first found her - gets another lucky break. And I put off thoughts of The Big Needle for a while longer.

Here's the thing: I have never been around for the loss of a pet, not really. My brother's Beagle took her last trip to the vet when I wasn't home. The Irish Setter that was supposed to fill the void when my dad moved out went back to the breeder (because none of us were around consistently enough to properly housebreak her). The cats died when I was away for my sophomore and junior years of college. I've never had to make That Decision.

We found Demmy on Memorial Day weekend in 1993. I guesstimated her age at that point to be about two weeks. So I decided that her birthday, unofficially, would be Mothers Day. I feel as though I helped save her life fifteen years ago. I can't bear the thought of having to decide when to end it. Once again, I get a lucky break.