Goodbye, my sweet baby…

Goodbye, Sylvie

I said goodbye to my sweet baby today. A little over 18 1/2 years ago I went to the Humane Society and picked up this cute little one-year-old black cat. She was a tiny, little thing. And she never really grew much bigger as the years passed. The sign at the Humane Society said her name was Penny. Who names a black cat Penny? I changed her name to Sylvie after the very first sentence of French I learned in a high school French class “Où est Sylvie?” (Answer: “Au lycée.”). I love France and the French language and grew to love Sylvie just as much, and then more. Sylvie was a perfect cat for me. She was a little shy at first but ultimately loved other people. She was the sweetest cat I’ve ever known. Very affectionate and responsive. She used to love to bat at the trails of water that would come down my clear shower curtain or put her paw underneath the door when I was in the bathroom. I’d dangle a piece of toilet paper and she’d grab it. She also liked to play fetch! I’d throw this little mouse toy down the hallway and I’d hear the pitter-pat of her little paws on the hardwood floor and then the sound of her dropping the mouse right in front of me. She’s lived with other cats, dogs, and other people and adapted well to every situation. She used to love to play with my other cat Myko. Myko was a big girl and would just roll on her back and Sylvie would go in for the kill, which was hilarious because it was so unlike her nature otherwise. I had this felt string thing on a stick that she would just love. Every time I’d pull it out she would make this funny noise and assume playing position while her tail would do this nervous looking twitch thing. She had some odd quirks. She almost never meowed. Instead she made this funny sounding grunt noise to announce her presence. She loved sitting on your lap but /hated/ having her belly rubbed (complete opposite of Myko who would lie on her back waiting for that). She had this mouse toy with feathers as a tail and she loved when you would run the feathers /on her face/. It was the weirdest thing. Earlier on in life she liked it when I would pick her up and pet her – especially behind the ears. And she was a total brush whore! She had a strong sense of smell and the second you made something she was there to check it out. Hilariously, though she was never interested in more than a few licks off your finger. And if she didn’t like the smell she’d turn around and walk away! She tended to sleep on the bed on the pillow next to me. Really she was almost always in the same room as me. She loved her trips to the sitters when I would go out of town. And it was after one of these trips that she wanted to get under the covers with me. New things learned while on her kitty vacations! She was really wonderful. She was the constant in a period of my life that saw a lot of change. Later, she was the presence who’d greet me when I came home. And she loved to go exploring in the hallway outside my place. I used to if not gone for too long, just have people check in on her. And she let me have it when I got home for about 15 minutes! Yelling at me. As she got older she started howling at night. I thought something was wrong with her so I took her to the vet, only to learn that she was totally fine. I was informed that she might have dementia and somehow that just seemed to make sense. Leave it to me to have a cat with dementia! She’d usually be in the other room so sometimes I’d gently pick her up and bring her to the bedroom and she’d calm down. I did find it hilarious though thinking of this old woman in the other room yelling at me. As with any cat that reaches a certain age, Sylvie started having issues with her kidneys. I caught it much earlier with her than I did with Myko, who unfortunately passed at a much younger age. So I fed Sylvie kidney health food twice a day for many years. Both pâtés and stews although she eventually tired of the pâtés and then tired of the chicken flavor and preferred the tuna. She had this funny bump on her head. She had had it for years. I was told by a previous vet that it’s sometimes more troublesome to get rid of it than to leave it be, especially if it’s not bothering the cat. It mostly didn’t until this last summer when she scratched it a couple times and it didn’t heal right. Starting this fall, I noticed she was drinking more and losing weight. She also would bat at her mouth even though I was told that she always had amazing teeth. Given her age, I wasn’t going to do anything that a cat that age couldn’t tolerate reasonably well. And given that I have a job and have to focus on work for a good chunk of the day or go into the clinic. I started giving her subcutaneous injections of fluids every other day to keep her hydrated – basically like a form of kitty dialysis. I never once missed this in the past three months and it actually became quite easy for me to do. I’d always say, “are you ready for the water?” She didn’t love it but she let me do it. When I first started doing this in November, I thought her days were numbered and that she wouldn’t make it past Thanksgiving. But she rebounded! Enough so that when I went to Omaha for a much abbreviated road trip for the holidays, I brought her along. And she loved it! I put together this really comfortable set-up in the back seat with a blanket and the cage open so she could go in and out as she pleased. Instead she climbed up on top of the cage to look out the window. Just like I would have done!! I noticed when I came back after a couple weeks that she was really losing weight. She was eating less and less. And she was getting weaker and having a harder time jumping on the couch and bed. So I arranged boxes and blankets and pillows and her cage to make little steps so that she could more easily get up there. And then I would bring her food to her sometimes (breakfast in bed!) and I was giving her less but more often. Then this week came and she started being clumsy in her walking and eventually she stopped eating altogether. I thought that I had been allowed to process and grieve and that I’d be ok today but nope. I was a full-on blubbering mess at the vet’s. Last night Sylvie had gotten off the bed and couldn’t get back on so I picked her up and she pawed me to get under the covers and then she laid right against me. I wept for a while but I was so glad she did that. One last moment of sweetness. Makes me cry now to think about. When I got home before taking her in for the appt she wasn’t really able to walk well at all. My hope is that I was able to successfully return some of the love and happiness she gave me over the many years and that she knew that she was loved. Greatly. I’ll miss her terribly and will never forget her. I’m so glad I was able to work so much from home this last year to be able to spend more time with her. Bye, my sweet baby.