For We Will Consider Our Cat Maggie
We buried Maggie up in the woods behind Bear's Retreat; when I got up yesterday morning I could see that she was dying soon, and indeed she did, so I was glad I got to sit with her.
We first met her at a motel outside Columbia, South Carolina; the people at the desk told us she'd been there at least six months. She was following the customers at the motel, but not approaching any of them -- with the exception of the child, who was at that time about one year old, and toddling around. She would go up to him and get pets -- but run when the adults came near. Lovely little tabby cat. Clearly fond of babies. Sam kept remarking on how pretty she was, and the child was delighted every time he saw her. I came out of the motel room, and it was cold, and it was raining, and the little stray cat was lying under a car, unhappy and lonely.
So we went to the vet's next door and bought a cat carrier, and there was a moment when she'd gone up the child to get pets, and didn't see me behind her, and I was able to grab her. She warned me to let her go, but I knew if I did we'd never catch her again, so I carried her back to the motel room, dropping sizeable gouts of blood all down the sidewalk, while the cat yowled and tried to get away.
This disconcerted Sam -- maybe her temperament isn't good, he said -- but I wasn't worried on that score. She'd warned me. I was out of line.
But we had her, and we took her to the vet's, and me to the emergency clinic. The vet estimated she was about 4 years old then. She'd had kittens previously. I figure she'd lived in a house with a baby in it, which I gathered because of her passion for babies, which she kept for the rest of her life. She didn't have a lot of patience with them, you understand; she'd whack them at a moment's notice (how often we'd be sitting downstairs with the baby monitor on and hear a sudden wail, followed by "Maggie hit me!") -- but she loved them. Liked to be with them when they lived with us or came to visit. Lila, the Balinese cat, would come running to me whenever the child cried, to get me to fix it. Maggie would run to the child and try to fix it herself.
(We called her Maggie, by the way, as a result of a convoluted literary route. We found her at the Days Inn. Therefore her name was to be a form of "Daisy." I suggested "Marguerite," thinking of Chaucer, and his discussion of daisies. Sam wanted to know what was a good nickname for Marguerite, which turned out to be Maggie, of course, and this was satisfying, because then we could call her Maggie the Cat, Girl of the Streets, and therefore at one blow nod to Chaucer, Williams, and Crane.)
I don't think she'd been abandoned on purpose. I think a family was traveling with her, and had her in the car but not in a crate (NEVER go traveling with a cat without putting it in a carrier, unless it's so ill it isn't moving around much), and she escaped. Once that happens, you can't get the cat back for about three days, by which time most people at a motel would have to move on. So I figure they were heartbroken. I always wished I could tell them she was safe.
She was THE most expensive stray cat in the world, though. It cost us about $1000 to get her fixed a the vet's and me fixed at the emergency clinic. Then we got her home and discovered that her head rattled. She had ear mites. Got the ear mites fixed. Head still rattled. She had ear infections. Tried several times to get THAT fixed. Couldn't do it because we could get antibiotics down her only one morning; after that, she escaped us every morning. She was good at escaping, and she had a street cat's smarts. Finally had to break down and leave her at the vet's while they gave her the antibiotics. All told, I figure the ear infection cost us another $2000.
Once that was over, though, she turned out to be much nicer than she had been before, and didn't whack us nearly as much as she had. She started consenting to sit on the laps of adult humans, eventually. Even me, though I had, as you will recall, shown myself to be untrustworthy, on account of grabbing her and refusing to let her go, despite her valiant and brave struggles against the wicked oppressor.
We loved her. She was darling, and awful, and beautiful, and loving, and wicked.
The other cats hated her; she hated the other cats; there was cat pee all over the house, in the territory wars.
Oh, she was a major pain!
Excellent cat.
She was so very much her own self.
And we were, through her, constantly amused, and constantly called to kindness. Lovely gift.
At all cat funerals we read "For I will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey," in its entirety. All the cats have a line that's especially theirs. Maggie's was "For she is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon."
So that's what we did yesterday, besides, if we were the child, learning to ride our bikes without training wheels. We had our hearts broken.
We first met her at a motel outside Columbia, South Carolina; the people at the desk told us she'd been there at least six months. She was following the customers at the motel, but not approaching any of them -- with the exception of the child, who was at that time about one year old, and toddling around. She would go up to him and get pets -- but run when the adults came near. Lovely little tabby cat. Clearly fond of babies. Sam kept remarking on how pretty she was, and the child was delighted every time he saw her. I came out of the motel room, and it was cold, and it was raining, and the little stray cat was lying under a car, unhappy and lonely.
So we went to the vet's next door and bought a cat carrier, and there was a moment when she'd gone up the child to get pets, and didn't see me behind her, and I was able to grab her. She warned me to let her go, but I knew if I did we'd never catch her again, so I carried her back to the motel room, dropping sizeable gouts of blood all down the sidewalk, while the cat yowled and tried to get away.
This disconcerted Sam -- maybe her temperament isn't good, he said -- but I wasn't worried on that score. She'd warned me. I was out of line.
But we had her, and we took her to the vet's, and me to the emergency clinic. The vet estimated she was about 4 years old then. She'd had kittens previously. I figure she'd lived in a house with a baby in it, which I gathered because of her passion for babies, which she kept for the rest of her life. She didn't have a lot of patience with them, you understand; she'd whack them at a moment's notice (how often we'd be sitting downstairs with the baby monitor on and hear a sudden wail, followed by "Maggie hit me!") -- but she loved them. Liked to be with them when they lived with us or came to visit. Lila, the Balinese cat, would come running to me whenever the child cried, to get me to fix it. Maggie would run to the child and try to fix it herself.
(We called her Maggie, by the way, as a result of a convoluted literary route. We found her at the Days Inn. Therefore her name was to be a form of "Daisy." I suggested "Marguerite," thinking of Chaucer, and his discussion of daisies. Sam wanted to know what was a good nickname for Marguerite, which turned out to be Maggie, of course, and this was satisfying, because then we could call her Maggie the Cat, Girl of the Streets, and therefore at one blow nod to Chaucer, Williams, and Crane.)
I don't think she'd been abandoned on purpose. I think a family was traveling with her, and had her in the car but not in a crate (NEVER go traveling with a cat without putting it in a carrier, unless it's so ill it isn't moving around much), and she escaped. Once that happens, you can't get the cat back for about three days, by which time most people at a motel would have to move on. So I figure they were heartbroken. I always wished I could tell them she was safe.
She was THE most expensive stray cat in the world, though. It cost us about $1000 to get her fixed a the vet's and me fixed at the emergency clinic. Then we got her home and discovered that her head rattled. She had ear mites. Got the ear mites fixed. Head still rattled. She had ear infections. Tried several times to get THAT fixed. Couldn't do it because we could get antibiotics down her only one morning; after that, she escaped us every morning. She was good at escaping, and she had a street cat's smarts. Finally had to break down and leave her at the vet's while they gave her the antibiotics. All told, I figure the ear infection cost us another $2000.
Once that was over, though, she turned out to be much nicer than she had been before, and didn't whack us nearly as much as she had. She started consenting to sit on the laps of adult humans, eventually. Even me, though I had, as you will recall, shown myself to be untrustworthy, on account of grabbing her and refusing to let her go, despite her valiant and brave struggles against the wicked oppressor.
We loved her. She was darling, and awful, and beautiful, and loving, and wicked.
The other cats hated her; she hated the other cats; there was cat pee all over the house, in the territory wars.
Oh, she was a major pain!
Excellent cat.
She was so very much her own self.
And we were, through her, constantly amused, and constantly called to kindness. Lovely gift.
At all cat funerals we read "For I will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey," in its entirety. All the cats have a line that's especially theirs. Maggie's was "For she is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon."
So that's what we did yesterday, besides, if we were the child, learning to ride our bikes without training wheels. We had our hearts broken.
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