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Ode to a Four-Footed
Friend
By Susan Law Corpany
Author’s note: We interrupt our regularly-scheduled
writings to bring you this special column. In two weeks I will resume
my Personal Records Management theme.
Years before I came on the scene, my husband
Thom found an abandoned kitten under the new home he and his first
wife, Sue, had purchased in Captain Cook, Hawaii. He named the little
gray furball “Smokey,” and she has been part of the
family ever since. When Sue died, Smokey grieved along with the
rest of the family. Thom said he would often find Smokey curled
up on Sue’s bathrobe.
When I first met Smokey, she was, understandably,
quite distant. I was an interloper. I have never met an animal that
could give dirty looks the way Smokey could. In Hawaii, they call
it “stink eye,” and Smokey’s dislike of me came
through loud and clear. I did my best to offer friendship to the
big gray cat, but she would have none of it.
When Thom and I married, a change in employment
located us on the Hilo side of the big island. Thom’s oldest
son, Rob, stayed in the other house with Smokey. Eventually, Rob
moved out and we turned that house into a vacation rental. Thom
and the boys discussed how much Smokey hated riding in cars, and
we wondered how we were going to transport her across the island.
The boys decided to try holding her and soothing her rather than
confining her to a box.
We began the trek across the island with a caterwauling
cat and the sounds of two boys trying to comfort her. About halfway
through the trip, she crawled up into the front seat and onto my
lap. This was the first time the cat had done anything remotely
friendly to me.
I decided that maybe in a moment of crisis,
she was willing to befriend me. I began to stroke her fur, but she
wouldn’t sit still. By then it was dark, and I couldn’t
see what she was doing, but in a moment my nostrils confirmed that
she had just used me as a human litter box. Then she attempted to
bury the evidence, effectively spreading the wealth.
As we pulled into the nearest gas station, I
got out of the car, covered from neck to knees. I ignored the snickers
from the backseat. Thom tried to help. People were looking at me
and laughing out loud. “They’re looking at you because
you’re walking like Frankenstein.”
“They’re looking at me because they
can smell me coming, but why don’t you show me the cool way
you would walk if you were covered in cat poop!”
Thankfully, I had a change of clothes in the
back of the Jeep, and the rest of the trip home was without incident.
Thom assured me that Smokey was very embarrassed and that it would
be best if I never mentioned the matter to her again. Every once
in a while, though, I would catch her eye and we would both know
what I was thinking about. I swear that once I saw her smirk.
For the better part of a year, I fed her, watered
her and tried to make friends with her, to no avail. Then when I
was away from the island for a couple of weeks, Thom said he had
found her curled up on top of my bathrobe. Sure enough, when I returned
home, the big gray cat came and climbed on my lap for the first
time, quietly kneading me with her paws, still not quite making
friendly eye contact, but it was a start. Smokey had decided to
accept that she had a stepmother.
Over the years, we have had a couple of more
interesting rides in the car, to visit the vet.
“Oh, I can see she is bleeding. Has she
been in a fight?”
“No, that’s not why we’re
here. That’s what she did to herself trying to claw her way
out of the carrier.”
This last trip to the vet, my stepson Shawn
tried to hold her during the ride, so when we got there, he was
the one bleeding. We gave her the medicine the vet prescribed and
hoped her breathing would not be so labored. We started to realize
that Smokey was getting old.
Although the medicine helped some, she continued
to have breathing problems. There might have been more they could
have done, but I wasn’t sure her old heart would stand up
under another car trip to the vet. We continued to love her and
care for her the best we could.
One day as she looked at me with those expressive
pleading eyes, I invited her inside the house to curl up in the
soft kitty bed I had bought for her. The eyes that had once so strongly
expressed her dislike of me now expressed gratitude for somewhere
soft to lay her tired old bones. I thought to myself, “I bet
when it is time for Smokey to go, she’ll just disappear, like
the aging Indian who goes to the top of the mountain and never comes
down.” It just seemed like something she would do to spare
us the trouble.
We haven’t seen Smokey in over a week,
and both Thom and I know. Some things you just know. She spared
us the grief and pain of finding her, but she deprived me of an
opportunity to say goodbye and to say a few kind words over a shoebox
at yet another pet funeral, so all I can do is eulogize her here.
Smokey, if you had a bathrobe, I would go curl
up on it for a few days and cry. We’ll miss you. I hope you
made it to the top of the mountain.
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