Nicola Cameron Writes

The memorial corner has settled in nicely and the azalea bush is looking good and producing new blossoms. I also bought a really pretty sun-shaped solar light and added it in the very back of the corner, and I may plant some vinca on either side of the azalea.

I still miss J.J. The living room feels empty and quiet, and the futon looks so odd with its regular cover and cushions. Granted, it’s been easier to clean—I’ve been vacuuming the LR rug every other day and sweeping the floors every day, and I can clean in the kitchen without worrying about disturbing him. The mild pee smell is gone and I make sure I sweep the litter-catching mat in the breakfast nook every morning.

But we can still feel this space in the house where he used to be. The J Crew have been a bit clingy, understandably, and I’ve been giving them extra attention, grooming, catnip, and petting. Jessie and Jeremy are slowly losing weight what with the shut-down of the Never-Ending Buffet, and even our little round puffball Jemma (who doesn’t like treats, doesn’t overeat, and will only occasionally eat tuna when offered it so I don’t understand why she put on so much weight) is showing signs of slimming down, all of which will make Dr. Dana happy. Which reminds me, I need to make appointments for Jem and Jasmine to get them vaccinated and checked out.

I hope I was a good cat mom to J.J., but sometimes I have doubts. I worry that I kept him alive too long for reasons that didn’t benefit him, that I should have taken the vet’s offer to have him put to sleep back on March 6th. If he had died peacefully in his sleep I wouldn’t be so bothered by this, but I’m pretty sure he had a stroke at the end and there were about five bad minutes before he died.

I promised him that I would take care of him and there wouldn’t be any pain, and I wasn’t able to keep that promise. Wherever he is, I hope he forgives me. I won’t be able to forgive myself, and I won’t ever make that mistake again with the rest of the J Crew.

As it turns out, digging a grave for a frail elderly cat is more work than you’d expect, especially in North Texas clay with all kinds of thick roots running through it. But making yourself too tired to cry is kinda useful, too.

We buried J.J. with the ashes of Jordan and Sandy in the southwest corner of our back yard (ignore the condition of the soil—I’ll be remediating it this spring). As I said to Lyndon, their little boxes are just something I dust and it would be more appropriate to mingle their ashes with J.J. We also added one of Lyndon’s old shoes, because J.J. loved to sing to Lyndon’s shoes at night, dragging one into the middle of the floor and MEOOOOOOOOOWing to it.

I cried a lot yesterday, especially in the shower, and only got to sleep with some pharmaceutical help. Today, however, is memorial day. So I went to Calloways and asked them what kind of rose or flowering shrub would work well over the grave. Since it only gets 6 hours of sunlight in the morning they said that a rose would be problematic but an azalea bush would work well in that kind of partial sunlight, blooms in spring and fall, and we could always plant annuals around it for additional color.

So I bought a small azalea bush with red blossoms, some shrub soil, additional lantana for the southern flower bed to replace the ones that got killed in the frost, then came home and put on my gardening clothes. I grabbed border stones from the little wall ringing the tree stump out front (will someone please remind me to have people come out this summer and grind out the danged thing?) and used those as a border, then dug a hole for the azalea bush, added the shrub soil and some mulch, and watered it.

I can see it from my kitchen window when I’m at the sink, which makes me, well, as happy as I can be at the moment. Afterwards I took the practically unused box of Hydra Care into our vet to have it donated to someone who could use it and thanked them for taking such good care of J.J., and of course I burst into tears at the end of it. Lyndon and I will probably grieve for some time, and even Jeremy, who is Not a Cat of Much Brain, has noticed that something is wrong and wants to stay with me when I’m in the house. I guess he’s my new shadow and bodyguard. As for Jessie, she keeps wandering around the house, then comes up to me wanting scritches and reassurance. Jemma and Jasmine don’t seem to be bothered all that much but they weren’t raised by J.J. and Jordan the way Jer and Jess were.

There’s a palpable absence in the house. I keep walking past the futon, which has now been cleaned and had its cover put back on, and it’s so strange not to see J.J. laying on his bedding and lifting his head to look at me. Lyndon said that he always used to talk to J.J. when he came in from the shops and was putting things away in the kitchen, and last night after he ran to Walmart it hurt not seeing J.J. watching him while he chatted about his day.

He was an amazing cat, and he will be missed deeply.

We hadn’t planned on getting a cat.

Oh, sure, we’d talked about it. But moving from country to country every two years like we did for the first eight years of our marriage wasn’t conducive to having a pet. It wasn’t until we moved back to the US in 2001 that we even gave adopting a cat a second thought. But even then it was something we’d do in the future, when the time was right.

As it turned out, the right time was May 11, 2002, when I went to a local PetSmart to see if I could find some equestrian gear for a friend. They were having an adoption event and I got to play with puppies and an adorable schnauzer before I went into the cat area. All the cats were all wonderful, of course—the huge gray Maine Coon, the equally huge orange tabby, the kittens, the long-haired gray tabby.

And then I wound up next to a cage marked “Cass.” A couple and their kids had been cooing and sticking their fingers through the bars to pet whatever was in there, but moved on to the next row of cages. When I peered through the grill, I saw a little black cat sitting there. He spotted me and blinked slowly at me. He wasn’t adorable, he wasn’t doing tricks or grabbing my attention—he just looked at me. I reached in to scratch behind his ears, and he moved his head until I had just the right spot.

When I pulled my hand back he stood up, carefully walked his front paws up the cage until he was balanced on his hind paws, then reached out through the bars and laid his paw on my nose.

“That is so sweet!” another customer declared. “I think he just picked you!”

I’m not one to miss a sign. So I called Ramón and told him how I’d been chosen. He was quite pleased and said, “I think you need to bring that cat home,” so I filled out the forms, paid the adoption fee, got all the necessaries, and brought Cass home.

After some discussion, he was renamed J.J. Pussycat Fletcher, J.J for short, and for the next twenty-one years he would be my shadow and bodyguard (I’m serious about the bodyguard bit—if a repairman or some stranger came into the apartment J.J. would remain at my side glaring at the interloper until they left). He was extremely smart, would come get us if something was wrong (we started saying, “What is it, Lassie? Is Timmy down the well again?”), and loved being in the same room with me.

And he got big. I don’t mean fat—I mean long, broad, and muscular. We’re talking back yard panther. One time a Girl Scout came by to sell cookies and peered past me at J.J. who was lounging on the stairs. “That’s a BIG cat,” she said admiringly.

At the time Ramón and I had office jobs and didn’t want J.J. to get lonely so we got him a black and white cat named Jordan as a companion. They got along well enough for a handful of years until I rolled over Jordan’s tail with my office chair. I don’t know what his yowl meant in Cat, but clearly he was calling me everything but a child of God because J.J. came charging into the room and launched himself at Jordan. The two bowled out of my office in a shrieking, spitting ball and I had to throw water on them to separate them. After that J.J. hated Jordan and would hiss at him any time he came near (which was often because Jordan kept trying to make amends).

In 2011 a friend of mine had to rehome two kittens, which is how we got Jessica and Jeremy. The guys promptly became Uncle J.J. and Uncle Jordan, taking care of the kittens like they were their own offspring. In 2013 we lost Jordan to GI lymphoma, then adopted Jasmine (a slender grey tabby who could give Jordan a run for his money when it came to neuroses) and Jemma (a big, beautiful tortie) in 2014 from some friends of Ramón’s who were moving and couldn’t bring the cats with them. For the last nine years we’ve been a household of five cats and two humans, said household definitely run to suit the cats’ needs.

In 2017 J.J. was diagnosed with kidney insufficiency and was given one to three years to live. He promptly ignored that and continued on with his life, cheerfully eating the special kidney food for a year before turning his nose up at it. We figured at this point he could eat whatever he liked so we fed him well in an attempt to keep as much weight on him as possible. Jessica and Jeremy became champs at hoovering up anything he left uneaten and turned into a pair of chonks. We told them that once Uncle J.J. crossed the Rainbow Bridge the never-ending buffet would come to and end and they’d go on diets, but they preferred to live in the moment and enjoy the leftover treats and Lick ’n’ Lap.

In the last few years J.J.’s health problems increased. He developed kitty dementia and “cloudy window” cataracts, and started going deaf. He also had problems with peeing in the litter boxes (he would go up to the litter box, look at it, then squat a foot from the entrance) so we started adding pee pads under them so that he could pee (and poop) on those. Over the last few months we turned the futon in the living room into a hospital bed for him, putting a plastic tarp down and layering that with cushions, pee pads, and bedding that would get changed with increasing frequency. His last checkup was in December 2022, and apart from his assorted health issues he was in remarkably good shape—BP was normal, heart and lungs sounded fine.

So we celebrated Christmas and New Year’s with him, and January and February 2023 passed with me changing his bedding multiple times a day, giving him water, treats, and sponge baths (which he would demand by going into the bathroom and yowling until I came running), and cuddling him whenever he wanted. On 2/27 we noticed that he was very unsteady on his feet, and on 3/1 I picked up a banana bag from our vet so that I could give him sub-Q fluids. He stopped eating on 3/3 and showed signs of an upper respiratory infection.

I took him into the vet on the morning of 3/6. She said he was in end-stage kidney failure judging by the strong odor of uremia on his breath, and asked if I wanted him to be put to sleep. He’d been alert and active the day before, I explained, and had been on the cusp of death a couple of times before until he bounced back. We both agreed that she should treat the URI and give him meds and an appetite stimulant, and I’d keep giving him the sub-Q fluids every day, but that we’d hold an appointment on 3/8 for euthanasia in case it became necessary.

He spent the next two days being well and truly spoiled by everyone in the house, even Jemma (whom he didn’t like for some reason), and somehow pulled yet another miracle out of his furry behind. On the morning of 3/8 Ramón burst into the bathroom while I was busy doing my business and told me excitedly that J.J. had just eaten some kibble. I cancelled the vet appointment and the Elderly Gentleman bounced back for a good week and a half, eating everything offered to him and snoozing happily in sunbeams. Unfortunately he also started developing constipation due to his kidney failure which required daily warm water enemas to help him pass the poop.

As I suspected, this was a surge. J.J. stopped eating again on 3/12, and today he started refusing water, which we knew was the final step. I administered a painkiller so that he’d be able to sleep comfortably for the afternoon, and called our vet to make the appointment tomorrow morning.

Being the stubborn little pooper that he was, J.J. decided to go on his own terms in his own bed this afternoon at 5:13 PM. He’s buried in the back yard with Jordan and Sandy’s ashes and I’ll be planting a rose bush over his grave as a memorial of the best bodyguard—the best cat—I could have ever asked for.

Thank you for choosing me all those years ago, J.J. You made my life wonderful.