Cats – Musings of a Gypsy Soul

Rest easy, my baby. We love you so much.

By: Jana Greene

Yesterday, I lost my beloved furbaby, Catsby. It was sudden and unexpected, and we are in another state taking care of some emergency family business four hours away. My daughter found him and called us hysterical.

Yesterday was pure processing, or trying to. And last night…

I fell asleep crying.
Woke up today crying.
Feel like I’ll never be done crying.
Feel like my whole heart is going to simply stop for trying to make sense of things.

Last night I had to fight the urge to drive to the vet four hours away that has his perfect little fuzzy body for cremation, all the way back to Wilmington.

I just wanted to hold him one last time and tell him how much I love him. To thank him for spending his life giving so much love and hilarity. I’d like to tell him what he means to me, but I tried to make that clear every day of his life.

I know he knew how loved he was. I know we gave him such a good life. We were nowhere NEAR ready to say goodbye.

So in saying goodbye to him, I wanted to share these things all about Catsby:

We got him because I fostered his litter of five kittens when he was a baby. It was delirious chaos and mayhem, and out of the five there was one shy little guy who I just connected with. I chose him because he chose me.

Catsby wasn’t like other cats. I know all cat people say this about their cats, and I used to roll my eyes whenever someone would insist that about their own, but ask anyone who knew him.

He was the Mac Daddy of pure, unadulterated love, and I never knew I could love a cat like this.

He was carried around, a LOT, his preferred mode of transport.

He was told he was a good boy approximately 150 times a day.

He had to be in somebody’s lap most of the time.

He was held and squeezed and the top of his little noggin was kissed no less than a million times in his lifetime. And he loved it.

He had a middle name – Zazzles – a nod to the cat in Big Bang Theory that Sheldon named “Zazzles” because “he’s SO zazzy.”

Catsby was SO zazzy. Big personality. Big love energy.

He loved to “spoon” – he’d come in every morning in bed and I’d sing him a dumb little song about what a good boy he is while he’d scrootch up next to me – couldn’t get close enough.

He got little bites of turkey and cheese when we made sandwiches, and I saved him the straws from some of my drinks because he LOVED to play “fetch.”

He loved water, so we got him a little kitty fountain. He loved it, as it befitted his taste for the finer things in life.

He loved to lay upside down and sun his fat, pink belly. No shame in his game. LOOK AT IT, he seemed to say. I wish I had that confidence about my own fat, pink belly. He knew he was majestic.

He greeted me at the door almost always – my own itty bitty kitty greeting committee. It’s going to be brutal walking through the door and not having him waiting for me.

He was a great outdoorsman (on the screened-in porch only, which he has no idea wasn’t the whole big, bad world (and nobody told him it wasn’t.)

He liked to sit on the barstool while I cooked and watch me, and sometimes I’d jokingly ask him if he wanted a sarsaparilla, because his little peanut head was all you could see of him over the bar and he looked somehow like an old-timey wild-west patron.

When I was having pain flares, he really pulled out all the stops – sitting with me in the pain all day so consistently and kindly. We watched many a true-crime series together, but I think he preferred watching 90-Day Fiancé episodes.

He could MacGyver his way into cabinets and figure out how to get to noms in the cleverest ways. He also liked to knock every single item off of ever single surface in every single room in the house, all while being told “no” whilst not breaking eye contact. My little fartknocker.

He didn’t mind his feet being touched, which is weird for a cat. I do so love some pink toe beans.

He followed me from room to room all day every day at the house; I didn’t even get to pee alone. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

He was the perfect boy for me….nice and codependent. Very go-with-the-flow, which I need, because I have absolutely no chill.

And I love him. So so much.

It is a sad time in many “life event” ways for us right now. Catsby’s passing is not even the most difficult thing we are going through right now. I cannot share more at this time, but please keep praying for us.

And hey, snuggle those furbabies a little extra today, for me. Time is so precious.

It’s true that The Beggar’s Bakery is a blog heavy on the substance abuse recovery material. That’s my passion. But through the ages (the nearly three years I’ve been blogging) I like to mix things up a little on occasion. I am also a “recovering” cat hater. Truly.

Recovery is my passion, but it’s not my ONLY passion. There is also my family, and the kitty cats – animals of all kinds, really – and chocolate, and music, and clothes with elastic waistbands.

Here is one from a blog I maintained for, um….about two posts. But I’m re-posting it because sometimes you just need to write a little, er….FLUFF to go along with the heavier issues.

What’s fluffier than kitties?

This is Catsby, the first cat I've ever heard that is truly mine, a Mama's Boy through-and-through. — This is Catsby, the first cat I’ve ever had that is truly mine (Bob claims him, too, but he is a Mama’s Boy through-and-through!)

I used to have a funny little blog about cat appreciation, but from the perspective of a person who grew up as a life-long cat hater. (Please, no hate mail! Remember that this blog is satire – or dare I say, “catire?” – and all in fun!)

Yes…

My name is Jana and I am a recovering Cat Hater. I come from a long line of cat-haters, and honestly, cat hating was all I knew growing up.

As a matter of fact, many in my family would equate penning this blog with signing my own commitment papers. But if there is anything being in my forties has taught me, it is this: We all own some degree of crazy. Own your crazy, without apology.

Really. “Normal” is just a setting on the clothes dryer.

And my love for cats?

I blame My Beloved husband. He started it.

Into our blended marriage, he brought one daughter and two cats, and I brought two daughters and The Best Dog Ever. Talk about life in the blender! I had never been in the same room with a cat, so limited was my experience with them.

All of my life, I’ve had dogs, and I adore them. I’ve always identified as a Dog Person. I think I will always identify as a Dog Person. I lost my Emmie, my Best Dog Ever, over a year ago. I cannot bring myself to get another. Until I’m ready, there are the kitties.

What I’ve found over the past eight years is that I don’t have to choose to be “either/or.” I can be an animal-lover, and appreciate all of God’s creatures for what they are. It is kind of long story, how this change came about – and it taught me a lot about myself, a lot about tolerance and acceptance.

Mostly, it taught me never to hate a cat for not being a dog, which as it turned out, was my main complaint about them B.C. (before cats.)

I strongly encourage others to expand their animal “rePEToire.”

Of course, one does not become a Cat Person overnight. Thrust into cat ownership, I went through all of the stages of acceptance:

Denial: “I will just ignore the cats!” and “The dog and cats will learn to get along.”

Anger: “Is there any surface in this entire house that is NOT covered in cat fur?” “Go to sleep, kitties!”

Bargaining: “Please, PLEASE sleep at night. Please, I beg of you – SLEEP!”

Depression “This darn cat won’t get out of my pillow….. Hairballs are the most disgusting thing ever….Wet cat food smells like stink and I will never get used to it. And the cats will never sleep through the night. NEVERRRRRRR!”

Acceptance: “But I guess the kitties are kind of CUTE, and warm. And I love that purr thing. And the pouncing … that is adorable.

They DO have so much personality……Yes, the cat hair is everywhere; I will just keep a lint-roller in my car for the fur. And maybe I will learn to sleep through all of the zooming about at 4 a.m. A cat cannot change its stripes, so to speak. I suppose I must accept them.”

Once cats get under your skin and into your heart, there is NO stopping it. You will make runs to PetSmart for a certain kind of toy mouse. You will find batting at feathers adorable. You will answer your cat’s meows with “Tell me all about it!” You will think internet memes of cats captioned with funny text are the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. You will resign yourself to the fact that you have ‘dropped your basket’ and it is full of kitty cats.

I’ve done a 180, as they say, and I’m grateful for my allergy to the purry ones (as it forces me to a strict limit of two, okay maybe three….and no more.) Catsby greets me at the door every day and mews to be picked up and carried around on my shoulder, and sits on the edge of the bathtub to play in the water. He is kind of a doggish cat, and I love that. I love that he is co-dependent.

Hey, recovery is a process, right? Own your crazy, without apology.

Here’s looking at mew, kid.