When I graduated from college, I wanted to get a cat to inaugurate my grownup life. I was going to get an apartment, find a job, and have pets, like people do. My cat was going to be long-haired and gray and answer to the name Ender. Adulthood was going to be awesome. It turns out that long-haired gray cats aren’t as prevalent at the local shelter as one might think, and so I was blessed with a scrawny gray and black tabby who loved to drink more than anything in the world. In light of this habit he was named after F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I was fine with calling him Scott for the time being. The woman who ran Asheville Pet Supply called him Scotty, as have several others who’ve met him over the years. My secret hope was that he would grow into a more stately name, Mr. Fitzgerald. This optimism was misplaced.
My partner Amy found Scott in a cage with his feral mother at Asheville Pet Supply (a fantastic shop that succeeds despite having no website even though it’s 2009). She was such a wild cat that oven mitts were required to feed her or, as was unfortunately necessary, to coax her into nursing her kittens. Scott was only 6 weeks old but the kind proprietor of Asheville Pet Supply felt it would be best if he was weaned a bit prematurely. Too soon or not, Scott was sent home with Amy.
By “home” I mean to say that Scott went to live in a college dorm, where he was kept hidden from me (because he was a surprise graduation gift) and from UNCA’s resident advisors. He spent finals week passing from one dorm to another, each inhabited by students somewhat frayed by the end-of-semester slog. The long-term implications of his time under the care of college students of questionable sanity cannot be accurately gauged, but I believe this was a formative week.
It soon became apparent that Scott’s mother had, in addition to physical malice, the enmity to withhold the basic life lessons one expects a cat to learn early in life. He knew that toys with colorful feathers were for killing, but his preferred method of attack was to sit on them and smother them. This became somewhat more effective in later years, when his bulk ensured he was capable of smothering anything smaller than a toddler, but as a kitten he just looked confused, but pleased with himself, when he tried.
Scott struggled a bit in our first apartment. For an entire year, he jumped every time the central air came on. He became overfascinated with a burning candle and spent a few weeks without the whiskers on one side of his face, during which he would only walk along the walls his good whiskers could touch. At one point he disappeared for an afternoon until we heard a muffled, plaintive mrreaw? that sounded like it was coming from the dishwasher. We found him in there, stuck under the bottom rack.
Now, I’m not great with geometry, so I can’t explain how a cat whose head is smaller than the spaces between the dishwasher rack wires could get his head stuck between them. I just know it took two people to rescue one very small kitten from the bowels of a dishwasher, and the operation involved lifting both Scott and the rack out of the dishwasher, then forcing his head into a position that allowed him to slip through the gap. Scott was lucky that this particular impasse wasn’t irreversible.
Kitties are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other
In our second apartment, Scott met and fell in love with two cats. First was a huge orange tomcat (Sherbet) who lived with our neighbor and could come and go as he pleased. Perhaps Scott envied Sherbet’s indoor-outdoor lifestyle, or perhaps he just found Sherbet’s mangy fur irresistible, but whatever the attraction, it was clearly unrequited. Sherbet would have nothing to do with Scott, and he eventually moved away, leaving Scott to mope on the front porch all day, staring down at Sherbet’s favorite step.
Eventually a new suitor showed up, and Scott forgot all about Sherbet. He was a flame point siamese, a stray, and for reasons I can no longer remember, his name was Blue. Scott and Blue were thick as thieves. They slept together. They groomed each other. They spent hours at a stretch just staring at each other’s impossibly long legs.
Blue was, however, a demon. He seemed to need to be an only child, despite his love for Scott. When he climbed onto the bed while I was reading, pawed at me to get my attention, then pissed in my lap while staring me down, I knew it was time for him to go. He lives on a farm somewhere in Raleigh now.
Not All Cats Are Meant to Live Outside
Scott wasn’t always hapless. There were a good few . . . weeks . . . when he could safely cavort in the little jungle behind our house, and (contrary to kitty nature), he always came running up to the sliding glass door whenever we called him. Eventually, though, it became clear that Scott’s time would be best spent inside.
The first time Mr. Scott ventured untended into the great wide world, he jumped from a moving car. I’ve forgotten why he was being transported, but I do remember the rear driver’s side window of the car had malfunctioned. The window was stuck not quite halfway down, and it had been sealed well enough, we supposed, to prevent any kitty hijinks. I wasn’t in the car at the time, but the report I got was that Scott made a break for it in the middle of a dirt road and ran into the nearby underbrush.
We’ll never know what he sought out there in the wild, or whether he found it. Ten minutes after he escaped, he scampered back to the car, soaking wet and smelling disgusting. A week later he was favoring one of his hind legs, so we took him to the vet. Evidently in that 10 minute excursion Scott had managed to find a festering swamp and get bitten by a nearby creature, and because he was Scott, the wound had abscessed.
The Big City Takes Its Toll
Scott followed me to grad school in Boston. We lived on the top floor of a brownstone not too far from the river. Scott was fond of my room, which featured a huge window where he could observe the mundane goings on below, but he especially loved my roommate’s room, because he was not allowed inside and because it had a window that opened onto the fire escape.
Scott wasn’t the most affectionate cat in the world but he did like to sleep on my bed, curled up behind my knees. I woke up one April morning and knew that he hadn’t slept there all night, the way you miss the warmth when your eyes are closed and clouds block the sun. He wasn’t in any of his usual hiding places.
At the bottom of the stairs was a sign: “Found, FAT gray cat” with a phone number. A couple in a nearby apartment was already on their way to the vet with the cat they’d found on the sidewalk the night before. He was pretty beat up, they said, and not very responsive. Since I didn’t have a vehicle in the city, they offered to swing by and pick me up. We were all relieved when I looked in their cardboard box and Scott immediately started purring.
It was easy in Boston to believe that everyone was too busy to think of other people, too focused on getting ahead to help out someone else. This couple, whose names I have forgotten, drove me to the vet with my cat, waited there with me to find out how he was doing, drove us to another vet when the first one confessed they weren’t equipped to help, and called to follow up every few days until Scott was better. And they weren’t even cat people.
Even vets evaluating trauma cannot resist making the obvious joke about how cats are supposed to land on their feet. It seemed clear from his injuries that Scott landed on his head. He could no longer see out of his right eye. His mouth wouldn’t close for a week after he fell. He got three different kinds of eye drops for a month, administered by me and a helpful roommate. He survived.
How To Tell Whether Your Already Hapless Cat Is Brain Damaged
One-eyed Scott was slower around the house, and less interested in playing with his toys, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain. His digestive system, never a marvel of efficiency, became the source of room-clearing, eye-watering visits to the litter box. And sometimes, just lying on the floor, Scott would start, as if he’d just fallen down.
His disposition became at once sweeter and more combative. He decided that he liked sitting next to people (but seldom directly on laps). He renewed an on-and-off battle with his kitty nemesis Ella. This time around, though, Scott had an unfair advantage: Ella wouldn’t fight back. Whether out of pity for the gimp or fear that Scott’s obvious ailments were contagious, Ella wouldn’t raise a paw against him.
Maybe He’s Just A Jumper
Last month, Scott decided he wasn’t going to eat anything anymore. Several trips to the vet were inconclusive, though we ruled out all the obvious stuff. Granted, he needed a diet, but it’s bad for cats to stop eating altogether, which is what he did just before Thanksgiving. His ribs and spine were much too visible beneath his flabby skin, and as the month wore on, he became weak and disoriented. He turned up his nose at every imaginable kind of food and beverage anyone could think to put in front of him.
We came home from the vet armed with a syringe and the most delicious puree of kitty food you’ve ever sniffed and gagged at the smell of, and for that Saturday morning I tried to coax him into eating something. I got more on the carpet than down his throat, but at least something was going in his belly.
It was the first sunny day in ages, so I thought we’d both like to sit out on the balcony for a while. Scott sniffed around the edges of the railing while I read a while. Then this cat, who was too weak to jump into a chair, leapt up 3 feet to the top of the railing, then down another 20 to the ground. Maybe he’d finally found something he wanted to eat. Maybe he caught wind of Blue’s scent, all the way from Raleigh. By the time I got down there, he had disappeared. I haven’t seen him since.
He was 8 and a half years old. He had the sad privilege of watching me muck my way through my entire adult life. I see him everywhere in shadows now, and I try to hope that another absurdly kind stranger has picked him up and dribbled something tasty into his confused little mouth and called him their own.
I know, in the quiet part of my brain, that I have been a good steward to such a small and bewildered creature. Still, there are days now when I think it might be better to hope that he found a warm hole to crawl down where he could go to sleep and never again wake to the starved and sightless world that was left to him in the end.
