Family mourns passing of 22-year-old cat
April 19th, 2008, 7:30 am · Post a Comment · posted by dgrubaugh
When people die, the loved ones they leave behind are best served by thinking only of their fondest memories. The same thing can be said on the passing of the family cat.
And when the cat lives to be 22, there are a lot of memories.
“Tillie” came into the world on March 29, 1986, and left it on tax day, April 15, 2008. She was one for the ages. She may not have been the oldest cat on record, but she seemed like it, and by the end, it was time. We all cried our eyes out, but we were strangely at peace.
She was a long-haired domestic with a fiery temper that convinced me she was of Irish decent. She could be cuddly when she wanted to be, but she had no compunction about using her claw power. And her feline canines found their way into my hand more times than I can count. There was no messing with the “queen.”
Our three kids grew up with Tillie, and until this week, none of them could remember a time without her. Typically a family will go through multiple cats in a lifetime. Ours went through one.
For most of the first 15 or so years, the cat slept with me and my wife, and she had this nasty habit of jumping on the bed and climbing over me to get to the restful spot on my wife’s side. Only a hard day of bug chasing could break that habit, and on those days, she was too exhausted to get past me.
And, of course, there was no need for an alarm clock. She ran on an engine that required stoking every morning at 5 a.m. Cats are said to sleep an average of 20 hours a day, and I could never figure how she picked her particular breakfast schedule.
She spent a lot of time outdoors and could be gone hours at a time. One night, she got a little too smart and climbed up on the neighbors’ carport roof. Yours truly was called upon for rescue detail and forced to get out the extension ladder at something like 3 in the morning. I’m pretty sure my neighbors slept through it, since the cops never came.
Until the last couple of months she remained active. As recently as last week she stood and stared at the back door long enough that I let her out for a stroll around the house. It was her last good walk.
I’ve tried various ways to estimate how old she was in human years. The old formula called for a 1 to 7, human-to-cat ratio, but that has been shown as inaccurate in recent years. A cat’s first couple of years are more like 24 to a human, then they slow down. I couldn’t find a single chart estimating how old a 22-year-old cat would be, but the closest estimate I could get is somewhere around 105.
That’s old, in anyone’s book.
She had a remarkable life, extended no doubt by her royal treatment.
I buried her Wednesday, at the bottom of the back yard, under a pine tree. The rain will stay off her that way, and the pine needles will provide fine cover. I had a sign out front that proudly noted our home as a “Kitty Crossing.” I moved it to the bottom of the hill. It was the least I could do for an old friend.
She was, after all, the queen.
