RIP, Fraidy

We took our twenty-one year old cat Fraidy to the vet last Wednesday morning and had her put to sleep.  It was time.  She had been eating only sporadically the previous couple weeks, and barely at all the prior 3-4 days.  When she stopped drinking water and using the litter box, we knew this might be the end, since our vet had educated us on the warning signs for a cat of her advanced years.  After some alone time with Fraidy in the examining room, the vet came in and explained the process.  He was kind, professional, and finished by saying "She is the oldest patient I've got".  This was a little ironic, since he was standing there with the syringe in his hand, but he had told us that before, and in his voice was just a little tinge of wonder.  It was a comfort and a source of more than a little pride that our vet could be amazed at her longevity, and he liked Fraidy too. 

We got Fraidy from my sister in 1993 when she was nine months old, shipped from Detroit, freshly spayed, drugged and stuck in a carrier for the 2.5 hour trip in the belly of a 737.  So it was a rough start for a kitten: She went from Detroit to Houston, from an indoor cat to an outdoor cat, and from the center of attention to second fiddle, what with our cat Buddy - also from Detroit and ten years old - having seniority.  The start of the relationship was not promising.  What she perceived as her ill treatment precipitated a memorable dash for freedom when I came home from work one day about a week after we got her.  I opened the garage door and she was off like a shot straight between my legs, over to the Murski's house and under their car.  I ran over and tried to coax her out.  She responded by running back across the grass and under my car.

 

This continued for about a half hour, with an ever-larger group of relatives, friends and neighborhood kids either joining the pursuit or watching in amusement.  I remembered thinking at the time that this was not the best thought-out plan, even for a pet.  It reminded me that 17 years earlier, my dog Babe ran away literally the day after I got her, flea-bitten, emaciated and with only one functioning eye, but she at least had a plan.  Phase One: jump the fence while I was in the back yard, get clean away, turn around to make sure I see her before she rounds the next block and disappears.  Phase II: Be sitting happily in the back yard waiting when I get home from work, tail thumping the ground in expectation of praise. 

 

A more sensitive person would look at these two events and detect a pattern: why were my foundling adopted pets treating me this way?  Neither one had any particular qualities that made them animals you could love, at least not at first, so I'm figuring they're being just a little uppity.  Anyway, the pursuit continued, Fraidy bouncing back and forth between cars, and easily avoiding the hands that reached out to her, me ruining my suit pants as I lean under each car in turn, trying to coax her out.  On the seventh try, she not only crawled under our neighbor's daughter's car, but climbed up into the engine compartment.  Theresa asked me what she should do.  I replied "start the engine".  She laughed, certain I was kidding.  Me, I wasn't so sure.

 

We did not start the car.  Instead, we decided to be a little more scientific about the whole thing, and got a bed sheet to throw over her like a fishing net as we would flush her out from under one of the cars.  This did not work at all, but added a whole other element to the chase that the neighbors could enjoy.  Finally the assembled throng started working in concert, and blocking her path of escape.  After some minutes of this, and managing to block her from getting under a car, she panicked and ran up onto our porch.  Sharon approached her; Fraidy was shaking and clearly exhausted, but looked directly up at Sharon and mewed.  I remembered thinking at the time how unusual it was for a cat to make sustained eye contact, but that turned out to be one of her more endearing qualities.  She let Sharon pick her up and take her into the house.  She was named that day.

 

After that we all settled into a routine.  In quick order, Fraidy adjusted to the new home, weather, living arrangements and the pecking order.  Buddy and her became fast friends, him tolerating the impetuous Newbie, but for all of that, she was not your typical kitten.  She did not play with string, or toys; she was very calm, did not destroy furniture, and was not infinitely needy as most cats are, her older brother also being an exception in that department and no doubt having a good influence on her.

 

Mostly, she was content to be wherever the humans were, particularly Sharon.  That was another quality she shared with Buddy, who was "my" cat.  If we were outside doing lawn work, Fraidy was content to be there as well, generally either leaning against you or directly in front of you, and most often exactly where you did not want her to be.  Not a problem: gardening, weeding and such soon became a ritual that involved doing a little work, petting Fraidy, moving Fraidy, continue working, then repeat.

 

Buddy took sick a few years later, and that was the first time I was confronted with taking a beloved pet in to be put to sleep.  He was 14, an unusually long life for a street cat of his size and breed.  I kind of used that as my expectation of how long Fraidy would be with us, but that would not be the first time she surprised us.  In 2000, she really came into her own, as we had moved out to the suburbs into a house we built, and where we currently live.  The area has a bunch of open land around us, and the neighborhood was comprised of large wooded lots with tons of critters and predatory birds.  Fraidy flourished, got adventurous, and would be gone for hours at a time, but would always pop back home every few hours.  On a half acre lot, there was also much more yard work to be done, and her social schedule got that much busier, as there were that many more hours to get in the way, or lounge happily nearby as we weeded, trimmed, cut and hauled, Fraidy patiently moving from place to place as the work progressed.  Suffice to say, we loved socializing outdoors as well, and Fraidy was there, always, and underfoot.

 

Around 2005, another cat - a large Tom - started hanging around, and after several months unofficially became ours.  I named him Idjit, because he was, but Sharon, thinking this unkind, changed it to Idjie.  I didn't figure it would matter to the cat, who was dumb even for a cat, but I did take consolation that in our vet's records, his name was recorded as Idjit.  This cat truly did not add anything to the household, but he was low maintenance, showing up once or twice a day max.  After a few years, he started getting bossy, and picking on the much smaller Fraidy.  She would give it right back to him though, and with her seniority, managed to keep him in line.  Still, the day came a few years ago that she was now a senior citizen, and he was taking advantage of it.  Suffice to say that Idjit got more than a few doses from the water bottle, as well as a number of whacks from a flyswatter we kept in the garage specifically for him.   

 

The situation was manageable for a while, but Idj was cruising for a trip to the animal shelter when he simply stopped coming around.  We found out later that he had decided to take up residence at a neighbor's house a few blocks over.  Either way, it worked out for all of us.  Having to deal with Idj did toughen Fraidy up though, and she continued to range the neighborhood, including lurking in the drainage pipe on the corner of our lot.  We never did figure out what her fascination was with the pipe, except that half the time if we would call her, she would come popping up out of it.

 

Watching her get comfortable in her old age was a trip.  She was probably 15 before she started limiting the amount of ranging she would do in the neighborhood.  The last six years of her life or so, she simply left later, came back earlier, and was within eyeshot more often than not.  This past year, she would venture out of the garage or screened-in porch, but rarely down the driveway or even the front yard.  Still, every once in a while she would get adventurous and wander the front porch, then down towards the street.  This caused a little anxiety because we weren't entirely sure how well she could see, but she always turned back and returned to the comfort of her pallet before too long.  She was content to wait for us to show up and scratch her, which between Sharon and me happened a dozen times per day. 

 

Her health was good.  Up until the last week - how to put this - she peed and pooped like a racehorse.  Seriously, her daily output was, like, half her body weight.  And as everybody knows, when you're old, you don't demand much more from life than a good appetite, a little socializing and regularity.  Except for an occasional illness, Fraidy had all those things for 21 years. 

 

I mentioned she was really good at making eye contact, and you could never mistake it.  It's not unlike when you make eye contact with another person: you can sense from the look in their eyes that they're looking at you; same with Fraidy.  The effect was all the more arresting because - as Sharon pointed out - the markings around her eyes made it look like she was wearing eyeliner.  In her youth, the eye contact thing was sporadic.  If dinner was late, if she wanted to be scratched or if there was thunder and lightning, she would tilt her head back and look right up at you, but that was about it.  In her senior years, though, as the hearing and eyesight started to go, the eye contact became more prolonged and insistent.  No doubt some of this was her simply focusing until she was certain you were looking back, but her manner of doing it was endearing in the extreme: She would walk up to you, tilt her head back and look up at you.  If you didn't respond, after a few seconds, she would mew at you.  If you didn't respond then, she would sit down, get comfortable, and do it again.  And always - always - you were looking into her gorgeous eyes. 

"Guilting", we called it, and it worked every time, with one of us pulling out the brush and giving her a good going over.  This was a constant source of amusement for Sharon, by the way, since Fraidy most often worked this angle on me.

 

I mentioned we got her a litter box a couple years ago.  Pushing through the cat door and going outside was getting beyond her, and she started peeing in her cat bed.  What made this funny is that when we would go out to the garage, she would immediately walk over to the soiled basket, look up and start squawking, as if this unacceptable turn of events was our fault.  So, a litter basket it was.  As time progressed she went outside less and less.  We left the garage door open as much as possible, but even with this she started getting disoriented in the semi-dark garage, so four months ago we moved her out to the screened-in sun porch off the kitchen.  She loved it.  Just enough sunlight, the smells of nature, and within eyeshot of the adults inside through the patio doors.  The funny thing is that the sun porch until that point was rarely used.  Once we moved her out there, it became the social hub of our home. 

 

About a year ago, we had a real scare with Fraidy.  She exhibited all the same symptoms from last week, and being twenty years old, we assumed the end might be near.  We took her to the vet expecting the worst; instead, it turned out she had an abscess on her leg, easily treated by antibiotics.  She came back like a champ, but before she started feeling better, she would look up at you with those big, beautiful, soulful eyes and mew at you, confident that she was going to be brushed, petted or just held, and asking for no more than that.  She didn't have a problem that couldn't be solved with just a little attention.  It makes you realize that, however old they get, pets are children their entire lives.  Is that why it's so heart-rending when they die? 

 

The last four months were good ones for her and us.  To watch her circle repeatedly on her pallet - arthritic hips reducing the ritual to an agonizing slowness - was an edge-of-the-seat experience, Sharon counting out the turns.  Fraidy would eventually complete the circuit and settle down, finishing with a deep sigh as her old bones got comfortable.  The practice of brushing her the last couple months changed as well.  For the first 19 years, we could sit down and Fraidy would immediately come over to be brushed.  Then her sight and hearing started going, and we had to call out to her and wave the brush for her to see.  Then her sight and hearing got a little worse, and we had to tap it on the ground to get her attention.  Then it just got tough for her to get up once she'd gotten comfortable, so we would frequently walk over to her pallet and brush her right there.

 

And always, she would talk to you, look up, and make eye contact.

 

By last Monday, it was clear she was in distress.  She cried a lot, but would settle down with a little petting.  By Tuesday, she was progressively weaker, and the vet confirmed that she was dying.  We took her in Wednesday afternoon and had a few minutes with her one last time.  She was content with us gently petting her, but in order to look her in the eyes, we had to stoop down to the counter, or pick her head up.  She didn't seem to mind, and I think she took as much comfort in it as we did.  Doc came in, gave her the shot, and Fraidy went quickly, melting comfortably onto the pallet one last time, our small consolation being that she was neither confused, fearful or in pain, and trusting because her parents hands were on her. 

What a blessing that little girl was to both Sharon and me, and for better than twenty years.  She was our much loved Fraidy, and like most pets, made the world a better place because she was in it.