Today I had to put down my cat, Oistrakh, also known, at various points in her life, as Little Kitty, Fatty, the Fatness, and Dr. Oysterman, along with countless other nicknames and terms of endearment, and a hashtag (#fatcat).

I’m devastated.

She had kidney failure.  It happened quickly, and by the time I realized something was horribly wrong, it was too late. We tried by putting her on an IV with fluids for a few days, but her levels never came back down. I took her home for a few days, but she was never okay again, and we decided it was time to let her go.

I’d never had to make that decision for a pet, or any of these end of life decisions, what treatment to pursue, how long to let her suffer. It was really difficult, but in the end I think I did as good as I could, and that I didn’t make her suffer too long (hopefully) and that I gave her a wonderful life. The vet said several times that this was the right thing to do, that we had done all we could and that really helped.

I woke up this morning knowing we had decided today was the day and I had already arranged my work schedule, and still, I was hesitant. It was so hard. She was still warm, still soft, and still breathing. She was drinking a little water and using the litter box. But that was really all she was doing. She wasn’t doing all the things she loved. She was just lying on a pillow.  It helped hearing from a friend who said that “for all the joy she brought you, you can now repay her a bit by letting her pass peacefully.”

It was so horribly sad at the vet, but I think she was ready, and it was like she just fell asleep—she passed as peacefully as any of us could hope to. Louie and I stayed with her until the very end and then they let us stay as long as we wanted afterwards and I covered her body with the blanket before we left. Writing about it makes me cry, but I want to share my feelings and get my thoughts down here before I forget. She deserves my sadness because she helped so much with mine over the years. She was also a wonderful photography subject and…I don’t know what I will do without her…

She was such a sweet cat. She had the softest fur, and was really squashy under her skin. Cuddling with her was one of my biggest joys. Even though she didn’t really like cuddling or being picked up, she would tolerate it for awhile. She loved eating, playing with pony tail holders, sitting in windows in the sun, or sitting on my legs or near me. She always hated violin and other noise, was shy around people until she got to know them, and didn’t care for Louie’s dog and cat at all. I think they miss her, and knew she was sick. Last night Chloe came and sat by her, and I felt like that was a reassurance that she wouldn’t be sick all alone while I was trying to sleep.

Letting go of my beloved cat has made the past few days really hard. She’d lost a lot of weight and was really bony. She didn’t like being picked up, and didn’t really respond to petting. She didn’t look up anymore either.

I have so many “end of life” thoughts, in regards to my pet…most pet owners will or have gone through something similar. The other night Louie reminded me that it wasn’t a tragedy, though, this was just a dear friend dying of a disease due to being old. She had (I hope) a wonderful life and was greatly loved.

I got Oistrakh while living in Charlotte, NC playing with the Charlotte Symphony. I had another cat at the time, Heifetz, who I’d gotten around Christmas of 2001, and Heifetz was really sad and needy when I wasn’t around, so my friends suggested I get her a friend. Sometime in April of May of 2002 (not sure) a colleague had a rescue kitten that needed a home.  I was able to take her in, and though she was never the companion for Heifetz that I’d hoped for, she did keep her from being quite so sad, and for several years they lived in (relative) harmony together.

That’s Heifetz, the black and white cat.

This was one of the only times she was cuddly with Heifetz. Usually she preferred a bit of space.

Heifetz died (suddenly) in 2007 and left me alone with Oistrakh. It wasn’t until after then that I really became attached to her. She had always been a sweet kitty, but when you have two it’s a little different. Or at least for me it was. I did a lot of moving, I got married, I got divorced, I met Louie…throughout all that I had my kitty by my side, and she was warm and soft and cuddly, and always there for me.

She had the saddest eyes. She always looked sad, but I hope she wasn’t and just looked that way.

Because sitting on the couch wasn’t soft enough, she needed a pillow on the couch for true comfort.

She loved boxes, the smaller the better.

And she loved sitting in windows.

That’s a box Louie made for her in the fall. It has foam from an egg crate mattress on the bottom. We put it on a table next to a window that she loved because it got a ton of sunlight.

This is the last picture I took of her sitting on my legs. Maybe it was even the last time she sat there, I don’t know. I can’t remember.

I took a bunch of pictures over the last few days, but I don’t want to share them. I want this post to be full of good memories, of a happy fatness. She was the best, and I told her that so many times. I loved her more than I should have, and I’m sadder that I could have imagined, but I’m so grateful for all our years together. I’m probably ridiculous right now for being so sad, but that’s how it goes when the best cat ever dies. And a special thanks to Louie for being supportive and wonderful throughout the whole ordeal. I couldn’t have done it alone, and I’m glad I had him to help me through it.

RIP Fatness. You will be missed. You already are. April 2002-January 11, 2016.

I just spent at least 5 minutes thinking it was Tuesday. Sigh. Often it’s easy to know what day it is as I see the same folks on the same day each week (perils of a private violin teacher) but this week between opera rehearsals and some other students rescheduling for THEIR rehearsals…I’m seeing people on the wrong day which just really throws me off.

Today is evidently National Cat Day. Maybe that’s the day that matters!

So, is anybody else already over Halloween? For me, this is not one of my favorite holidays. And I think that the number of Halloween activities seems to be out of hand. Halloween is a holiday for kids to go trick-or-treating. From door to door, house to house, not out of the back of somebody’s car…doesn’t Trunk of Treat just teach kids that people actually DO have candy in their cars and that yes, you should probably trust them when they say, hey, come here little boy, I have candy?

I’m told there is decoration and it’s all in good fun. But I’m pretty sure that’s what regular trick-or-treating is, except you walk further between the houses than you do for cars, and it’s just one night so you don’t have to worry about how much candy your kid gets all month long.

Maybe I’m old and crotchety. Or maybe I’m jealous that Thanksgiving hasn’t taken over like Halloween and Christmas have. (And Fourth of July. Don’t get me started on how the fireworks were nearly a week late this year in our neighborhood which majorly threw off plans and ultimately led to an incredibly anticlimactic party.) How about we start celebrating Trunksgiving, where you go from car to car eating Thanksgiving food that people have prepared. Mmm…turkey here, stuffing over there, gravy off the back of that truck, cranberry sauce from that little Fiat.

Which reminds me. I used to have an adult student who came to my house in Cleveland, and one time he came up for his lesson and told me that after parking, a man approached him and asked if he wanted to buy some meat. The man evidently had random packages of meat in his trunk that he was trying to unload. Or maybe my student misunderstood and it was a pay per car type of Trunksgiving celebration. 

I do know that tonight is Taco Thursday. Well, to be fair, I’ve called it Mexican Monday and Taco Tuesday today (at one point Louie said, are you having a stroke?) so I will say that I know, with at least 37 percent certainty, that tonight is Taco Thursday. That’s probably far more than Congress knows, so I’ll consider it a win.

Having a blog is a funny thing—you don’t always want to go into a lot of things in your life. It’s like, you want your readers to know a lot about you, but not everything. Or you want to share, but you don’t want to overshare, or share too much about other people in your life.

That’s probably the main thing. The other people. My big other person is my boyfriend Louie, who I was fortunate to meet, and who I met not terribly long after my separation from my now ex-husband. I was lucky to meet Louie then, but I would have been lucky to meet him anytime. Arguably, meeting him a little later might have been luckier still as we both had a lot of baggage to work through, but we felt that we were the right people for each other, and that made it the right time. I wake up nearly every day feeling special.

But I digress. I really want this blog post to be about pets. I was renting, Louie is a homeowner, so when my lease was nearing its end we decided the practical thing would be to merge our households. We knew it might be a little soon for both of us, but financially it made sense, and it made sense personally as well—we knew we were in a serious relationship, and figured moving in together was the logical next step, and who was to say what “too soon” was.

So the biggest worry for me was how my cat would adjust to living with his cat and dog. I thought she was a fat, lovable, cuddly, sweetheart of a cat who might be terrified to move in with a giant black dog and a white cat who likes to cuddle with her claws extended on your neck. I did some reading and talked with my vet and came up with a gameplan. The first step was to move the fatness over and give her her own room of the house. For a week or so she lived in the bedroom by herself. After a few days we put up a babygate so the pets could see each other too but not touch. And, little did I realize that my sweet little cat was ACTUALLY kind of the meanest cat ever. She would growl and hiss at the other animals. She hated Chloe (the white cat) from the bottom of her heart. Once we started opening up the house further she would let out the scariest growls from under the bed, terrifying us all! She left scratches on Mackenzie and Chloe, and basically told them that she wasn’t to be messed with! Every doorway was a small battlefield, and around ever corner lay a potential fight. My sweet little cat was still the sweetest cat to me and Louie and other people, but I learned quickly that she was not to be messed with.

But time heals most wounds. Over time, she grew used to the other pets, and they grew used to her. They still hiss and fight, especially the two cats, especially when they are hungry and it’s feeding time, but the urgency and seriousness isn’t there anymore. Mackenzie still backs up when she sees the Dr. coming (we have taken to calling her Dr Oysterman—long story) but just this morning they had a moment of sniffing each other’s mouths before retreating to their separate areas. Chloe and the Dr. definitely fight over food (and that’s been made more difficult with Chloe having special diabetic food, sigh…) but otherwise they basically co-exist and have their own areas of the house that they hang out in, and occasionally they even relax near one another!

And as far as Louie and I, living together in an old house definitely has its challenges..dog fur EVERYWHERE, and moisture, and spiders, and clutter, but we are making relentless forward progress, and he is one of the most kind and generous people I know. Plus, I love living in a house that I “own”…technically I don’t, but I’m not really a tenant either…it’s nice having a sense of permanence about one’s living situation. I haven’t had that in my adult life, and didn’t know I missed it until I moved here! But that’s a post for another time.

(So, while the animals are generally getting along better, we are having some issues. Chloe is diabetic, and has been peeing where she shouldn’t. The advice we got from the vet was to keep the litter boxes super clean. We do have 3 boxes for the two cats, in various places…but she still pees on stuff rather than in them. It’s frustrating to say the least. Any advice, readers? She did have a urinary tract infection when she first got diagnosed with diabetes, but doesn’t have one now. )