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of mice and men
Nov. 28th, 2005 01:06 amThe first thing people generally noticed, upon meeting Gwydion, was that he was a fat cat. "She carryin' a load?" delivery boys would ask, watching this fantastic pudding of a cat shamble across the floor. "Swaybacked," our friend Katherine pronounced him, and I do not believe I have ever heard a more beautifully correct word in my life. Swaybacked he was, his belly dusting the floor and his back bent like an old bridge groaning under the weight of centuries of passengers.
Gwydion was not always a pudge. When Ellen found him he was a svelte little kitten, abandoned on the mean streets of Chicago. He actually followed her home. (I never knew that kittens or puppies really would do that.) Once he became an indoor cat, it didn't take long for him to see what the score was, and he took great advantage of his position. By the time I met him, he was about four and already had acquired a reputation for being fat and lazy, a reputation that clearly did not bother him in the least as he slid magnificently from the windowsill to his food bowl.
In his youth, I am told, he was an excellent mouser. I didn't have the privilege of watching this first-hand, in the apartments where we lived in Chicago, but from time to time I caught a glimpse of the genius that lay within. From a half-sleeping mound on the floor he would spring upright, ears erect, perfectly at attention, and it was only then that we would hear the faint skittering of some tiny creature underneath the floor. Gwydion would remain silent and almost absolutely still, ears twitching faintly as he followed the sound. When he could hear the little beast crawl within range, he would smoothly stand up on his rear paws, front legs fully extended, and would bring his entire sixteen-pound frame down precisely on the spot where his prey would have been, had it not been safely ensconced beneath the floorboards. It was a remarkable performance, and always captivating.
When we moved east and had the temerity to bring a new creature into the household—a two-legged one named Morgan—we worried about how Gwydion, never the most social of cats, would cope. We should have known that he would do us proud. Gwydion accepted the brunt of Morgan's toddler exuberance (and, later, Quinn's) with the quiet dignity that only an old grey cat can muster, doing no more than politely getting up and walking away when the child's fists proved too vexing.
The children had one unmistakable effect on him, though: in the years after they were born, Gwydion steadily lost weight. Being chased from one end of the house to the other several times a day, surprisingly enough, improved his health considerably. When we moved to a house with stairs and forced him to go up and down stairs for his food and his litter, he improved further still, to the point where visitors no longer asked if he were pregnant.
It wasn't until the last year or so that we realized that his declining weight was no longer a sign of fitness but of chronic kidney disease. If the weight loss had not made it obvious, the periodic bouts of vomiting about the house proved that his condition was getting steadily worse. Tonight we discovered that he could no longer move his hind legs. Paralysis, we learned, is a common symptom of third-stage renal failure, and by the time the disease reaches this point it has apparently become quite painful as well.
We had been anticipating this moment for many months but somehow did not expect it to happen so quickly. We brought the kids in to stroke Gwydion and say their goodbyes. Ellen stood strong and wrapped him gently in a blanket, and held him on her lap while John drove her to the animal clinic.
Although Gwydion did not live long enough to see Mosaic Commons, we plan to bring him with us to Sawyer Hill, there to sprinkle or bury his ashes. Perhaps it's ironic to give this notoriously indoor cat such a pointedly outdoor burial ceremony. I like to think that he would have liked it that way — a swaybacked ghost, prowling the land in search of just one last mouse.
Gwydion was not always a pudge. When Ellen found him he was a svelte little kitten, abandoned on the mean streets of Chicago. He actually followed her home. (I never knew that kittens or puppies really would do that.) Once he became an indoor cat, it didn't take long for him to see what the score was, and he took great advantage of his position. By the time I met him, he was about four and already had acquired a reputation for being fat and lazy, a reputation that clearly did not bother him in the least as he slid magnificently from the windowsill to his food bowl.
In his youth, I am told, he was an excellent mouser. I didn't have the privilege of watching this first-hand, in the apartments where we lived in Chicago, but from time to time I caught a glimpse of the genius that lay within. From a half-sleeping mound on the floor he would spring upright, ears erect, perfectly at attention, and it was only then that we would hear the faint skittering of some tiny creature underneath the floor. Gwydion would remain silent and almost absolutely still, ears twitching faintly as he followed the sound. When he could hear the little beast crawl within range, he would smoothly stand up on his rear paws, front legs fully extended, and would bring his entire sixteen-pound frame down precisely on the spot where his prey would have been, had it not been safely ensconced beneath the floorboards. It was a remarkable performance, and always captivating.
When we moved east and had the temerity to bring a new creature into the household—a two-legged one named Morgan—we worried about how Gwydion, never the most social of cats, would cope. We should have known that he would do us proud. Gwydion accepted the brunt of Morgan's toddler exuberance (and, later, Quinn's) with the quiet dignity that only an old grey cat can muster, doing no more than politely getting up and walking away when the child's fists proved too vexing.
The children had one unmistakable effect on him, though: in the years after they were born, Gwydion steadily lost weight. Being chased from one end of the house to the other several times a day, surprisingly enough, improved his health considerably. When we moved to a house with stairs and forced him to go up and down stairs for his food and his litter, he improved further still, to the point where visitors no longer asked if he were pregnant.
It wasn't until the last year or so that we realized that his declining weight was no longer a sign of fitness but of chronic kidney disease. If the weight loss had not made it obvious, the periodic bouts of vomiting about the house proved that his condition was getting steadily worse. Tonight we discovered that he could no longer move his hind legs. Paralysis, we learned, is a common symptom of third-stage renal failure, and by the time the disease reaches this point it has apparently become quite painful as well.
We had been anticipating this moment for many months but somehow did not expect it to happen so quickly. We brought the kids in to stroke Gwydion and say their goodbyes. Ellen stood strong and wrapped him gently in a blanket, and held him on her lap while John drove her to the animal clinic.
Although Gwydion did not live long enough to see Mosaic Commons, we plan to bring him with us to Sawyer Hill, there to sprinkle or bury his ashes. Perhaps it's ironic to give this notoriously indoor cat such a pointedly outdoor burial ceremony. I like to think that he would have liked it that way — a swaybacked ghost, prowling the land in search of just one last mouse.
