My husband and I adopted Bob in May from the Save the Animals Foundation in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was a big, cranky, longhaired orange cat with no tail (hence the name). He had spent 3 years of his life as a stray and was left at the shelter after being hit by a car. With a cracked pelvis, amputated tail and broken jaw, he didn’t have much hope to live. He eventually healed, but his cranky personality meant he didn’t have much hope for adoption either. But since it was a no-kill shelter, they put him in a room with 20 other not so lovable cats and there he stayed for 3 years, day after day, as people came to see him, but always decided that he was just too bad of a cat.
Until last April. We fell in love with Bob almost immediately, despite the fact he didn’t seem to like anyone, and despite the fact the shelter warned us that he was aggressive and picked on the other animals. I walked into the room and he allowed me to pick him up right away. He didn’t love it, but he allowed it. Of course, he bit me right after, but no matter, it was love. Sold. The shelter wasn’t so convinced. I mean, we had a smaller than normal cat at home that was super docile (remember the first official Dope Kitty, Gracie, anyone?), and a tiny 3 pound dog. That would just be dinner for Bob, right?
It took two more visits, and eventually driving our dog down to the shelter in Cincinnati to allow them to interact in order convince them there was no impending slaughter before they would allow us to bring Bob home - all in all a 1 month ordeal in which the shelter threatened to refuse adoption at all, fearing that they would end up on the receiving end of a lawsuit. They ended up asking us to sign a liability waiver just in case Bob did end up killing our entire household in our sleep. I wish that were a joke. Seriously, we laughed at them, let’s see how pleasant you are after being hit with a car, then being thrown in a room with 20 insane cats for 2 years, we said. Finally, Bob came home.
Was it a bloodbath? Hardly. Gracie hissed a couple of times. Our dog hid, then tried to play with Bob, then got swatted. Game over. Bob woke us up every morning by aggressively… purring. Yes, purring. Right. In. Our. Faces. The horror. Some days, when he got really, truly angry, he would headbutt our legs when his food dish was empty, that savage beast. Perhaps the most vicious, evil thing he did was jump on the sofa and curl up in our seats when we got up. We lived every day in fear of what that furry tyrant might do next. Honestly, we couldn’t have asked for a better cat.
Eventually, Bob and Gracie fell in love. Gracie’s always had the knack of sneaking into closets and getting trapped. Bob became her protector, alerting us immediately to her trapped status. In fact, the only times he ever meowed were to let us know Gracie’d gone missing or occasionally greeting us when we came home. Ever vigilant to maintain his toughguy image, Bob would sleep beside Gracie, but never, ever touch her. If she was on the sofa, he’d be on the floor immediately beneath her. If on the floor, he’d be near but never beside her.
Bob had always been a somewhat stoic cat, so we were all surprised at his joy over the Christmas tree this year, until we realized he’d probably never seen one. He spent every waking moment (and every sleeping one) under the tree, just gazing happily up at the lights, watching the ornaments glint in the slightest draft of air. Where most cats, Gracie included, are climbing the branches and batting the decorations in a frenzy, Bob was content to just look at everything in wonder, coming out from the under tree only on occasion to nuzzle us, always smelling of the Christmas tree. It seemed that Christmas really brought out something in him that we hadn’t seen before, and we took to calling him our “Christmas Kitty”, joking that we needed to find him a tiny Santa hat.
Yesterday morning, however, we awoke to find Bob yowling outside of our door, dragging his leg. Deciding that he’d finally decided to have a go at climbing the tree and had a mishap, we took him to our vet immediately. After an X-ray, our vet sat us down and told us that Bob’s leg was actually fine, but he had suffered a serious heart injury and would be transferred to The Ohio State University Hospital for further diagnosis, and that she couldn’t do anything more for him. Later in the day, we found out that Bob suffered from a genetic heart condition (advanced feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) that caused the walls of his heart to thicken and stiffen, which meant it couldn’t fill and pump properly, allowing clots to form. One of those clots went to his leg, obstructing blood flow, rendering it useless. It was the worst case the vet had ever seen, there was no cure, it would continue to get worse, and even if the vet could fix this clot, there was already another clot starting to form in his heart and Bob only had a week to a month to live before it happened again, this time ending in a sudden and even more painful death. The only humane thing to do, according to the vet, was euthanize.
Six months. Three years on the streets, hit by a car, three years dumped in a shelter, and all he got of a good life was six fucking months. They say life isn’t fair, but sometimes, it’s just a little too true. So I did the humane thing. I held this cat that I had loved for six short months, I stroked his head, and I watched him take his last breath. And as I bent down to kiss him goodbye one last time, I think I caught a slight whiff of the Christmas tree.