My girlfriend rang me up and asked if I wanted a kitten. It seemed that one of her co-workers had just been and impulse-bought a little cutie in the pet-shop window and as she already had both asthma and too many cats, her husband had put his foot down and told her to find it a home p.d.q. So I came and saw you, and when I picked you up you climbed up on my shoulder where you settled down and started emitting entirely too much purr for such a small animal. So it looked like I was stopping on my way home to buy a litter tray, a food dish and so on.
I have a picture somewhere of you stretching to reach over the edge of your food dish. When I brought you into my cottage you explored everywhere very slowly and deliberately. I was all for letting you sleep in my bedroom that night, but you blotted your copybook a few minutes later when you walked across my face, for which you got unceremoniously deposited outside my bedroom door, which I had to shut pretty smartly to stop you coming back in. You complained about it for a while, then settled down, and when I opened the door in the morning there you were, curled up in a little ball hard against it.
A few weeks later, once you’d been jabbed, you were allowed out for the first time. It was all new and interesting and once again you took your time working out what was there. Fortunately you turned out to be naturally afraid of traffic, and there was plenty of safe territory for you to explore, your little string tail held fearlessly upright.
You learned to hunt, and you brought us presents - mice, birds, frogs, once or twice a rabbit, and you even managed to nail a bat one time. Of course you needed to teach us to hunt too so plenty of this was brought in alive, leading to the time my girlfriend (now wife)'s mother was visiting and I ended up having to rescue Mrs M from a live mouse and ma-in-law from you. In time MIL got over her cat phobia, at least as far as you were concerned. But, fearless scourge of small squeaky things that you may have been, I don’t believe you ever won a cat fight in your life, and many were the times we heard a loud series of meows, a frantic scrabble at the cat flap, heralding your arrival looking indignant and with your tail fluffed out like a bottle brush.
Still, within your own four walls your Commandment was “Thou shalt have no other cats before Me”. We brought a few young upstarts into the house over the years. The first of them freaked you out because you didn’t know what to do with a bouncy little kitten who didn’t understand when he was meant to back off, but you learnt to deal with him and with the others. You barely tolerated the last of them, and him only towards the end - the rest you swore at every time they came near you. And even when you were already getting old and infirm, you stood no nonsense from the boisterous young Staffordshire, even when he grew several times bigger than you. You let him know that he would be swatted across the nose if he disrespected you, and even though he was a slow learner you were always ready to repeat the lesson.
You were already slipping into your final decline, though. We were dismayed at how thin and short of breath you were getting, but you still kept yourself active, still patrolled your beat in the surrounding gardens and the playing-field, and still made the dog keep his distance. Even just a week ago you were still nimble enough to steal left-over casserole out of the crock on the stove-top - your last theft, if we’d known it. And you tucked heartily into the “senior cat” food I’d bought to tempt you - but you were all skin and bone by now.
On Friday afternoon my wife rang. You’d stayed in one spot all day, doing nothing but wheeze for breath. I left work early so we could rendezvous at the vet; whatever was going to happen, I was going to be there. You stepped out of the carrier onto the examination table and I was relieved you didn’t have to be forced. The vet examined you, her face lengthening with every touch of her fingers, and she told us you had far too much liver and not enough room for anything else. We could get you X-rayed if we wanted confirmation, but my wife and I looked at each other and shook our heads. This was a poor time to let you down with craven indecision.
Our sons said goodbye to you for the last time, the four-year-old mercifully not understanding, the eight-year-old in floods of tears and not knowing why you had to go. I was doing a poor job of holding it together myself, but I had my last duty to do once the children had gone. The vet brought the consent form and the pen, and I signed your death warrant - No, your manumission papers, your release from enslavement to pain, your passport to a final dignity.
Telling you that we were going to stop it hurting, I sat at your head while the sad-faced vet did what needed to be done. You did not like the large needle being pushed into your back, but you did not struggle very much. Your purr was long since silenced and you didn’t even have a thin, cracked meow left. You subsided once the needle was fully in and the merciful drug began to work. Eyes wide, your last sight was of me, your last sensation the touch of my hand on your head. Listening to your tired heart, the vet told me you had gone - but I had been watching your eyes and she told me nothing I did not already know. The pain was gone, and you were free to hunt among the stars.
She wrapped you kindly in a soft towel, and we went home. In the October twilight I shovelled out a place for you under the spreading branches of the apple tree where you liked to doze in the summer, and - mindful of a boisterous young dog that likes to dig - lined a space for you with brick and put you to rest, a paving stone covering you and a last meal.
I went for a long walk in the dark of an autumn evening, telling over to myself all the days of your life as I recount them here. I was almost home when my cellphone meowed at me. I’ve changed the ringtone now - the next spam text I receive will not haunt me with the memory of a grey fluffy kitten with a purr like a small thundercloud, who will never sit on my shoulder again.
RIP Nimbus, 1993 - 2007