This is long, but I needed to write it.
17 years ago come September the neighbor kids brought a couple of kittens to the door of my house. They asked me if I wanted one. I didn’t really think I should but this little scrap of brown fur stole my heart right away. She was maybe 8 or 9 weeks old and I named her Cocoa, because she was about the color of good milk chocolate.
The first few days were touch and go. She was starving as well as worm and flee infested. It was maybe three days before she got enough food in her to produce a bowel movement. But, survive she did, and grew into one of the most indomitable creatures I am ever likely to know.
Cocoa brought a kind of magic with her. The night I got her is also the night I got pregnant with my daughter. The relationship had been going badly, and he walked out shortly after that, so it was pretty easy to pinpoint. I never was able to get pregnant again. Several years later, I met my current husband because of her. In some ways, most everything that is dearest in my life came to me through Cocoa.
Cocoa was fearsome. In her early years I was pretty broke so we went to a veterinary clinic where all the veterinarians were volunteers, including one of them who was a big cat vet at the zoo. I think it was him that wrote on her chart that she was dangerous, and she sure could be if she was terrified. She was an extremely capable hunter, and when she was young she mostly fed her self. While I never again will have an indoor outdoor cat, it was something to see her jump 9 feet in the air and catch a bird. Back then she would disappear for two or three days and come home when she was good and ready. If the hunting was bad she would stop at the food bowl before she took a snooze. I loved never having to worry about a mouse in the house too.
Her sense of humor bordered on mean. The next door neighbor in the first house had a yellow lab that spent a lot of time chained up outside. She used to sit washing a paw about 4 inches from where his chain maxed out. He would yip and growl and snarl and do everything he could think of short of completely hanging himself to get her but he never could. She would do it day after day. She didn’t much care about people except for us, but there was one lady up the street that she would visit every day. That woman was terrified of cats. She had the most extensive vocabulary of cat profanity I have ever run into.
Cocoa liked to hang out draped across my shoulders when I was sitting at the computer. She would swear and dig her claws in a little. She loved corn, particularly creamed corn, and chicken. She liked to stand on the toilet and watch me shower then get in after I was done to drink. Somewhere in there she taught herself to use the toilet to urinate. I have no idea how.
The last few years she has slowed down some. She would go out for a couple hours if the weather was nice and have a sun bath. Jumping got kind of difficult and she tended to climb instead. She was starting to get cataracts, and she slept more. There was nothing unexpected really. Then about a month ago she started to hide. This cat that was afraid of nothing was living in the closet. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong but it was clear something was. She didn’t want to sit in the sun, she didn’t want to eat unless I put food right in front of her and she seemed terrified of everything.
Anyway, it all ended this morning. I took her back to the vet. The once 11 pound cat was now 7 pounds, down a full pound since the last visit. The vet did an x-ray and found a very large tumor in her lungs. There was nothing to be done, except let her go.
Good bye Cocoa I hope that the mice are plentiful where you wind up.
