Our cat, Skookum, passed away last night. She’d had a stroke. The vet said there was a 5% chance of partial recovery. And, not to put too fine a point on it, that she was very uncomfortable. I was with her all the way.

She was a good cat. We got her in 2000, I think. I happened to be looking out the window of our apartment one night when two guys came down the alley. They stopped, shook something out of a bag, and walked on. It was a small starved cat, with an egg-sized tumour on her belly. The local vet took care of that, and we have had her since.

She liked drippy faucets, and chasing mayflies, and biting me. She turned out to be jolly good at catching mice. She stole milk and butter, and begged bits of cheese whenever we were in the kitchen. At bedtime, she lay on Nola’s chest as close to her face as Nola would allow, for about five minutes at a time, and purred. She liked to go outside only with one of us, and only for short periods. Nola would take her for strolls all around the house. Or she would take Nola. She'd sniff all around, and look about carefully as if taking inventory, and then it would be time to go in. She rarely saw Cardhu without growling and hissing at him. One of her last acts was to bite the ever-loving fuck out of my finger.

We don’t have many pictures of her. But we have emails in which she figured. These are them, in no kind of order at all.

(from peri to Nola, Sept 2008)

Your cat was being a bag earlier. I heard a great rustling down below, sounded like she’d gotten into a stray piece of bubblewrap and was trying to kill herself in her despair, but what she'd done is yoked out a bag of the dog’s salmon training treats and was trying to rip a kitty-sized hole in it.

So I put it up out of her reach and lectured her on morals and depravity and where on that scale she belonged, and the length and breadth of the distance she had to go to reach the other end, and she stared at me with unblinking cat eyes and I gave up and went back upstairs.

Within five minutes came more thumping and bumping noises. Back down I went. She'd drug the bag of dental kibble off its shelf. Thankfully it has been constructed with kitties in mind, so I left her to ponder the wages of sin amidst the ruin of her failure. I don’t think she’s learned much.

(from peri to Mom, Jan 2011)

Skooks is uncharacteristically needy just now. I used to worry there was something really wrong, but she seems to go through these phases where she’s purring a lot and in my face, and, when not in my face, sitting somewhere in the house calling piteously. Right now she is at my left elbow, on the desk, purring and purring. If the PC were not asleep, she’d be emailing everyone at work as her butt is planted on its keyboard.

(from peri to Mom, March 2007)

I sat on the floor, to which Cardhu was indifferent till I got up and put down a floor pillow. Then it was Strange and required investigation and possibly supervision. Skookum hissed and batted at him over my shoulder (she was perched on the arm of the chair Nola reclined within). Somehow, I kept track of the plot until they all settled again.

(from peri to Nola, March 2011)

Kitty is stropping the corner of the iPad, so this may be a bit garbled. It is certainly hairy, as I scrumpled her some, and stray fur has wafted across the screen.

(from peri to Mom, July 2009)

We’ve got the cat on a new dry kibble. At the feedstore the clerk gave us several different sample packets to try her on, see what she went for. She’d totally rejected one kind just prior and was quite the little diva in insisting on her rights. At the same time, the kibble we’d given her before the stuff she said wasn’t fit to eat, and of which we have still a couple of pounds, she started puking up in the morning. Anyway, bless the clerk, the trials were a real help. Now I feed her in the morning, and in the evening, and in between she does not paw at my arm and mew incessantly for nourishment. It’s the peace and quiet that comes after hitting your head with a hammer for a month or so, and finally stopping. Though I suppose with a hammer your head would be a total mess after a month, but you know what I mean.

(Nola to friend, August 2005, on the advent of Cardhu the Dog)

The cat and he sniffed noses. The cat did not snarl or hiss, but she did look back at us over her shoulder as she slunk off the bed with an extremely eloquent, “how could you bring this hell upon me?” expression.

(from Nola to peri, February 2005)

At the moment [the stool] is in my office… It is in the office because The Cat wants something to sit on. Actually, she wants attention, but a stool will do as a placebo. If she appears and bumps noses while I am trying to Get Something Done, she can be distracted and somewhat placated by being plopped firmly on the stool, either between the drafting stool and computer chair or next to the window (the latter is actually more effective, as it allows her to growl at passersby in the alley).

(from peri to Mom, March 2004)

Nola’s got the cat back on reducing diet and she’s complaining and searching in corners for bits of food. It’s really pitiful; I'm thinking of making her a sign, “Will purr for food” but that might get my head thumped.

(from peri to Mom, May 2011)

Skooks caught another mouse last night. She's getting very good at it, and was veryveryvery proud of herself this morning when Nola arose. Skooks sat up beside her kill and maow’d a single, check-it-out maow. We have offered much praise all day.

Nola took both these pics in 2004, shortly after Skooks came to live with us.

I have heard often of how birds are at home in the sky, in the open air, but only now am I aware of how at home they are in a plane full of obstacles, threading their way fearlessly, freewheeling on no track at all.

There’s no moral here, no homily. It’s just neat.

Now I’m going to go do something fun with the rest of my Sunday.

Here’s hoping the power comes back on, at the least. Otherwise I will have to refill the gennie in the dark. And cold. And sleety rain. It will suck to be me.