Calypso

When I met the Artist Formerly Known as Frau Lobster, she had a cat. She'd named her Calypso for the Homeric goddess. Not long after we started dating, the late, great Rasta was added.

Rasta went to Kitty Heaven about five years ago. When my then wife and cat departed for the vet, I bawled. Em consoled me with perfect Kindergarten clarity: 'It's okay, Daddy. It's not your fault.'

Calypso was, for all intents and purposes, immortal as far as we could tell. She was approaching 20 years of age and still kicking the dog's ass when he tried to horn in on her food.

She was always aloof. She wanted to be petted, but at arms length. She would not get on your lap, and if you tried to make her get there, you might develop a blood leakage. She used to smoke, which is to say when me and my ex smoked, she liked to find the stream coming off the cherry and inhale with visible pleasure. Which doesn't seem to have shortened her life at all, though I don't suppose that voids the Surgeon General's warnings.

She would lay on people if they were sick. To the extent we used her as a diagnostic tool: if Calypso got on you and started making kitty biscuits, you didn't wonder if you were sick, you just hoped it wasn't anything serious.

Back when we lived in the hood, in this crazy old house full of hardwood trim and floors, we'd listen to the Calypso Show. Presumably she did this when we were off at work, but at night, when the house got quiet, she'd go a little nuts. We'd hear her loud, sharp, meowing, and she'd run around, skidding on the hardwood and crashing into walls. Yow! Yow! Skid, thud! Yow!

She also did a little daredevil act on the railing above the bench at that house. Instead of following the contour of the stairs, the rail was horizontal, about twelve feet above the floor. She'd walk back and forth on it, even though there was only about an inch of wood you'd call flat. She only fell once, on me while I was on the phone, nearly inducing heart failure in us both and disconnecting the call.

'You're not going to believe this, but I didn't hang up on you. The cat landed on the phone.' I don't think I was believed.

She'd slowed down the past couple years. Still had a surplus of Cattitude, but the Calypso Show was rarely performed, and we often wondered if she'd gone completely deaf. Or blind.

About a year ago we had to switch her to soft food. She'd still crunch an occasional morsel from the dog's bowl, but she would have starved to death on dry food alone. She puked on the rug a lot the last few years. I think she got to where she didn't know if she'd eaten, and assumed she was hungry if a human stood by the bowl. Then she'd eat too much and get sick. Or something.

She scared me a couple weeks ago, yowling Calypso Show style but standing by the bed. She wasn't too steady on her feet, and I thought, 'No! Don't die, I have to go to work!'

She didn't die. I fed her and she seemed fine. Or as close to fine as she's seemed in recent days.

But something was wrong. I don't know what, but she deteriorated with alarming speed. First she looked like she was gaining weight, which was a good sign. But then it was too much, and too fast. She bulged in the middle, and quit eating, more or less. She quit kicking the dog's ass over her barely-touched bowl. She sat kind of funny, like her hind legs didn't work. And increasingly, she walked like she was drunk.

When we finally took her in today (my Ex met me at the vet), I didn't have a cat carrier, but I didn't need one. She didn't fight me at all. Which was proof I should have taken her in sooner. If I'd tried picking her up like that two weeks ago, she'd have clawed the shit out of me and gotten away. Instead, she let me put her on the seat of the car. And instead of diving under the seat when we got into motion, she just lay in the sun on the seat while I stroked her alarmingly skinny shoulders.

They gave her a shot to conk her out before the shot to stop her heart. She didn't seem to notice, and never closed her eyes. I think that first shot would have finished her off if they'd let it. She was breathing when they gave her the second shot, but not much else.

I cried, even though (as Em might have told me) it wasn’t my fault. The vet said the most likely explanation for her condition and the rapid decline was kidney failure, that the bloat was fluid built up from that.

They said it was illegal to bury her in the city limits, but fuck it. We buried her by the side of my house, next to John Gerbil. Calypso would not have wanted to abide a stupid law.