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Requiem for a Foozle
My cat -- not one of the boys, the one who lives with my father -- died this morning.
I'm going to write about her now.If I can find the cable for the camera, I have some photos of her from a few months ago and I'll update this entry accordingly. I've added a photo. I may put more in this gallery. (Thank you, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
suzimoses, for the copies of other photos.)
Misty wasn't originally our cat; she belonged to our neighbours from across the street, the Moddermans. The Moddermans also kept The Cat Who Owned the Neighborhood, a catankerous orange named, with equivalent creativity, Tabby. They had four small children and a large dog who kept running away.
Misty was a bit neurotic as a kitten, for some reason.
I was the oldest kid in the neighborhood, and tended to accumulate the odd jobs as a result. One of the odd jobs I acquired in the summers of 1987 and 1988 was to take care of Misty (and Tabby, the first year; he died soon after) when the Moddermans were on vacation. Misty rapidly took a liking to me -- she would crawl into my shirt on occasion, come when I called her name, and would even venture into our yard occasionally, and a few times into our house, to visit, much to the irritation of my parents' seventeen-year-old curmudgeon tux cat, Sliver.
There were occasional moments of excitement -- once my parents were at a party at a house down the street, and I went over to look in on the cats and found the room where their food was kept was full of raccoons. I picked Misty up and ran down to the party (she wriggled free when we hit her self-defined territory boundary) and got adult support for dealing with the infestation. (Raccoons are huge. One lumped over my foot.)
We moved away from Hyattsville in 1988.
Soon after that, the Moddermans were also moving. They contacted my parents and suggested that I could take care of Misty for the duration, so she wouldn't be too traumatised by the boxing of things and moving about. I didn't understand this at the time; we weren't entirely moved in, so there were still boxes to be had. I suspect now that they wanted to get rid of her and I was a kind excuse.
Sliver had died the summer before we moved, and was buried at the foot of the yard; we were catless. We took her in.
Come Christmastime the Moddermans told my parents to tie a bow on her and give her to me.
She continued pretty flighty for a few years. She would run up and down the hall in the middle of the night, earning her the nickname 'thunder thighs', and engaged in similar catly shenanigans.
She drooled, copiously, when petted.
She would climb trees and then follow the branches down onto the roof. We came home one day and couldn't find her; calling, "Miiiiii-steeeee" would get this pathetic, high pitched, bewildered mew, but we couldn't get a location on it. We eventually found her on the roof, and my father set up a ladder and tried to coax her over so he could grab her -- she would edge into just outside of reach, then panic and scoot away. Eventually we got her down.
She did that again a few times.
She got into the habit of getting up at five or six in the morning to demand food because that was when my father and then I got up for work and school. She continued this habit on weekends and after I went away to college.
Storms would wash tiny tree frogs down into the basement. She would eat their legs. She wasn't a good enough hunter to catch things that weren't constrained, but she loved it when there were frogs in the well at the base of the steps.
She would chase chipmunks into their holes and sit there for hours waiting for them to reemerge. The chipmunks would depart their little warren through a different hole and go about their business behind her.
Once she caught a toad -- after we dug the pond in the backyard, we had a few amphibians kicking around -- and picked it up. She spat it out and wandered around for a while spitting and looking disgusted.
Once she caught a frog. She held it against the ground between her forepaws, then lifted one foot to check on it. The frog jumped, hit her in the face, and hopped away. She caught it again, checked it again, it bounced off her forehead again. Eventually it made it into the water.
She would stalk the frogs around the pond. They would leap into the water at the last possible moment, sometimes flicking her in the nose with their toes.
She loved to sun herself on the rocks next to the water. Sometimes her tail would drift to float on the surface, and she wouldn't notice until her fur saturated and it sank. Then she would be Quite Offended.
She was a bit of a druggie. She loved her some catnip -- I once found her lying next to the catnip in the rock garden, crushing it between her head and a stone. Thump. Thump. Thump.
She would peel wallpaper and weatherstripping so she could sniff the glue.
When my parents built the addition with the spiral staircase, she discovered that she could lurk on the steps and see the whole room. She would sit there quite contentedly, being Taller Than You.
Otavia (a friend from high school) demanded to know why I called Misty a foozle. (I think she thought it was an insufficiently dignified handle for a cat.) I didn't have an answer other than, "She just is." Then she came over to my house and met the cat, and then said, almost but not quite apologetically, "You were right. She is a foozle."
She would cry to be let in at the door that was never opened, and it would take ages to persuade her to come to the back door.
Despite being horribly dim, she understood physics. My father recently put in a new kitchen counter that was very slick. She jumped onto the kitchen counter and skidded off the other side. She didn't stop jumping onto the counter; no, instead, she jumped in a very high, tall arc such that she landed on the counter going straight down.
She loved Christmas. Crinkly paper to sit on. Ribbons to shred. And, most importantly, red satin Christmas ornaments to savage. One year a garland and some of those were hung on the bannister, and we spent the entire season listening to "Bap! Bap! *pause* Crack! Bonkbonkbonkbonkrolllllll."
My mother tried to train her out of doing this with a squirt gun. She didn't stop knocking off the ornaments, but she fled from my mother.
Once my father came through the door next to the stairs just as she got one of the ones at the top. Bap! It hit on his left side, bounced over his head, and Bap! hit on the other side. He looked up into this horrified grey cat face, frozen in 'Woops!' Then she thundered away.
She's been getting old and deaf. Dad says he had the doors open to listen to a thunderstorm last year, and there was a tremendous crack of thunder right overhead. All his girlfriend's cats fled the scene; Misty just sat there, watching the rain and hail.
Last I saw her she was thin and bony. I've been expecting this phone call someday for some time -- treating all the times I see her as potentially the last. She was well until Thursdayish, Dad tells me, and then just seemed very tired. They put out a pad for her and put a heating pad on it, and she curled up there and went quietly in her sleep.
Bast welcome her and carry her to the West.
Dad's going to bury her next to the pond. I told him to plant catnip around the grave for her.
She loved avocado. My mother was trying to make guacamole once, and she crawled into her lap and sat there trying to fish peels out of the trash without falling out. She was also fond of melon. And broccoli.
She would steal grapes from the fruit bowl, but only after they'd started to ferment a little. (See also druggie.) And then she'd play with them, batting them around, and we knew the grapes were going weird when someone stepped on one.
Ten-cent superballs out of grocery store dispensers are "cat-summoners". Though Dad would sometimes get the quarter ones, because she seemed to like them better.
She had some of the softest fur of any cat I've ever met. It was always a surprise when I came home to visit Dad after being away for a while, just how soft her fur was. Each hair was slightly mottled, darker and lighter greys, save for a tiny, diamong-shaped patch on her belly where they were white.
I'm going to write about her now.
suzimoses, for the copies of other photos.)Misty wasn't originally our cat; she belonged to our neighbours from across the street, the Moddermans. The Moddermans also kept The Cat Who Owned the Neighborhood, a catankerous orange named, with equivalent creativity, Tabby. They had four small children and a large dog who kept running away.
Misty was a bit neurotic as a kitten, for some reason.
I was the oldest kid in the neighborhood, and tended to accumulate the odd jobs as a result. One of the odd jobs I acquired in the summers of 1987 and 1988 was to take care of Misty (and Tabby, the first year; he died soon after) when the Moddermans were on vacation. Misty rapidly took a liking to me -- she would crawl into my shirt on occasion, come when I called her name, and would even venture into our yard occasionally, and a few times into our house, to visit, much to the irritation of my parents' seventeen-year-old curmudgeon tux cat, Sliver.
There were occasional moments of excitement -- once my parents were at a party at a house down the street, and I went over to look in on the cats and found the room where their food was kept was full of raccoons. I picked Misty up and ran down to the party (she wriggled free when we hit her self-defined territory boundary) and got adult support for dealing with the infestation. (Raccoons are huge. One lumped over my foot.)
We moved away from Hyattsville in 1988.
Soon after that, the Moddermans were also moving. They contacted my parents and suggested that I could take care of Misty for the duration, so she wouldn't be too traumatised by the boxing of things and moving about. I didn't understand this at the time; we weren't entirely moved in, so there were still boxes to be had. I suspect now that they wanted to get rid of her and I was a kind excuse.
Sliver had died the summer before we moved, and was buried at the foot of the yard; we were catless. We took her in.
Come Christmastime the Moddermans told my parents to tie a bow on her and give her to me.
She continued pretty flighty for a few years. She would run up and down the hall in the middle of the night, earning her the nickname 'thunder thighs', and engaged in similar catly shenanigans.
She drooled, copiously, when petted.
She would climb trees and then follow the branches down onto the roof. We came home one day and couldn't find her; calling, "Miiiiii-steeeee" would get this pathetic, high pitched, bewildered mew, but we couldn't get a location on it. We eventually found her on the roof, and my father set up a ladder and tried to coax her over so he could grab her -- she would edge into just outside of reach, then panic and scoot away. Eventually we got her down.
She did that again a few times.
She got into the habit of getting up at five or six in the morning to demand food because that was when my father and then I got up for work and school. She continued this habit on weekends and after I went away to college.
Storms would wash tiny tree frogs down into the basement. She would eat their legs. She wasn't a good enough hunter to catch things that weren't constrained, but she loved it when there were frogs in the well at the base of the steps.
She would chase chipmunks into their holes and sit there for hours waiting for them to reemerge. The chipmunks would depart their little warren through a different hole and go about their business behind her.
Once she caught a toad -- after we dug the pond in the backyard, we had a few amphibians kicking around -- and picked it up. She spat it out and wandered around for a while spitting and looking disgusted.
Once she caught a frog. She held it against the ground between her forepaws, then lifted one foot to check on it. The frog jumped, hit her in the face, and hopped away. She caught it again, checked it again, it bounced off her forehead again. Eventually it made it into the water.
She would stalk the frogs around the pond. They would leap into the water at the last possible moment, sometimes flicking her in the nose with their toes.
She loved to sun herself on the rocks next to the water. Sometimes her tail would drift to float on the surface, and she wouldn't notice until her fur saturated and it sank. Then she would be Quite Offended.
She was a bit of a druggie. She loved her some catnip -- I once found her lying next to the catnip in the rock garden, crushing it between her head and a stone. Thump. Thump. Thump.
She would peel wallpaper and weatherstripping so she could sniff the glue.
When my parents built the addition with the spiral staircase, she discovered that she could lurk on the steps and see the whole room. She would sit there quite contentedly, being Taller Than You.
Otavia (a friend from high school) demanded to know why I called Misty a foozle. (I think she thought it was an insufficiently dignified handle for a cat.) I didn't have an answer other than, "She just is." Then she came over to my house and met the cat, and then said, almost but not quite apologetically, "You were right. She is a foozle."
She would cry to be let in at the door that was never opened, and it would take ages to persuade her to come to the back door.
Despite being horribly dim, she understood physics. My father recently put in a new kitchen counter that was very slick. She jumped onto the kitchen counter and skidded off the other side. She didn't stop jumping onto the counter; no, instead, she jumped in a very high, tall arc such that she landed on the counter going straight down.
She loved Christmas. Crinkly paper to sit on. Ribbons to shred. And, most importantly, red satin Christmas ornaments to savage. One year a garland and some of those were hung on the bannister, and we spent the entire season listening to "Bap! Bap! *pause* Crack! Bonkbonkbonkbonkrolllllll."My mother tried to train her out of doing this with a squirt gun. She didn't stop knocking off the ornaments, but she fled from my mother.
Once my father came through the door next to the stairs just as she got one of the ones at the top. Bap! It hit on his left side, bounced over his head, and Bap! hit on the other side. He looked up into this horrified grey cat face, frozen in 'Woops!' Then she thundered away.
She's been getting old and deaf. Dad says he had the doors open to listen to a thunderstorm last year, and there was a tremendous crack of thunder right overhead. All his girlfriend's cats fled the scene; Misty just sat there, watching the rain and hail.
Last I saw her she was thin and bony. I've been expecting this phone call someday for some time -- treating all the times I see her as potentially the last. She was well until Thursdayish, Dad tells me, and then just seemed very tired. They put out a pad for her and put a heating pad on it, and she curled up there and went quietly in her sleep.
Bast welcome her and carry her to the West.
Dad's going to bury her next to the pond. I told him to plant catnip around the grave for her.
She loved avocado. My mother was trying to make guacamole once, and she crawled into her lap and sat there trying to fish peels out of the trash without falling out. She was also fond of melon. And broccoli.
She would steal grapes from the fruit bowl, but only after they'd started to ferment a little. (See also druggie.) And then she'd play with them, batting them around, and we knew the grapes were going weird when someone stepped on one.
Ten-cent superballs out of grocery store dispensers are "cat-summoners". Though Dad would sometimes get the quarter ones, because she seemed to like them better.
She had some of the softest fur of any cat I've ever met. It was always a surprise when I came home to visit Dad after being away for a while, just how soft her fur was. Each hair was slightly mottled, darker and lighter greys, save for a tiny, diamong-shaped patch on her belly where they were white.
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The kitchen counter made me laugh out loud.
May she sleep gently, and wake in the West in a place where she has all she wants, and no silly humans changing things on her in undesireable ways.
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Our
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BTW, your burial idea is simple and lovely. I've wanted to do that here, but have hesitated knowing we probably won't be in this house for many more years. Once we settle for good, I want to make a garden for all the cats we've loved and lost.
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*hugs*
memories
*hugs and tears*
suzi
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Xmas loving kitties
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I also remember wondering why didn't she go after the fish in the fishpond.
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May she live forever and always, in good health, with Bast.