8/04/06

Long time no blog, I know. This time, I'm not on a soap box. This time, I'm feeling a huge hole in my world because a member of my family is no longer with us - and I'd like to share her with you.

Once upon a time, there was a little, tiny black, orange and white fluffball - one of several siblings - out on a pig ranch. Momma cat taught them to leave the caged chickens completely alone, but to be ready and willing to play with whatever else moved within striking distance. This little ball of fluff entered our lives and was promptly - and very appropriately - named Mischief. Mischief proved herself a unique individual almost immediately. She learned to play fetch - with miniature plastic shuttlecocks and wine corks - and true to her mother's training, she left caged birds alone.

At the time, we had a parakeet by the name of Sparky in a round cage that sat at the end of our dining table. When Mischief joined the family, the bird was bigger than she was! She would get up next to the cage, and Sparky - brave little fellow - would come over close and pull on her whiskers and ears. As time went on, whenever Mischief would get upset, she'd get up on the dining table and curl up next to the birdcage. Almost without fail, Sparky would get over as close to her as he could and would, in his parakeet way, sing to her.

I never thought that animals could grieve - but when Sparky died suddenly, Mischief came up on the table one time, gave the cage - with Sparky in it - one sniff, laid down next to it for about a half hour; then she jumped down and didn't have a thing to do with the cage again. The new parakeet had to move a long way past being a baby bird to having created its own new parakeet song before she once again would curl up next to the cage. Ziggy - the new parakeet - learned Mischief was harmless, but he never sang to her the way Sparky had.

When the time came - partly because of her predeliction to shredding doorjambs, wooden chair legs, antique bureau corners and piano stools; and partly because we had NO intention of letting her roam out of doors on our busy residential street - we not only had her neutered but de-clawed. She handled that with about as much grace as one would expect - and commenced a long and fairly happy life with us. She was a creature who loved heights - finding roosting places on the narrow tops of doors and shower doors. She quickly decided she preferred to get her water either from the sink or a dish left in the kitchen window ledge. She STILL sharpened her non-existent front claws on wooden surfaces - doorjambs, piano legs, etc.

Mischief was also one of the most stubborn people I'd ever met - and yes, I considered her about as close to human as a feline could get. When she decided she wanted to do something, unless it was made completely unattainable, she persisted until it was MADE unattainable or she got her way. That included making a habit of sitting on my chest at night while I watched TV. For years, everytime I sat down, within ten minutes I had a "boob kitty". There was NO leaving food on the counter - Mischief would get into it, whether it was meat or otherwise. The only real human-enforced rule she learned and was content to live with was to never get up on a table while we were sitting around eating.

She was also one of the most verbal cats I've ever met. She learned before long how to meow twice quickly to mimic our "din-din" call, and thus ask for food when she'd get hungry. Later, when it became harder for her to jump all the way up on the kitchen counter to get to her window for water or to watch the backyard world go by OR to get back down to the floor again, there was another special meow for "up" and/or "down." Eventally, she just enjoyed getting her own words in edgewise in conversations - and she'd sit either on the floor, in the window or on the counter and "talk" to us. She'd greet us with a "meow" the moment she saw us in the morning - and whenever any of the accepted family would come into the kitchen, she'd strike up a conversation with them. Her evening "boob kitty" time was taken up partially with conversation if I would pet her at all. If sitting in the kitchen window, she'd greet anybody walking up to the back door.

Early on, we tried giving Mischief a feline friend. When she was about two, my kids brought home a bedraggled and thoroughly abused little black ball of fluff that ended up being named Peeper. We took him to the vet, got his infected eyes and ears cleared up and then watched HIM grow healthy and strong. Did Mischief accept him into HER household? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! She turned her back on all of us for having betrayed her and brought the interloper into the house, refused to play with us any longer, and just generally avoided us entirely except at dinnertime. Peeper, however, decided when he was about eight months old to try to chase poor Sparky's cage off the dining table - and was promptly given away to another good home, leaving Mischief sole queen of her domain. It took her a good two years to completely forgive us - but she never again played fetch for us either. She'd chase a string, but never a wine cork.

Time passes, as time tends to do. Mischief developed a severe allergy to flea bites - something that would raise hell with her and leave her utterly exhausted at times, not to mention anemic from blood loss. She HATED to have any hygenic activity pertaining to flea control done to her - combing her for fleas earned the idiot who tried a fairly serious cat bite, she would get rid of flea collars as if her last name was Houdini, howled and bit when my son Lee would give her a flea bath, and detested being dosed with Frontline. Vet trips were traumatic - she'd sit in my arms with her face tucked into my armpit as if she were an ostrich.

As she got older, she got more crotchety. She became our "old lady cat" - someone who would growl when, after being picked up to get petted or held, didn't really want to get put back down again. And this was a full-throated, wild cat growl that could raise the hackles if heard in the dead of night.

About three months ago, after getting tired of getting "meowed" to pick a kitty up into the window and "meowed" to put a kitty back on the floor (by then, her arthritis in her front paws was so bad that she'd shake her paws when she'd trot anywhere for any reason) my husband Bill built a "Kitty Ladder" for her. Amazingly enough, it only took two days for Mischief - smart little devil - to learn how to get both up and down the ladder to the counter by herself. She was so pleased with herself, I think she made several trips just because she could do it herself again after all this time.

Mischief was with us for 14 years - from February of 1992 to this afternoon. She was my fourth child - the one I never had to stop carrying around with me.

In my heart, I know that she's finally free of arthritis pain, the itch and exhaustion of fleas, persistent bladder problems and teeth going very bad. I hope that she finds herself able to jump up into the windows again like she used to - to sit in the doorway looking out, or even to slip out the back door to roll on the porch the way she used to love to do (and give us all heart attacks when we found her OUTSIDE). Our haunted house - that's right, I've never written about that, have I? I'll have to remedy that one day - can make room for one more spirit. I hope she chooses to visit from time to time.

But in the meanwhile, I'm going to miss her terribly.