Never easy to say farewell to a pet

In February 1999, I was at a serious crossroads in my life.

I had been working for a local recreation and parks department full-time for nearly 16 years, and had logged eight years of part-time service before that. I had become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the department, which was treading water and resting on a reputation earned in the 1950s, when it truly was visionary and state-of-the-art among public recreation entities.

Unfortunately, the department had done very little to grow since the 1950s and ’60s, and the job was pretty much a repetitive cycle of following the calendar and putting into place this year the same programs that commenced at the same time the previous year.

Many volunteer-driven recreation councils were out of control and filled with egotistical, power-hungry, dishonest members who were involved for all the wrong reasons. It was rare to come across an altruistic volunteer; many were involved for bragging rights, a plaque on the wall and, in way too many instances, private gain from council proceeds.

My last assignment was with a council lead by the most corrupt, “me, me, me” volunteers I encountered in my career. The council leaders were used to calling their own shots, bending the rules (when they bothered to abide by them at all) and generally running the show. Permits to use a school building? Who needs a permit? Yeah, I have keys to facilities that I shouldn’t have, but what are you going to do about it? Adults lied to me about the keys they had, they accessed schools when they had no permission to do so, they misused council money, etc., etc., etc.

I knew I had to make a decision about my career when a program volunteer took it upon himself to hold a scheduled outdoor awards ceremony in an elementary school cafeteria when rain dampened his original plans. This could have been handled by submitting a permit to cover inclement weather, but that was apparently too much for the volunteer to handle.

The group left quite a mess, and needless to say, school custodial and cafeteria workers weren’t too happy to see the mess that greeted them on a Monday morning. The school’s principal, fed up with repeated violations by the same group, had the security system’s code changed and didn’t share it with us.

The following weekend, the legitimate gymnastics program set off the alarm, and classes were chaotic because the alarm kept sounding and school security officers responded.

That Monday, I got called into my supervisor’s office and received a written reprimand because the new code had not been passed on to the appropriate people. The fact that I had not been informed about the new code pulled no sway.

The reprimand was the straw that forced me to look at whether I had 14 more years in me to deal with this BS. I decided the answer was no, and I got my doctor to put me out on sick leave.

I burned through all my accumulated sick and vacation time while trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. To say I was depressed and suffering from a loss of identity is an understatement.

I had been wallowing in my self-pity for about a month when a friend called me to tell me of a little orange tabby kitten hanging around an apartment complex near her home. She told me to come look at it; it obviously had been abused and needed a home.

I went to look at this little ball of fur and instantly fell in love. Someone had not been kind to the kitten that I estimated to be about 12 weeks old. The tips of both ears had been cut off, as had about a third of her tail.

Arrangements were made to take her to a vet to check her out and test her for feline leukemia; I had two other cats at home and couldn’t risk taking disease to them.

Many of you know I’m an Olympic freak, and on the drive to the vet I decided I would name the cat, whose gender was unknown at that time, Sydney, in honor of the summer Olympics scheduled for Australia the following summer. Regardless of gender, the name would be appropriate.

She was given a clean bill of health—though she tore the vet up who attempted to draw blood —and she became a loved member of my household.

She did all the things cats do: she chased her tail, she sat in window sills and hunted birds, she chewed plants and flowers, she tossed hairballs, she batted toys under the stove, she drooled over hits of catnip and chased sunbeams. She would curl up in a ray of sunlight and nap, moving only when she became aware that she no longer was bathed in that sunlight. She would stand up, move a bit and go back to sleep.

But most of all, she loved me.

Sydney followed me around the house like any dog would, jumped in my lap when I sat down, sat on the newspaper when I tried to read it, did likewise should I dare pick up a book, greeted me at the door when I came home from work, let me know (quite loudly) when she was hungry and screamed at me when she decided it was treat time. And she came when I called her.

She slept with me every night, and gradually worked her way up to the position of prestige … the pillow. There was a definite pecking order among my cats, and that order wasn’t demonstrated any more clearly than it was in the bed. When she came into my home, she was the newest and youngest of three cats. Luther, the elder of the den, slept up on my pillow with me. Middle child Morgan slept in the crook of my knee, and Syd took the foot of the bed. It’s as if she understood her place and that was OK with her.

When Luther died at the age of 17, Morgan moved up to the pillow and Syd assumed the spot behind my knees. As the life cycle progressed, she earned the pillow and Beijing, who came into the house when Syd was 9, took over the lower half of the bed.

Sydney even gave birth to a litter of kittens, even though she never went outside and both of her “brothers” were neutered.

Once, when Sydney happened to be in heat, a neighborhood male cat tore a hole in a screen in a window that overlooked my back deck and helped himself to my house and to my little girl. 

Sydney was quite vocal and enjoyed conversations in which she seemed to take turns talking (which is more than I can say for many humans). She purred at the drop of a hat, and she drooled with happiness when I held her at the end of a long work day.

It struck me as appropriate that she was as verbal as she was, given my new vocation as a newspaper writer. She loved to sit between me and the keyboard, and I often had to delete her contributions to my written efforts.

To say that she became a vital part of my everyday life doesn’t give enough credit to the loving, beautiful, sweet creature that she was, and the value I placed on her presence in my life.

Sydney turned 16 this past November, and she was beginning to show some signs of an aging cat. She lost a little weight and, based upon water consumption and output, she was probably beginning to suffer from kidney disease. But she was healthy and happy, overall. Great appetite, still running crazy at nighttime, still opining on my decorating tastes by knocking stuff off shelves, still screaming for treats any time she found me by the cabinet that she knew housed them, still sleeping on the pillow, continuing to purr even after she fell asleep.

Thursday morning, I woke up to realize something was very wrong with her. She was huddled in one place, not moving, even when I called her. I picked her up from her perch, held her for a while and then put her down on the floor. She wobbled a bit and fell down. When she made no effort to get up, I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. She gave me a look that said, “I think this is it; just hold me and love me.”

About 10 minutes later, she suffered a major seizure that wracked her little body for about 20 seconds or so. When it ended, she turned her face to mine and looked into my eyes. I stroked her under her chin and watched the life slowly leave her eyes —those beautiful orange-yellow eyes that had loved me for 16 years.

I find it still stunning to even be writing this, just 12 hours or so after her death. To have a beautiful cat, loving life one day and dead the next. I’m assuming she might have had a stroke, which caused the wobbling of her gait, and then the seizure was too much to overcome.

I might not know exactly what killed the sweet girl who was a vital part of my life, but I do know this: she loved me unconditionally and I returned that love.

And right now, that has to be enough.