Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Mickey

Our good cat Mickey died yesterday. She was 14 years old. She had been sick, but we weren’t expecting her condition to deteriorate so quickly. On Friday she had surgery for obtaining a biopsy from a (likely cancerous) growth on her jaw. When she came home Friday night, she was groggy but still ate and drank some water. On Saturday morning, she also ate and drank. As the day went on, though, she clearly began to feel very bad. On Sunday morning, we took her to the emergency vet and she was admitted for testing and IV therapy. It turned out her blood pressure was very high and her kidney values were terrible. The vets tried several approaches with her (all somewhat conservative, at our direction, because of the likelihood that Mickey had a terminal cancer anyway) and, by yesterday morning, it was clear that nothing was helping. Her kidneys were pretty much shot and both of her retinas has detached so she was blind. We can’t be sure, but it seems likely that she suffered some kind of “insult” during or after her recent surgery. Possibly there was a bad reaction to the anesthesia. Possibly she had a “stroke”. At any rate, seeing that there was no chance for any kind of good life left for her, we took the route dictated by compassion and instructed the vets to euthanize her.

Mickey and her sister, Marjie (also gone now), came to us as rescue kittens. They had been living in a cage for all of their early kitten months so neither of them ever learned how to jump up onto high things like kitchen countertops. Many people might have considered that a real plus, be we always thought it was kind of sad.

I have to confess that for most of Mickey’s life I thought she was a pretty dull cat. She didn’t have an outgoing personality and she was generally cranky towards the other cats. It was only in the past 4 years that I really got to know her. In 2004 (I think), Mickey was diagnosed with diabetes. In the course of monitoring her condition and giving her twice-daily insulin injections, I came to understand Mickey’s personality better. She wasn’t dull — she was just subtle.

There aren’t many funny anecdotes to tell about Mickey. She just didn’t operate that way. When other cats might be running around the house acting crazy, Mickey was the kind of cat who would sit quietly to the side and watch. Mickey did, however, have one quality that really made her stand out from the crowd. She had the roughest tongue of any cat I’ve ever known. Truly, if she licked your arm it would REALLY hurt! Since Mickey was a cat who liked to groom us when she was feeling happy, we always had to be sure to offer her some part of our bodies that were less sensitive — like an elbow or a kneecap!

In the last nine months, Mickey’s health had really begun improving. We started her on a new diet (Wellness canned food) and she was able to completely come off insulin. She lost a bit of weight, her fur was looking glossy and smooth for the first time in years, and in general she really seemed to be doing well. She was, however, an old cat. Old cats get cancer.

Sigh.

We’re going to miss her.