RIP Megs
It is with great sadness I enter spring this year with the
loss of Megs the Merciless, my feline companion for over twenty years. Yeah, I
know, that’s old for a cat. And some people will say, “It’s just a cat,” but spend
that much time with something/someone sharing your bed, hogging the pillow, stealing
the covers, being there each night when you go to bed and greeting you first
thing in the morning…you get a little attached.
Megs came to me as a tiny kitten while I was working in the
IT department at Elixir Technologies. She was so tiny with her barely
perceptible squeak I said she was only a megabyte and the name stuck.
At the time I was living in a funky 1950’s era mobile home
smack dab in a citrus and avocado orchard. Critters were everywhere, especially
rats, mice and opossums. My two-legged house mate had issued a NO CATS edict,
but the vermin were outmaneuvering the traps and poisons, coming into the
bathroom through the spaces between the floor and the pipes, raiding my Tampax
box for bedding they shredded in the walls at night while we were trying to
sleep. It was a losing battle with us on the wrong side.
Shopping at a neighbor’s yard sale one day we spied a
rat-sized live trap. “Why are you selling this?” asked my anti-feline companion.
“We got a cat,” was there reply so the cat ban was lifted.
The next day at work came an office wide email—Free Kittens.
It was meant to be. The next day I arrived at my desk to find a mewing tabby in
a cat carrier next to my CPU. She went home with me and has remained my
faithful companion until today.
From the very beginning, Megs was a hunter. Even though the
orchard rats were bigger than she, lizards under the carport were her first
quarry. She didn’t even kill them, just grab them by the tail which popped off
as a natural escape mechanism. When she finally grew into her glory, she would
bring several offerings a day to the front door—rats, mice, bunnies, snakes and
once a raccoon kit. She avoided hawks, owls and coyotes.
For two years her best
friend was Rosa, a black Lab puppy we were raising for the National Disaster
Foundation. Rosa would run with a blanket upon which Megs would cling for dear
life as her pal would leap off and on to the porch, the blanket flying with kitten
in tow. Rosa would carry Megs around by the leg and be scolded for doing so,
but them Megs would rub against the puppy’s mouth teasing her to take up their
game again. During long walks through the orchard in the morning and evenings
with the dogs, Megs would follow along racing up trees and ambushing the dogs. When
Rosa left for her professional training, Megs was visibly depressed for several
days over the loss of her friend.
When the time came to move across the country from California
to Pennsylvania Megs won the award for the worst traveler. The horse had a
trailer, the dogs had a futon in the back of the truck and Megs had a large dog
crate with a cardboard box for a litter pan. She was none too happy and “sang” the
song of her people for three thousand miles.
Half way through the trip we
stopped for a few days in Texas at my companion’s mother’s home. She was a
dyed-in-the-wool cat hater capturing wayward neighborhood kitties in a live
trap, tormenting them with hose and them calling animal control to dispose of
them. Once, she clipped the whiskers off her next-door neighbor’s pet cat with
a pair of garden shears out of spite while it was being held by the owner. I
had made arrangements to board her with my horse at the local veterinarian’s
clinic, but when I arrived she was turned away due to an outbreak of contagious
cat disease. She had to go with us. Imagine my surprise when I woke the next
day to find our host with Megs on her lap, a cup of coffee in one hand and a
cigarette in the other. “I thought you didn’t like cats?” I asked hesitantly.
“I don’t,” she replied in her clipped German accent adding, “but
this cat is not going to shit in my garden.” Megs sat there purring. Was it
because she was out of her crate or because she had won over the cat-hater?
After ten days we arrived at the farm which was right on the
road. I had visions of finding her splattered on the asphalt, but in all the
years there she managed to avoid tragedy while numerous barn cats did not. She
opted for the opposite direction, hunting down in the pines where there were
plenty of bunny nests. Bush-hogging days were her favorites when she would
pounce on moles, voles, mice and of course, baby bunnies exposed in the mowed
grasses. She nabbed chipmunks, squirrels, baby groundhogs and once, a fledgling
owl. Much to the horror of our bird-watching neighbors, she raided the bird
nests in their ornamental trees grabbing one at a time, bringing it home to eat
and then going back for another until the nest was empty.
Her modus operandi also got her into trouble with the
farming activities when she chewed the heads off a few dozen turkey poults one
year. While the initial loss was around a hundred bucks, had those turkeys
grown up for Thanksgiving dinners they would have brought in well over a
thousand dollars. It wouldn’t be the first time someone who slept in my bed
caused thousands in damages. From then on during poult brooding Megs was
unhappily confined to the house. Angered by this, she tore through a second-story
window and escaped for another pre-Thanksgiving feast. We learned to Megs-proof
the brooders.
Like our walks in the orchard, Megs
would tag along with
walks around the farm with the dogs, the bottle baby goats, the calves and the
horses.
A year into the farm in Pennsylvania I brought home a friend
for her, Bugs. Megs was having none of it. They were mortal enemies for many
years until a visiting dog grabbed Bugs by the neck violently shaking her. She
lay on my bed for two days unable to get her bearings. I was afraid she was
going to die. It was at the height of market season when I had three market
days in a row over the weekend and not the funds, let alone time, for a trip to
the emergency vet clinic. I came home to find Megs in bed next to Bugs with her
tail draped over her once hated housemate in a gesture of comfort. Bugs
recovered and the outright fighting between the two ceased.
Although a new feline friend was not to her liking, the
first Great Pyrenees puppy—Sherman was love at first sight. They play racetrack
around the house for hours at a time, bounding on to the furniture before
falling together in a fit of exhaustion. Despite his enormous size, she was the
one to play rough always going for his lips causing him to freeze while she
retracted her needle-like claws. He would hold her down in his massive paws and
lick her while she yowled, but she never physically protested.
When Sherman was
hit on the road in front of the barn one morning, Megs entered another
depression like that of when Rosa left. She never became attached to any of the
puppies to enter her life again and was equally indifferent to a tuxedo kitten
rife with lice, ear mites and eye infection that was dumped in the driveway at
four am one July morning. She tolerated Lucky, but neither played or fought
with him.
One summer I thought I had lost Megs for good when she
disappeared for nearly two months. An owl, a hawk, the road, a leg trap…who
knows, she was gone. As suddenly as she had disappeared, she reappeared seeming
none worse for wear, fat and clean, however, she seemed to stick close to the
house. It wasn’t until the Amish family a few doors over were walking by one
days when they noticed her sunning herself on the bench in front of my house.
“Oh,
there’s our kitty,” the woman said as
her little girl rushed to grab Megs who eluded the child’s attempt. I explained
that Megs was mine and had traveled from California with me several years
earlier. She would not be going home with them. The woman was incensed I would
do something so mean as to take away a child’s pet. I didn’t give a shit what
she said, Megs was my cat.
Megs had a wicked sense of humor. She knew when someone wasn’t a cat or animal person, making it a point
to win over their hearts or harass the daylights out of them until they left
the property. Once, she shed a huge gravid tick the size of a lima bean on a
friend with a tick phobia. She didn’t run when he tossed her off his lap
shrieking at the top of his lungs. Each time he would visit, she would make a
bee line for him, but for pet people, she could care less.
When I gathered up all the critters to move to a different
farm four years ago, Megs only had twenty minutes to sing. She, along with Bugs
and Lucky, were forced to share my bedroom and the master bath for a week until
I opened to door to their new home.
The road was a quarter mile away. The house sat in the
middle of a hay field. There were three
porches on which to laze in the sun—one for each cat which suited them all just
fine.
About a year into her third farm it became apparent Megs was
aging. She could still catch and wolf down baby bunnies. She knew there was a
mouse trap on the counter and would jump up when it snapped, stealing the
entire trap to go and eat the mouse out of the bale wire. I found a stash of
traps under my bed recently. But she wasn’t grooming herself. Tufts of excess
fur were matting on her haunches. She was staring to shrink from her sleek, yet
muscular self. I bought a pet brush and we learned to deal with it.
Another year went by and while her body continued to shrink Megs
continued to hunt, to eat, to jump up and down on the bed. Her one eye grew
cloudy with what else… a cataract! She was old.
When the weight really began dropping off her I splurged on wet cat food, the
nice stuff which she gobbled two cans each day. She could still hear because
she would dance in excitement each time the mouse trap snapped, waiting for me
to drop it in front of her to promptly gobble down. Even when she quit eating
the fancy wet cat food, only licking the gravy off the chunks, she could still
devour an entire mouse and not barf it up. I tried to entice her with raw chicken livers, another favorite, and she turned up her nose.
This past summer Megs developed an ulcerated tumor on her
side. The vet said she could sew it closed but it would require anesthetizing
Megs and wouldn’t guarantee it would not open right back up. I didn’t want to
take the chance and instead kept the open sore clean and medicated. It didn’t
start to expand until about a month ago. Then it began to smell. I considered
having her euthanized, but each time she would jump up on my lap showing no
pain with a relatively clean sore. Then it began to
ooze. The fur fell out around it. She quit eating altogether, but anytime I sat
down she climbed up on my lap and purred. I knew the end was near. I would not
terrify her by loading her into a strange carrier and
taking her somewhere to be put down out of convenience for me. She was not in
pain. She was not suffering. She was going to die on her own terms.
For the last few weeks she mostly slept, ate little and
spent her time awake when I was around. Each morning when I would wake up, she’d
be waiting outside of my door as I had to quit letting her sleep in bed with
me when she refused to get out of the way when I rolled over. She tried to get
as close as possible and I was afraid of squishing her. To be honest, the oozing
sore was also something I did not want in my bed.
Last week, Megs had her celebrity fan moment when my
neighbor’s brother gave me a ride to the mechanic to pick up my van after I had
some maintenance done. He is none other than Dale Midkiff who played Doctor
Louis Creed in the Stephen King thriller, Pet Cemetery. We had been joking
about Megs smelling like Church, the cat-returned-from-the-dead.
“Would you do
me a favor, Dale? Hold Megs and let me take your picture,” I asked. He obliged,
adding to hurry up because she smelled like death and he was going to puke. I swore she smiled having played the part to a T. I placated Dale by
letting him cuddle the house lamb which smelled like a wool sweater for a few minutes.
This morning when I woke up, Megs did not greet me at the
bedroom door as usual. She was laying on the floor in the living room with Bugs at her
side. They hadn’t laid like that since Bugs’ encounter with the nasty dog. Megs
couldn't stand up. Her eyes weren’t focusing and the pads on her paws
were ice cold. I wrapped her in a towel and a blanket and laid her on my bed.
As I went about my work today, checking in on her regularly, I could see she
was gradually shutting down, fading just as I had seen with my grandmother as
her breathing grew irregular in her final hours of life, an occasional large
inhale, a small squeak when I squeezed her paw or stroked her fur. As a farmer, I know death isn’t pretty.
In the early afternoon as her breathing grew shallow and irregular, I got
a telephone call from an acquaintance who suggested I bang her on the head with
a shovel or shoot her and get it over with.
I hung up, blocked their number on my iPhone and went back to ensure
that Megs faded quietlyacross the rainbow bridge.
Megs passed peacefully wrapped in her favorite blanket on my bed on the
first day of Spring despite a snow storm.
She likes to leave kitty tongue marks on butter left out and in the pan when grease congealed. Salmon skin was her favorite thing next to whole mice and she would be underfoot singing each time I opened a package of salmon. The vacuum cleaner didn't frighten her, but helium balloons were on par with evil clowns for her.
On an impulse last Sunday, I
purchased several dinner plate dahlia bulbs, something I’ve never grown. Megs will
be buried in my flower garden next to the porch on which she loved to sun
herself, the dahlias marking the spot. I’m certain they will be gorgeous and
make me smile just as Megs did.
