Midnight went on her last hunt. Our oldest pet, a black cat who reached more than 19 years, Midnight ran the house. When we moved to Michigan, our first cat passed on very quickly, and our first Michigan cat (Hattie) died quickly, probably from the same illness. A black cat named Sarah came into our lives. Terri and Sho allowed her to have one litter (turned out to be 8 kittens), and we kept Midnight after finding homes for the rest. After about three years, Sarah went out to hunt and never came back. Not long after, Midnight did the same. At that time Terri and Shoshana found our gray tabby twins, Tommy and Rachel. But Midnight was always full of surprises and after an absence of 6 weeks, there she was back again. We’ve theorized that she might have been locked away in someone’s garage but managed to survive–I guess she lost quite a few of those proverbial nine lives in that episode.
But that broke our stream of bad luck–Midnight was here to stay. And she made it pretty clear that she would have nothing to do with the twins. Wouldn’t even share a litterbox with them. Fortunately for us, she preferred the outside life, so for most of our years with her she was our outdoors cat. She liked to come in for the day and stay out at night. And she would deign to keep us company during the coldest nights of Winter. And for all those years there was a steady stream of “gifts” left for us on the front porch.
Old age caught up with Midnight a couple of years ago, so for the past two years she was around the house a lot more. We threw in the towel on the litterbox issue and got her her own private one.
Two months ago, at her annual physical, the vet found a tumor on her paw and the diagnosis was immediate–cancer. She might survive a bit longer, we were told, with an amputation. But why put a 19 year old cat through that misery? So we gave her the most comfortable life we could provide and let her eat the wet food she preferred over kibble. What a pain that was because Nina our dog would do everything she could to get that food with very unpleasant consequences.
This morning the tumor opened up and Midnight bled profusely. I got a call from our cleaning crew (it was our biweekly cleaning day) telling us that the cat was clearly ailing. So after work Terri and I headed once again for the vet. One shot and a few minutes later, Midnight was sedated. Terri pet her and she purred until she was out. A second shot and her strong little heart was stilled.
Terri buried her under the tree which was a favorite napping spot of hers for so many years.
It seems like these days half my activity in this blog is writing obits for my pets. Midnight was 19, Tommy 14 and Roxanne 9. So in the last few months, we’ve lost pets who occupied 42 collective years of our pets’ lives. I miss them all.