by Amy Newmark
As Chuck’s bond with Candy strengthened, Chuck became stronger as well. The softness and patience he showed toward Candy spilled over to his attitude toward others, including me. His angry outbursts occurred less and less frequently, and it seemed as if the dark cloud that hung over him for so long was finally lifting. With Candy, Chuck was completely present, attentive, and light.
As cute as Candy was, she also came with some behavior problems. She would scratch us when she wanted food and pee in our bed when we were out. As frustrating as these problems were, Chuck was patient in training Candy. He spent hours online searching for remedies and tried a bunch of different tips to make Candy more calm and trusting. At the same time that Chuck’s depression began to lift, Candy’s behavior started to improve as well.
It’s now been three years since Candy became a part of our family. Candy’s life changed dramatically when she was brought into our home, and so did ours. Chuck was able to crawl his way out of his depression and anger into a state of acceptance for the devastating loss he experienced. Our relationship not only survived, but we became closer as a couple once we were both able to process the events and learn from them.
Indeed, when we married in 2015, Chuck began his vows with this: “Brittany, you have made me feel more loved than I ever thought possible and helped bring me through my darkest times. Our road has not been easy, but that is how I know it is one I want to continue traveling by your side.”
Of course, Candy made it into our vows as well. We promised to be a good cat mom and dad to her, and as a joke, Chuck promised to always love me more than her!
I often wonder what would have become of our relationship, and of Chuck himself, had Candy not come into our lives when she did. We may have saved Candy from a grim future, but she saved us as well.
~Brittany L. Stalsburg
The Nurse Cat
When I look into the eyes of an animal I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul.
~A.D. Williams
It was Halloween night. Witches, ghosts, goblins, and Darth Vader were trekking from door to door asking for treats. The phone rang; it was my friend Lilly, whose five-year-old son has autism.
“Hey, would it be okay if I brought James to your house to trick or treat? This is his favorite holiday, and he’s all dressed up in his costume, but he can’t go just anywhere, only to homes where he knows people.”
“Of course,” I told my friend. I knew that her son didn’t do well with strangers or crowds, and though I’d been to his home many times, he had never been to mine.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I opened it to find James standing there in his costume.
“Trick or treat,” he whispered. I dumped a large handful of candy into his bag.
“Can we come inside?” Lilly asked. “We already visited all our neighbors. This is our last stop.”
I opened the door wide and invited them inside. James took two steps and froze, staring at my orange tabby cat, Lox. I glanced at Lilly. “What’s up?”
“Because of his dad’s allergy to cats, he hasn’t been around them much, or really at all.”
We watched as James stepped into the room with all the caution of a secret agent scoping out a possibly dangerous environment. Lox stayed still and didn’t take his eyes off James. James plopped down on the rug and lowered his head to the cat’s level. Lilly and I moved over to the couch and began chatting about the mundane events of our week. Every few minutes, Lilly looked over her shoulder to watch her son, who sat mesmerized by Lox. If one of them cocked his head sideways, the other one mirrored the movement.
Tears began welling in Lilly’s eyes. She reached up and wiped away a stray tear. “In his whole life,” she said, “James has never looked anyone in the eye. Not me, not his dad. No one. It’s part of his autism.” She pointed to Lox and James. “Since he walked in here, he hasn’t stopped looking Lox in the eye. And Lox hasn’t stopped looking at him. I’ve never seen a cat do that.”
I explained that Lox was a nurse cat, and had been since the day we brought him home as a kitten. He sensed when someone was ill or injured or needed a loving paw. I couldn’t explain it, but Lox knew with uncanny insight when someone was hurting or ill. He wouldn’t leave the person’s side until he or she was fully recuperated. I’m not sure he knew what to do with James, so he did what he knew best. He mimicked James and stayed with him until Lilly took James home a half-hour after the stare-a-thon began.
Lox was one of the most extraordinary cats I’d ever known. He was social almost to a fault. Whereas other cats would vanish when company visited, he preferred to be in the middle of the conversation. At every meal, he politely sat on a dining chair, watching us eat, never begging or intruding. He simply wanted to be with us.
We also witnessed Lox fall in love. We took in a stray mother cat and her kittens that someone had dumped in our neighborhood. The mother was thin and exhausted, and the kittens were hungry. Lox and Shayna (the name we gave her) bonded immediately. To give her time to rest, Lox would babysit the little ones several times a day while Shayna retreated to another part of the house. It was astonishing to watch the vast empathy Lox displayed for everyone, including animals he didn’t know. Eventually, we found homes for the kittens, and Shayna stayed with us. She and Lox became inseparable. I don’t think they spent five minutes apart until she passed away a few years later. I’d never seen an animal grieve before, but grieve he did, sleeping only in the places where she slept, eating little, if at all. He mourned like a human.
But it wasn’t just animals he cared for and nursed. When my husband was recovering from shoulder surgery, Lox lay next to the injured shoulder, placing a paw lightly on the bandages, providing warmth.
A few years later, I suffered a near-fatal pulmonary embolism that required I spend several days in the hospital. I returned home to a fretting cat. As soon as I lay down on the bed, he was right next to me. He snuggled between my arm and upper body, with his head resting gently on my chest. Somehow, he knew that his body evoked a healing effect, something unexplainable, a sort of spiritual nourishment. Every hour or so, he would lift his head and look into my eyes, softly stroking my cheek with his soft paw. I could only interpret it as his way of checking on me. I would nod and tell him I was going to be okay. He would hunker back down and begin purring, lulling me back to sleep.
For weeks, he nursed me, and I slowly recovered. But as I recovered, Lox began his decline into terminal kidney failure. Lox had been in kidney insufficiency for a year, and he’d been doing well, or so we thought. Then, all of a sudden, his health turned, and he was dying before our eyes.
I wasn’t allowed to cry as Lox entered his final days. The doctors had warned me against any activity, emotional or physical, that could cause the embolism to dislodge and travel back up into my heart or plunge into my lung, which could result in instant death. My dear, sweet cat was dying, and all I could do was grieve silently.
Finally, after watching Lox suffer over a weekend, we called the vet’s office on a Monday morning and said it was time to bring him in. They prepped him and placed him on my lap. We kissed him and told him goodbye. In moments, he was gone. All the tears I had not shed gushed out. I didn’t care what that embolism did. I’d lost my sweet kitty, my nurse kitty, an extraordinary little being that had made the world a better place through his simple acts of nurturing. He saved me, and he saved countless others, and I was heartbroken that I couldn’t save him.
~Jeffree Wyn Itrich
A Furry Angel
God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger.
~Joseph Méry
My husband and I had been married for about two years when Nekko came into our lives. The first time I saw him, I was visiting friends when I spotted a small, black-and-gray cat stuck in a tree. I climbed the tree partway and managed to coax the cat down. It jumped to the ground and ran off when a stranger approached to ask why I was in
a tree.
The next time I went to visit my friends, I found the same little cat being tormented by three men who were trying to tie firecrackers to its tail. I yelled for them to stop, but I’m a very small woman and not very intimidating, so they just laughed and ignored me. I ran to my friend’s house and got her husband Charles, who is a very, very large man. Charles chased off the men, but we were unable to catch the cat. It had run off.
I told my husband about the small cat and its plight, and how it was obviously a stray and in need of a home. My husband and I already had one cat, and he said if I saw the little cat again, it was fine with him if I brought it home. When I went to visit my friends again, I was prepared. I brought a cat carrier and a can of tuna, and it was good I did, because I saw the little thing again. It walked right over to the tuna and didn’t protest at all when I picked it up and put it in the carrier.
When we got home, I gave it a bath. The cat was covered in grease and mud, and I didn’t want to risk bringing fleas into my house. I quickly discovered that the cat was a female, and rather than being black and gray, she was a lovely black and white. She purred loudly as I washed the filth from her fur, never protesting or trying to get out of the bath. It was as if she knew I was trying to help her, and she wanted to be clean.
While I was washing her, my husband asked what we should call her, and he began proposing names. He was studying Japanese at the time and suggested we call her Nekko, which is Japanese for cat (“neko”). I asked the cat if that was all right with her, and she seemed to purr louder, so Nekko it was.
A few days later, I took her to the vet for a check-up and to be fixed and get her shots. The vet guessed she was about two years old, and she was pretty healthy despite living on the streets.
Nekko soon became a very loving and affectionate cat. She’d greet me at the door whenever I came home from work and always loved to jump up on my lap while I watched television.
Several months later, we were visiting my father-in-law at his assisted-living center, and I saw a sign saying the center was starting a pet-visiting program. I spoke to the nurse in charge of my father-in-law and asked if I could bring Nekko for a visit. The nurse said Nekko could come if she was clean and well behaved. I began training Nekko to sit and walk while wearing a body harness and leash. As always, she was very calm and willing to please. In a matter of days, she was leash-trained.
I began bringing Nekko with us whenever we went to visit my father-in-law, and she soon became very popular with the residents at the home. She would walk down the corridor and let strangers pick her up and pat her. She would also sit on their laps if they wished.
During one visit, my father-in-law’s nurse brought in a nurse from another floor and introduced her to me. She was a hospice nurse and had a patient, an elderly lady, who they didn’t think would make it through the night. The hospice nurse explained that her patient was alone and had no family. She had been asking to see and pet a cat just one more time. The hospice nurse explained that her patient had owned many cats and had to give them all up when she entered the center. The lady had told the nurse that if she could pet a cat just one more time, she could die happy. The nurse asked if I would mind bringing Nekko to the lady’s room and let Nekko stay with the woman. I agreed. I picked up Nekko and followed the hospice nurse to the room of a very old and frail woman named Martha.
Martha looked up as we entered, and upon seeing Nekko, she broke into a smile. I walked up to Martha’s bed and introduced Nekko, then put Nekko on the bed and tied the end of the leash to the bedrail. I told Nekko to stay and be a good cat. Nekko immediately walked onto Martha’s chest and knelt down facing her. Martha began patting Nekko and talking to her, and Nekko began to purr very loudly. I stayed for several minutes to be sure Nekko was behaving and then left to go back to my husband and father-in-law, with a promise from the hospice nurse that she’d return Nekko to me.
Two hours later, the nurse still hadn’t returned with Nekko, and I was wondering how I could politely retrieve her. Suddenly, the hospice nurse appeared holding Nekko and crying, accompanied by my father-in-law’s nurse and another nurse. The hospice nurse said that Martha had passed a few minutes earlier, but she’d died smiling. The hospice nurse went on to say that she’d left Nekko with Martha while she’d gone to check on other patients, stopping in every few minutes to check on them both. The nurse said that every time she stopped in, Nekko was loudly purring and looking into Martha’s face.
The nurse had then been tied up with another patient longer than she’d intended, and a good thirty minutes had passed before she could return to Martha. When she’d gone back to check on Martha the last time, she’d found Nekko sitting upright at the foot of the bed and mewing softly. The nurse went to check on Martha and discovered that she’d passed. The hospice nurse said that Nekko was surely a little angel for she’d sat perfectly still and purred nonstop for Martha, making Martha’s last hours on earth very happy.
The nurses all thanked me for bringing Nekko and said that she was welcome back any time. Nekko continued to accompany us to the center, and brought smiles and laughter to the residents every time.
~Leslee Kahler
Everyone’s Cat
As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.
~Ellen Perry Berkeley
Someone was singing right outside my door, but when I looked, no one was there. A moment later, Mike opened his door down the hall. A sleek, striped cat darted between Mike’s shins.
“Did he wake you? Sorry,” Mike called down the hall. “Nobody can talk like a tabby Maine Coon!”
It was my first morning after moving into the apartment, and I was glad to make friends with someone.
While checking my mail, I ran into Mike again. He was tall and slender, with an elegant manner learned from his years as a Hollywood chauffeur.
“Glad you got a chance to meet Gizmo,” Mike explained. “He’s so old — he’s been here longer than I have. If you hear him, feel free to knock on my door. But whatever you do, don’t pick him up. He can be grouchy.”
As the weeks passed, Mike proved himself to be an excellent apartment manager. He collected cans from all the tenants and used the recycling money to purchase new Christmas decorations for the courtyard.
Gizmo serenaded us morning and night. One day, I sat at the top of the stairs, and to my surprise, Gizmo slunk right up onto my lap. He coyly stretched out his white chin for me to scratch, neatly hiding away any grouchiness he might harbor. He let me scratch behind his ears, and then, in a flash, he had enough and was gone.
I learned to look forward to Gizmo’s evening visits on the stairs. Sometimes, I “accidentally” spilled some coffee creamer into a pie tin next to my door, and often found myself leaning on the balcony railing as I watched him poke around in the miniature jungle of our courtyard.
And I was not the only one. There were haphazard jar lids placed near every other apartment. On a Saturday afternoon, I watched Gizmo take the stairs down to the first floor, sneak into the laundry room, and then visit three apartments in a row.
The lady who lived directly across from me could only greet me in Ukrainian, but Gizmo seemed to understand her perfectly. The two gentlemen who wore Hawaiian shirts as their constant uniform were often seen scooping him up and passing him to one another. Gizmo’s grouchy reputation was apparently just a ruse. Even the college professor on the other side of Mike’s place was friends with Gizmo, often leaving out scraps of eggplant and prosciutto.
That season, Mike purchased a giant, inflatable snowman, and we both laughed over its odd movements as it deflated each evening. Gizmo would walk toward it tentatively and then dash away. A few minutes later, he’d repeat the whole process.
Soon, glitter snowflakes gave way to whirligig hearts spinning across the lawn — a constant source of fascination for Gizmo. Eventually, flags and sparklers lined the walkway. When the Los Angeles weather melted into scorching heat, that’s when Mike knocked on my door to del
iver the bad news.
“There was an accident,” he told me, solemnly. “One of the neighbors watched it happen at the intersection… It was horrible. I could barely recognize him.”
He shook his head before adding, “I’ve chosen to bury him in the courtyard, just under the jade tree.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry, Mike. He was everyone’s cat, really.”
I thanked Mike for telling me. Until I was by myself, I didn’t realize how I felt about Gizmo. I curled up on the couch and remembered how Gizmo surprised me by showing me his tender side. I thought about his plaintive song, and how he often seemed to be telling me something. What was he always trying to say?
That evening, I raided the cupboard for something special. Way in the back was a box of gourmet chocolate brownie mix. Tears spilled while I mixed the dark batter. If Gizmo had been my cat, then maybe I would have built a Gizmo-specific armor around my heart. But Gizmo was as much a part of life here on Moorpark Street as the constant whoosh of Los Angeles traffic or the smell of jasmine in the spring. He was not an incidental cat, as I had thought. Gizmo was essential to everything here.
While the tray was still baking, I went online and made a donation to the Burbank Animal Shelter in Gizmo’s name. I printed a little certificate and added it to the plate of brownies. Maybe someone else’s incidental cat would benefit.
Then I walked down the hall to deliver condolences to Mike. As the door slowly swung open, I was surprised to see so many faces crowded into his small living room. There were matching Hawaiian shirts on the couch, and the college professor was leaning her elbows on the kitchen counter. Even the Ukrainian lady was there, dabbing her eyes. I passed around the plate and marveled at all these people — Gizmo’s people.