Anniversary

Ten years ago this month, I left graduate studies at the Ohio State University and moved to my first solo apartment. You might think my next move would have been to find a job. It wasn’t. The next thing I did was to get a cat. “For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit,” wrote Christopher Smart, when he considered his cat, Jeoffrey.

The cat was free, and she almost wasn’t mine. When I called the ad in the paper, the woman told me someone else had beat me to her. A few hours later, she called back to say the other person hadn’t shown up. Soon I was standing in the living room of a ranch style house in the western suburbs of Columbus, where I was introduced to Sylvia.

She slipped down the stairs, a gray shadow in the corner of my eye, while the family explained that the teenaged daughter simply didn’t want the cat anymore. Plus a large dog had joined the household. The mother brusquely gathered up cans of cat food, a dish, and a plastic cargo crate. All of it was mine. Free. Just take the cat. I was there for less than five minutes. They crammed her in the carrier and suddenly I was standing on the step holding the crate, a little stunned by the lack of ceremony. No good-bye pat, no rite of handing off. Animals have never been disposable to me, and I have never let one go without a farewell of some sort. "Well, their loss. Come on, kitty," I thought-beamed to the soft, frightened creature at my side as we stepped into the cold dark together.

I didn’t even feel her silky chinchilla fur until we were home. Home was the upper apartment in a dilapidated house a few streets north of campus. It had a kitchenette and two rooms outfitted with yard-sale grade furniture. Raccoons lived in the attic and a broken window was never satisfactorily repaired. The downstairs neighbors had noisy sex on Sunday afternoons and Thursday nights after E.R. Hey, E.R. used to be good.

Gas was around $1.15 a gallon. I think my rent was $280 a month. But I digress.



Sylvie’s never been much of a lap-sitter, but she was visibly uncertain and shy at first. She warmed up to Dmitry, who had a way with cats, even if he wasn’t patient enough to help me practice my Russian phonetics. “Your kitty is пушинка” - a bit of fluff - he would say, giving her tail a gentle tug.

He wouldn’t recognize her now, with her beautiful silver fur gone from her belly and back legs. For the past five months she’s been chewing her own hair off. The vet has been unable to treat successfully the allergy or compulsion that causes her to do this. I’m not completely at a loss yet. One of my writers’ group members suggested Dr. Pitcairn’s natural diet, which helped her dog with skin problems.

The hair loss is not the worst health issue she’s ever faced. In 2001 I noticed her lapping the water bowl bone-dry on a daily basis. She was diagnosed with diabetes and prescribed insulin injections. She fought the shots every day. She slashed at me. She hissed at me. She skulked around, hid under the bed, fired furious, baleful glances at me. I cried on the phone to the vet that I couldn’t do it - that Sylvie hated me too much - and the vet assured me that I was not a bad kitty mom if the injections weren’t a viable option.

But they were the only option. After I stopped trying to administer the shots, Sylvie got sick and skinny to the point where her hindquarters quivered with the exertion of merely walking. Finally she let me start to give the injections. Even after five years, this trust does not extend to other people. If anyone else approaches her with a syringe, they will shortly need the tube of Neosporin. The only person foolhardy enough to make an attempt was my friend K. from the wildlife rehab clinic, and she had to go after my cat with padded welding gloves on and with the net used to restrain coyotes. A wild bird of prey is easier to handle than my pissed off cat.

She pretty much hates anyone who comes in when I’m not home, even if it’s someone she’s met before and seems to like. She will smack the hand that feeds her. I tell friends coming over to take care of her while I’m away to throw the food down and go.

She especially dislikes women with higher-pitched voices. After the coyote-net incident, she would rush at K. like an enraged bull elephant. She ripped open a three-inch gash on the foot of a little girl for following her into the other room. When my girly-voiced friend J. came over, I had to shut the cat in the bedroom. She seems to like men better, but she’s not a good judge of character and totally, completely adores the cads.

She is attracted to black pants as if they’re made of catnip. She hogs the body pillow at night. She demands canned food immediately upon my return to the apartment, no matter how brief my absence. She chews on the Christmas tree.

She leaves all the yarn and beads alone. She forgives me for yelling and for running the vacuum and for coming home late, even when I smell like other cats. She keeps me company while I work. She likes quality chair time, when she can press her forehead against my leg and purr like a diesel engine. She gives me kitty-kisses.

In the past ten years, we have moved four times. I have had seven different jobs. My brother and two good friends have died. My heart’s been broken a hundred times. Life has shattered, shifted, come back together with jagged Crazy Glue edges. Sylvie is always there, rasping tears off my face with her warm tongue, head-butting me to get out of bed, greeting me at the door.

For all these gifts and more, my furry purry one, Fancy Feast all month, and the feather toy every night.