the phoenix cat

scout was impossibly tiny when I brought her home

A few weeks ago I discussed my love for our cat Dada.  We adopted him in December of 2008 from the Burbank animal shelter.  From the first moment I picked him up I could tell he was a special cat.  If you would like to read more from that first post about him click here, dada was my favorite.

Jaime grew up Catholic, I am not nor have I ever been religious.  The closest I ever got were a series of Hanna Barbera videos depicting bible stories through animation.  Easter was not a particularly special day for either of us.  We decided to make the most of a day off, which began with a nice brunch at Jaime’s restaurant.  We followed that with a walk around Silverlake and a trip to Trader Joe’s where we bought a leg of lamb for dinner.

The rest of our day was spent lounging around watching movies and snacking.  In the early evening I decided to go ahead and get dinner started.  I was prepping the lamb when Dada came over to his food dish in the kitchen and proceeded to pull out all the food onto the floor.  He then stood over the dish and squatted over the dish, clearly trying to go to the bathroom.

I don’t have to explain to you that this was not normal behavior.  I reached down to touch him and it took only a soft stroke on his back to raise his hair.  He let out a low base moan, one that you only hear when a cat is either extremely pissed off or in a considerable amount of pain.  Something was seriously wrong.

I called over to Jaime and we watched as Dada moved about the apartment finding different corners trying to pee and letting out deep moans of pain.  It was Easter Sunday so there were no Vet clinics open, but after a search on the internet we were able to find an overnight clinic in Pasadena.  We hopped in the car and rushed in over, hoping that this was a minor problem with an easy fix.

The Vet determined that he had a urinary tract infection. The infection had swelled so that he could not pass urine through his urethra.  It was explained to us that we had two options, either a surgery to remove the blockage or antibiotics which hopefully could begin to open things up a bit.  Just as with Esteban, money was tight and surgery just wasn’t feasible.

We decided on the antibiotic treatment which the Vet explained to us should begin to take effect immediately.  However if he wasn’t better by the morning we should take him back in for the surgery.

We took Dada home and forced the antibiotics down his throat.  By this point he was refusing to walk more than a few steps, he just stood in place trying desperately to pee.

We went to sleep without eating our lamb dinner, neither Jaime or I could choke down anything with Dada in such pain.

I made up his little bed next to ours and gently laid him down.  That night was full of dreams, eerily similar to the ones I had about Esteban when he was sick.  In the dreams I would wake up to find Dada out of his bed and cured, he was happy and rubbing up against my leg purring so loud that the floor boards shook.  In reality I woke up early in the morning to find that during the night he’d  crawled from his bed into the living room where he refused to stand, instead he just laid there shivering.

His regular Vet still wasn’t open and the overnight clinic we’d taken him to the day before was closed.  The closest we could find was an emergency clinic near Culver City.  Once again we got back in the car and rushed off to another animal hospital.

The Vet took us to a room right away and after a brief exam she hurriedly took him to run a quick test.  Jaime and I waited in the room not saying anything to one another, but we were both thinking the same thing.  “How could this happen again?”

When the Vet came back Dada was not with her.  She explained to us that she’d had some difficulty feeling his bladder, they x-rayed him and found that it had ruptured.  Jaime immediately began to cry while I stood in shocked stillness.  There was nothing we could do, no surgeries or medications could delay the inevitable, Dada was going to die.

It wasn’t until the moment that the Vet told us that his bladder ruptured that the idea that he might die entered my mind.  The night before the Vet had been so nonchalant that I didn’t believe that death was a real possibility.

They took us to a special room, one that was clearly designed for grieving pet owners who’s pet were about to be euthanized.  The room had dim lighting and a couch that looked like it had been stolen from a Venice beach hotel in 1991.  We sat down our eyes so full of tears we could hardly see when Dada was brought in wrapped in a blanket.  Before we left the apartment that morning I assured Addison that Dada would return just as soon as we go him fixed up.  I just couldn’t believe this was happening, seeing him sedated and barely conscious.

In many ways Dada’s death was much harder to accept than Esteban’s.  With Esteban we were prepared to make this decision if it came, we were able to spend a long weekend with him, making him as comfortable as possible.  For Dada it was so sudden and unexpected that neither of us could really believe that this was happening.  Dada was still just a kitten, just barely half a year old.  We bawled uncontrollably as the phenobarbital was injected into his vein.  We had such a brief time to try and say goodbye before his body relaxed and his eyes went empty.  Jaime quietly asked if he was dead, and I assured her that yes, now he wasn’t in pain.

The clinic was really wonderful, they charged us only for the euthanasia, not the visit or the x-rays which they had not received our consent for before hand.  

Back at home we greeted Addison empty handed.  She was expecting to see Dada, she was expecting that fuzzy kitten to rub up against her and purr, but now she was alone again.

Jaime and I cuddled on the couch and watched Pet Cemetary.  For dinner we ate our lamb Easter dinner in memory of Dada.

* * *   

Two Days later Jaime and I drove twenty three miles out to the Baldwin Park animal shelter.  We spent the day before calling around and this was the only shelter with a kitten.  Baldwin Park is not exactly a beautiful place and the animal shelter was even more terrifying.  A bunch of rundown buildings and litter strewn walkways, if I hadn’t know better I would have thought I walked into a war torn city.  The cats were kept in outdoor cages, the pen next to the cats was full of chickens snacking on a half eaten bag of Dorrito’s.  On the otherside were bunnies and inexplicably, squirrels.

There was as promised, just one kitten, a black and white shorthair.  Just four weeks old she was impossibly small, her eyes still sapphire blue.  Her microscopic frame dwarfed by the size of her cage and all the older cats surrounding her.

Just as with Dada she would need to be neutered before she could be taken home, though both Jaime and I knew that she was still far too young for the operation.  I was told that I could pick her up the next day after she had a check up and was neutered, (Jaime and I rolled our eyes when the animal control employee insisted that she was old enough).  On our way home Jaime and I discussed whether it was the best choice for us to adopt her.  It wasn’t that we didn’t want her but there was concern that she would not be healthy, I was especially afraid that because she was so young that she might end up having health complications and we both knew that we could not put down another cat.

We wouldn’t come to a conclusive decision until I found myself the following day driving back out to Baldwin Park.  I rolled my eyes again when the animal control employee informed me that she was too young to be neutered.  I was told however that if I made a deposit for the neutering I could bring her home that day.  She then followed that by saying,

“You don’t have to take her, but if you don’t she’ll probably die.”  To me that meant that really, I didn’t have a choice.  I paid the deposit and took this tiny kitten home.

Addison should have rejected her, three cats in two years should have hardened her, made her act cruelly toward this new kitten.  She accepted her with open... paws.  There was no question of what to call her, she had no fear, after walking through the door we plopped her down on the floor and he immediately began to take charge.  Scout would be her name.  Scout, the mischievous tomboy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

As I prepared to write this story I was reminded of the mythological Phoenix bird, who bursts into flames at death, then from those ashes is reborn anew.   Scout was the total opposite of Dada but my fears of an unhealthy cat have, three years later been proven incorrect.  Then I began to think about Jesus, who according to my Hanna Barbera videos was resurrected on Easter.