When I got Spud, he was only six weeks old, and I was 21.  I was living in a house off-campus, known all over the city as the “Hippie House”, and there was already one cat in residence.  So I had a friend drive me to the Humane Society – I didn’t even consider another option.  Cats in pet stores had plenty of chances; cats in the shelter only have that one left.  

I don’t remember much about picking him out – he was cute, of course, and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, and had me completely wrapped around his paw.  I didn’t have a carrier, so I just held him very carefully in my lap the whole way home.  I remember being so paranoid about my friend’s driving on that trip, worried that something would happen that would be dangerous to the little ball of fluff crawling up my shirt.  (I also worried that he’d manage to climb down under the seats somewhere, or find some niche I couldn’t retrieve him from, so I kept a pretty close eye on the little guy.)

But he did make it back to the house safely, and of course he was the center of attention for a while as he explored and hid and bumped into things and generally made a nuisance of himself.  After he’d fallen off the table a few times, and stumbled in and out of his water dish, we couldn’t help laughing at him.  One of my roommates (perhaps under the influence of something), said, “He’s about as smart as a potato, you should call him Spud.”

There were people in and out of the House all day and night, so particularly at the beginning I was really worried he’d slip out the door, so I closed him in my room with me.  For the first few nights, he crawled up on me and slept between my shoulder blades, close to my heartbeat.  I remember being so scared that I’d roll over in the middle of the night.  

It’s funny, considering his later behaviour – he used to be scared to death of going outside.  He’d dig his claws into me and hang on for dear life if I even took him from the front door to a car.  There was a staircase from our floor directly to the front door, and he didn’t even like going down those stairs for a long time.  

(Sorry, I know a lot of this is trivial stuff, but I’m more trying to record all the memories for myself than trying to create some sort of narrative.)  

Later in my university years, I moved to a place where I was more living alone, in a room off an art professor’s studio (the studio was bigger than some houses I’ve lived in), and let me tell you, Spud loved that place.  There were huge bookshelves lining every wall, and creating additional alcoves of their own here and there; we lived on the second floor, with a walkway, and in the right spots he could climb right down to the top of a bookshelf, and cross the whole room that way.  There was also a spiral staircase to the first floor that he could race down; for a cat, it must have seemed like nirvana.  I’m sure there were mice somewhere, as well.  

Of course, there only being me to pay attention to, sometimes he really needed to know I was there, and this was where he developed a habit that would come back in the last couple years of his life, of uttering these long, pitiful wails when he wasn’t sure where I was.  I’d hear him go off, and I’d go out to the walkway and look down – he’d be standing there, all alone in the middle of the huge expanse of the first floor, looking up and waiting for me.  And when I left town for a day or two, I was worried that the other people in the house would let him out (because it happened several times), so I’d shut him in my room – and the minute he heard my voice coming home, he’d wail again, over and over until I made it upstairs and opened the door.  (Of course, being a cat, most of the time after whining for my attention, he’d put up with hugs and petting for about a minute before wandering off on his own.  The point was for me to be there, that’s all.)  

Spud was the first cat I’d gotten to know very well; the only cat I was around in childhood was a horrible white fluffy thing my Grandma Sylvis had, and I really only recall wanting to get away without being covered in its fur.  So I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I read a lot about cats online (of course, this was right when the Internet was hitting its stride), and I read somewhere that they don’t have any long-term memory.  So I wasn’t expecting him to learn his name, or things like that.  But he did learn, and respond to it.  And I thought that cats would play, sure, but Spud fetched.  He would chase a crumpled ball of paper (being a writer, you can imagine how I learned about this) wherever I threw it, bat it around a little sometimes, but mostly he would pick it up and return it to me for throwing again.  Sometimes, this would go on for the better part of an hour.  

What he liked best was when I’d go out on the walkway and throw the paper the whole way down into the art studio – he’d barrel down the staircase, so fast he must have been dizzy so excited to retrieve it that his whole body would vibrate.  In fact, once he got so excited that, instead of taking the stairs, he leapt off the walkway the whole way down to the first floor!  I was sure he’d hurt himself, but he just sat there for a moment or two, looking around as if to say, “How did that happen?” before I made it downstairs to check on him.  It was a while before I played that little game again, I’ll tell you.

Finally, we made it out of university (well, after a one-year flirtation with grad school that didn’t go well), and into my first marriage.  Neither of us had jobs planned, and we were hideously poor, so we moved back to the tiny little town I was born in, and found the first apartment we could afford.  The lease said, “No pets,” but we knew there were other people in the building with dogs, and we didn’t have much choice, so we took the chance.  I found a job bagging groceries, she did some sub work (she’s an English teacher), and we got by.  

But less than a month into our lease, our landlord came up and informed us that someone in the building had ratted Spud out – and we could either get rid of him, or move out by the end of the month.  I don’t know if the laws were the same down there as here – where it’s actually illegal to evict someone for having a pet in most cases – but certainly, I didn’t know that.  I was so scared; there’s no way I’d send him back to the Humane Society.  But we were barely scraping by, we couldn’t afford to look for a new place or to switch all the utilities, etc. if we did find one.  

Finally, my ex-wife’s parents (who live out in the country with a couple of huge, overindulged cats of their own) offered to take him in.  So for the better part of a year, I only saw my buddy when we visited them – which, of course, happened a lot more often than before.  But it still wasn’t fun – he ran for me every time I came through their door, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he was getting along with two cats who were firmly entrenched at the top of their particular pyramid.  And my mother-in-law didn’t make it any easier when she dropped little jokes during every visit like, “Oh, Spud said he doesn’t ever want to leave!”   

In fact, the next house we lived in was a converted two-car garage, so small we almost had to go outside to stretch – but it allowed cats.  

The years passed, and for the most part, Spud was okay – except, of course, that we moved far too often.  My ex had eventually adopted a cat as well, Myy, so he had someone else to keep him company – but of course, it was still always Spud and I in the end.  He slept in the crook of my elbow, or at my feet, or between my legs, he sat beneath the legs of my chair – he never, his whole life, figured out that wasn’t a terribly safe place for life forms with tails, he raced for the door when I came home.  (Of course, to be fair, sometimes he was racing to get out the door.)  

When things started to go really bad in that marriage (which I may tell sometime, it’s something I need to get out of my system), it was Spud that kept me sane; that may, at some of the lowest points, have kept me alive.  He slept on my chest when I moved down to the couch for good; when I collapsed in corners, sobbing, he came up and bumped his nose into my hands, wanting to be petted but also, in some way, wanting me to know he was there.  I try not to anthropomorphize my pets too much, but I do believe that they have spirits of their own, and I believe they can recognize anguish even if they don’t understand the cause.

And Spud was the only one with me when I made one of the hardest trips of my life, finally moving out and down to Pittsburgh to start a frighteningly new life.  Oh, let me tell you, he never liked car trips.  I spent most of the trip freaking out, trying to take care of a wailing cat and negotiating my first big city on my own in a station wagon I’d never really driven before, wanting nothing more than to run somewhere and hide from it all until someone made all the decisions for me.  

And we made it through that, with the help of some friends.  I never wound up in a place of my own while I was in Pittsburgh – I was living with the brother of a friend – but I found a good job eventually, and by the time the station wagon died, I was able to take buses everywhere, and I paid my bills and Spud got used to a new staircase he could chase paper balls up and down, and everything seemed to go pretty well.  

There was one scary night where I thought I had lost him.  My housemate (well, it was his house) had a friend mooching off him for a while, and this guy just wouldn’t pay attention to little things like, oh, making sure the front door closed behind him when he left the house.  One night I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that Spud was nowhere nearby – which was really odd for him.  I stumbled downstairs for some water, figuring he was probably in the living room, and I noticed a draft.  The front door was hanging wide open, letting the night in – and Spud out.  

I spent hours calling him, racing from street to street nearby, certain I’d find him run over.  It’s not like he knew roads very well at all, much less city roads.  My friend came out and helped, and it was two in the morning before we finally gave up and headed back to the house.  “We can look again in the morning, or he’ll probably come home on his own,” she said, but I wasn’t anywhere near as certain.  I was going through all those little morbid fantasies that you do in those situations – how I would feel when we found his broken body in a gutter somewhere, how I would spend weeks, months, scanning the street every time I walked out of the house.  

We were just about to go inside when I called his name one last time.  “Spud, where are you,” I called out weakly, and just as I was about to turn away, I heard this rustling from beneath the porch next door – and out he strolls, purring, ready for a late dinner and a nap on the couch.  Of course, it was hard to do either for a good while, until I let him out of my arms.  ;)

Somewhere in that Pittsburgh part of my life, of course, I met a fairly wonderful person online, and fell head over virtual heels in love with her.  We met on a website where we both posted poetry – one of mine that particularly caught her eye being about a certain cat who made my life more interesting.  And as we got to talking, I’m sure a lot of my best stories were about my Spudcat.  I’m not completely sure, now that I think about it, if she came down to visit me …

But visit she did, and I proposed that first week in person, and she accepted.  She’d always said that she worried that Spud was too lonely; she had two cats herself, and almost as if to seal our deal, we went out and adopted a second one for my household (and, of course, eventually for our home together).  Before he knew it, and certainly without his agreement to the addition, Spud suddenly had a little sister; a goofy, annoying little kitten named Grayscale, who climbed over him and licked him without invitation and insisted on a more than equal share of my attention and affections.  

Eventually, they did bond together – I have many photographs I’d be glad to share proving it – and he must have thought his life was finally settling down. After all, by this point he had passed the decade mark, he deserved some stability, didn’t he?  

But no, just when he thought all was well, I started packing things into boxes again.  He’d always gotten nervous the minute I started to pack for a move; even bringing boxes into the house made him anxious and clingy.  (Grayce, of course, was only interested in the new opportunities for climbing and jumping and other assorted badness.)   But he couldn’t possibly have imagined what was waiting for him when I wrestled him into his carrier another time, and packed them both into the front seat of the U-Haul that I drove from Pittsburgh directly to London, Ontario and a life that not only held a new person, but two other cats he’d share the rest of his life with.  

Oh, that was a rocky road.  One of Laura’s cats, Thoreau, had instant dominance issues with Spud, and he never really got over hissing and striking out almost every time they were near each other.  It was really the first time he’d had to adjust to a new place, new people, and new cats all at the same time; I wasn’t sure he’d be okay with it all for a long while.  We were in a high-rise apartment, and he spent a lot of time out on the balcony when he could.  I wondered if he was looking for a way out.  But everything did calm down for a while that fall and winter, and I hoped this was the last move the big guy would have to worry about.  I made sure to spend more time focusing specifically on him, and if he was awake, he was generally in my vicinity, wherever I was.  He didn’t even leave the bed when Laura and I were, well, moving rather vigorously, if you know what I mean.  

That summer turned out to be a rough one for all of us.  Laura was finding out that the same University that asked her to take a one-year artist’s diploma in preparation for the graduate program wasn’t going to let her into the graduate program; I had just lost a job that, while almost impossible to bear, was also the only continuous employment I’d been able to find in that year, and we were trying to figure out what the next step in our lives might be – not to mention how we’d afford it.  

All of this, and then, the management of our building decided that the concrete railings on the balconies needed to be replaced.  Not only did this mean that we would have no access to our balconies for most of the summer, but it meant that from 8 to 5 every weekday, there would be crews up and down the side of the building, jackhammering the old railings into pieces.  It was bad enough when they were on the other side of the building; when they got to our side, it was almost too much to bear.  You literally couldn’t hear yourself speak.  

This was bad enough for Laura and I, but the poor cats didn’t know what was happening, couldn’t understand it all, and worst of all couldn’t get out for a break from it when it got to be too much.  They were jumpy and nervous, on edge even at night when everything was quiet.  I tried to create a little soundproof area for them in the bathroom, but it didn’t work.  

And bit by bit, Spud started to get sick.  We weren’t sure what was happening to him, but his eyes and gums were starting to look yellowish, and he didn’t seem to be drinking or using the litter box.  He was barely moving around the apartment at all.  When we took him to the vet (on my birthday), he didn’t even struggle.   

It turned out that, mostly I assume due to the constant noise and clamor around our building, Spud had gotten depressed and decided to stop eating.  It doesn’t take long for a cat who isn’t eating to develop liver disease, which is where the jaundice was coming from.  He was only days from death at that point, and the vet explained very carefully to us that there was a good chance he was too far gone.  It would take constant attention to even make the attempt to keep him alive worth while.  

Luckily, I could give him constant attention.  For weeks, I spent a significant amount of every day trying to convince Spud to stay alive, feeding him with a syringe, pulling him from his hiding place under the bed over and over.  He hated it.  He would scratch and writhe to get away from me; and when it was too late, he’d make his displeasure known by stomping into the living room and shitting all over the floor (and, more than once, my slippers).  Then he would disappear until it was time to repeat the process.  I don’t know who was more miserable – him or me.  

But it was all worth it the day he finally made his own way to the food dish again, and started snuffling into it for a few mouthfuls without my assistance (or insistence, for that matter).  We made it through that crisis, that summer (though Grayce went through some of the same thing before we finally got out of that apartment and moved to Toronto), and settled into a new, calm, quiet place.  Again, I hoped it would be the last move he’d have to suffer through – I know he didn’t make the drive over easy for Laura, but they did all make it safe and sound into another new home.  

I was kind of glad it was a basement apartment where he wouldn’t have to worry about stairs or outside noise, and he seemed to settle in okay.  It was obvious, though, that he was starting to feel his age.  He didn’t jump anymore when he could help it – when we did open a window, high in the wall, he would sit beneath it and wait to be lifted to the sill so he could sniff the outside air.  He moved slowly and slept even more.  He seemed to forget, late at night, where I was, and he’d stand out in the living room wailing until someone came out and got him.  

Everything seemed okay, though, and even when we planned this move, to the apartment we live in now, he didn’t fuss as much as usual.  He seemed to like the new place, even if it took him a while to negotiate the stairs.  And yes, I remember thinking one more time, “I hope this is the last time he has to move.  He’s been through a lot in his life.”  

Still, he got a few months in this place, and it wasn’t all bad.  It hurt to watch him stumble down the stairs, but he could lie on the bed and bask in the sun, or curl up in any of a dozen places in my room to slumber (only a couple of them close enough to the wheels of my chair to be bothersome).  He seemed to be doing okay.  Things were okay for all of us, really, and it was nice to get a little chance to breathe.  

Again, I went out of my way to make sure Spud was getting enough attention – picking him up a lot to cuddle him, and petting him, and lifting him to the couch or the bed if he seemed to want to be there.  He loved being brushed – I got tired of it long before he did.  And while he wasn’t up to jumping on the bed as much, he came into the room when I decided to sleep and would nuzzle at my hand if it was hanging low enough.  

Then, a little more than a week ago now – maybe Thursday or Friday – we noticed that he was having trouble at the litter box.  He’d sit there, straining and straining, and nothing came out.  It took until the weekend for us to compare notes and realize that it was happening every time, and we started to pay very close attention to him.  I thought maybe he was just temporarily constipated, and I looked online for various cures I could try.  All I could really find is that some hairball remedies might help a bit.  

That night, Laura called me over and said, “Have you noticed this lump before?”  There, low on Spud’s abdomen, beneath his ribcage, I could feel a large swollen area.  All I could think is, maybe he’s backed up enough that you can tell that way.  Laura suspected something worse, but there was really nothing to do at that point.  He didn’t seem in any discomfort, except when he tried to defecate – it didn’t even seem to hurt if we pressed the lump.  I wanted to wait and see how he was the next day, Sunday.  He was still affectionate, he was hiding a bit but he always came up to visit me in my room again.  I figured a trip to the vet was probably in the works, but one more day, and actually getting some hairball remedy and trying it in case he was just blocked up that way, couldn’t hurt.  

Sunday came and went, and he didn’t seem too much worse, but he wasn’t really moving around much, either.  He lay spread across the floor, looking up at me until I would pet him and press my face to his chest to hear his still-rumbling purr.  I could tell he wasn’t feeling well, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain.  I did get the hairball remedy and dosed him a couple of times – the first time he ate it eagerly, the second time he sniffed at it a little, but licked it off his paws when I placed it there.  He still made his way up and down the stairs any time he wanted to get some food or water (I had placed a second litter box upstairs for him, but he wasn’t really using either of them by then).  He still came to visit me when I went to bed, and curled up among the laundry until morning.  

Monday morning came, and he got up when I did, wandered into my room asking for affection, and lay down under my desk between my feet while I checked my email.  I dropped my hand, petting him absentmindedly, and noted down our vet’s number to call them once their office opened.  I hadn’t used my allotted personal hours for the month, so if they had to fit me in during work hours, I would be able to do that.  When it was time to go, I chased Spud and the other cats out of my room, as usual, and when I left he was walking back to the bedroom to curl up there.  

By the time I made it to work, and it became late enough to call the vet, I wasn’t worried, exactly, but I was eager to get my buddy in to figure out what was up.  I still thought he might just be constipated, and need an enema or what-have-you.  Sure, anything can be stressful when a cat is his age, but he hadn’t even seemed terribly out of sorts about it all, or unresponsive, or anything else I would take as a real danger sign.  I just wanted him to get better, that’s all.  So I called, and made an appointment for mid-afternoon, and told my boss that I’d be leaving at lunchtime.  It’s always been a hassle to get Spud into the carrier and out the door, so I wanted to have some time to pet him and calm him down before we had to get going.  

I took the subway home a little after noon.  All I’d really gotten done in the morning was posting on LJ, and telling my work friends, that Spud was sick, and I was glad he was getting to the vet to get it all sorted out.  And I was glad to be heading home to him – I feel bad leaving Laura alone when she’s sick, much less one of these guys, who doesn’t understand why they feel off.  

When I got home, I think I probably cleaned the litter box before going upstairs.  Halfway up the stairs, I could see Spud’s lower legs splayed across the hallway, and I figured he was sprawled out the way he had been quite a bit the past day or two.  I think I said hello to him, and asked if he was ready to go to the vet today

I got up to the top of the stairs before I noticed the puddle of drool beneath his head, and his eyes, staring blankly ahead – and I screamed his name, fell to my knees, and cried.  I pressed my head to his chest again, like I had so many times before, but I knew he was dead.  Even now, I still can’t get that image out of my head.  I called the vet in a daze, both to cancel the appointment and because I really didn’t know what to do from here.  There was nowhere I could bury him myself.  I barely kept my composure on the phone – I could see him there, still lying in the hall – but I managed not to bawl while they explained that they could do the cremation there.  They were very kind about it all.  

I picked him up, sobbing, and his head fell limp against my chest.  Carefully, I took him downstairs and put his body in a black trash bag inside a cardboard file box – I just thought that I didn’t want anyone else to know, I couldn’t stand someone even looking through the hand holes in the side of the box and knowing that I was carrying my cat to his body’s end.  I called a cab, and took him to the vet’s office.  I paid the bill for the cremation, and when the assistant at the desk took the box in her arms, I opened the lid one more time, my hand buried in his fur, and said, “Goodbye, buddy.  I love you.”  Then I turned and ran out the door, crying so hard I had to take my glasses off and walk up the street in a blur.  

It’s been almost a week now, and I still feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.  I feel like part of my soul has been torn out and burnt to dust.  Slowly, I’m healing a bit, too, don’t get me wrong – but it’s a lot to make my way through.  For fifteen years, he was the only one who was always there for me, and I never even got to say goodbye.  That last day, I had resigned myself, preparing for the worst as we always do, that if we got to the vet and it was something incurable, I would say my final goodbyes and let him go.  But there’s a world of difference between that and coming home to find that chance had been stolen from me.  

So maybe that’s why I have to tell all this, and write about him again and again, even though every time leaves me raw and weeping.  I’m still saying goodbye.

Spud, I love you.  Wherever you are, you’re always one of the deepest parts of me.