The Gift

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the 28^th of June, about a month before our 17^th anniversary. I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. Call display said it was my wife. When I answered, she was beside herself with excitement. The Winnipeg Humane Society had a program where they loaned abandoned animals to various pet shops in the hope that they would be adopted. My wife had been walking past our local pet store and had seen a cat in the window. It was love at first sight. “You don’t have to buy me anything for our anniversary, but I really, really want this cat! She’s beautiful! We’ve just got to, got to, got to adopt her! …..” (heavy sigh).

As I’ve said in a previous post, I am an animal lover, and I prefer dogs over cats. But I stopped on my way home from work that evening to check out this must-have animal and she was indeed a beautiful cat. Her name was Monet and she was 3 years old. She had the thickest, richest, most luxurious fur I’d ever felt and her colouring was amazing. And she seemed pretty warm and affectionate. But we already had a cat. Did we really need two? (That was the dog lover talking). But she was beautiful and she was going to be euthanized in a few more days if she didn’t get adopted so (reluctantly) I decided to buy her for our anniversary.

I told the lady in the pet store that I was going to go home and get the pet carrier and come back and buy her. The woman surprised me when she said she couldn’t sell Monet to me. Another lady had already put a deposit down on her. My wife was going to be crushed. I should have come sooner. I should have left work early. Why did I wait? I was across the parking lot and almost to my car when, “Wait a minute!” I went back and asked the name of the woman who had put the deposit down. She told me and I said, “It’s okay. You can sell me the cat. That’s my wife.”

 

And so Monet, the cat in need of a home, became Monet, the cat who reigned supreme in our home.

This all happened a few days before the July long weekend and we had been planning on going to the lake. I was on vacation the following week and we were going to go to the cottage and just relax. Except I didn’t want to go. For some reason, I felt very uneasy about this trip. I’d felt this way for days. I didn’t know why, but I just didn’t want to go.

The day after we brought Monet home, she started to sneeze. She had a cold. This is quite common among animals from a shelter – they pick up every germ from every animal in the place. The problem, though, is that, when cats get a cold, they can’t smell their food and so they don’t eat. The way you get them to eat is (and I’m not making this up) to smear food on their nose. They don’t like how it feels so they lick it off and they get fed. The problem was that someone had to stay home and smear the food on the cat's nose. Since I was already feeling very uneasy about going to the lake, I said that I would stay and the rest of the family left for the cottage.

I have a friend who says that there is no such thing as a coincidence. She calls them “Godincidences.” And I’m inclined to agree. A couple of days after my family left, I got a phone call from one of my parent’s neighbours. She had popped in to see my parents, who were both in their 80's, and she called to say that my mom wasn’t looking well and my father, who was developing dementia, seemed lost and didn’t know what to do. I came over and took my mom to emergency where they confirmed that she was having a heart attack. She was going to be in the hospital for a while. So I got her checked into the hospital and then I moved in with my dad who, because of the dementia, could not be left on his own. If I had gone to the lake, I would have been 3½ hours away and none of my parent’s neighbours would have known how to reach me. My mother could have died and who knows what would have happened to my father. But I didn’t go to the lake and my mother didn’t die. All because we adopted a cat with a cold. Call it a coincidence if you like but I will go to my grave believing that God knew what was going to happen to my mom and He wanted me in the city when it happened. And so He brought Monet and my wife together that afternoon and I stayed where He wanted me to be. Monet was our little miracle.

And we became a 2-cat family.

"No need for Christmas presents. You have me!"

There are pets and then there are pets. There are lots of dogs that are yappy little tufts of fur that were designed to be carried around and cooed at by blue-haired ladies. And there are lots of cats that just lay around the house, their lives consisting of eating, sleeping, pooping, licking themselves and coughing up the occasional hairball. But every now and then a pet will come along who becomes much more than “just” a pet. They inject themselves into the family and become part of it. Full participation. They invariably have huge personalities and they get loved to pieces. I have had two such animals in my life. The first was Sparky, the dog that I had when I was a boy. I used to tell people that she had more personality than most of my friends. That was not an exaggeration. The second was Monet who, like Sparky, had an immense personality.

It didn’t take Monet long to start making an impact on everyone around her. She had certain behaviors that she reserved for each of us. She cuddled with all of us, but her favourite cuddle partner was my wife. My wife would lie on the couch and Monet would come and stretch out on her legs and purr so loud that you could hear her in the next room. They would lie like that for hours. How many times did I hear my wife apologizing to her, “I’m sorry, Monet, but I have to get up.” And Monet would begrudgingly permit it.

Yoga cat - spines are highly overrated

With me, she liked to roughhouse. If I was sitting on the couch, she would come and stand in front of me and “ask” to play. I would scratch her back really hard and then run my hand down to her tail, grab it and give it a tug. That was the signal that “play” had begun. When I pulled her tail, she would flop onto her side, roll over onto her back with all 4 feet sticking straight up in the air and then I would slide her around the carpet on her back. Back and forth, circles, figure-eights, all around the room. Fun!

But the best was “The Sock Ritual.”  When I got dressed for work in the morning, I would come to the living room and sit on the loveseat to put my socks on. I don’t remember exactly when or how it started but, one day, Monet came and stood in front of me. So I pushed her over on her side and started rubbing her back with my foot. She loved it. Pretty soon, no matter where she was in the house, when she heard me sit down in the living room, she came running. She would appear, seemingly out of thin air, plop down in front of me and wait for her back rub. And she really got into it! She would dig her feet into the carpet and push back against my foot as hard as she could. The “Ritual” became legendary and whenever my kids had friends over, they always had to see it performed. Others tried, but she wouldn’t do it with anyone but me. That was something she reserved just for me.

She loved us all but she had an extra special relationship with my son. He could get away with things that no-one else could even dream of. Her trust in him was absolute. He would sit her up on her haunches and help her “dance.” He would walk around the house cradling and rocking her like a baby and she would purr. But his favourite thing was to sit in a chair with his knees together, pick her up and lay her on her back, legs pointing up, on top of his legs with her head between his knees. She would lie there peacefully while he played games with her feet, rubbed her tummy, tickled her nose with her tail…. whatever. She just let him. Then, he would put his hands in the air like “We’re done!” and she would slide, headfirst, down his legs, flip over in mid-air and land on her feet. Other people (including me) tried to do that with her and she would have none of it. That was her special “thing” with my son.

Most days, she seemed more like a dog than a cat which, speaking as a dog lover, is the greatest attribute a cat can have. She was a voracious eater and not particularly picky about what she ate – sandwiches, Pringles potato chips, whatever she could get at. We tried very hard to make sure that she didn’t eat anything that was bad for her, but she was clever. She could open kitchen cabinets and certain containers. It was like having a two-year-old again. She was also skill level 5 at begging. She could lay a guilt trip on you like no pet I’ve ever known.

One of the other things that we all found endearing about her was how she always greeted us when we came home. We have a deacon’s bench that sits beside the door where you enter the house from the garage. Whenever Monet heard a car come into the garage, she would run and jump up on the bench, front feet up on the armrest, waiting to greet whoever had just come home. You could always count on her to be waiting at the door to see you when you came home. A long time ago I had a dog that did the exact same thing.

 

Like all cats, she was curious about everything. If it could be gotten onto or (even better) into, she’d find a way.

Which brings me to why I am writing this today. Today we had to have Monet put to sleep. It would have been 8 years tomorrow. The vet says it was probably cancer. We thought she might have had a stroke – she had many of the signs that identify strokes in humans. The vet said that strokes are very rare in cats. But Monet was a very rare cat. It would have been appropriate. Whatever it was, the end came quickly and, even though I am typing this through tears, I am glad for that. I got Sparky when I was 8 years old. She died when I was 21 and I cried that day, too. That was more than half a lifetime ago but I still remember her so vividly – the things that she did and the love and devotion that we had for each other. She was my best friend. Monet will be the same. Thirty years from now I will remember her just as vividly. And so will our children. Their lives are immeasurably richer for having had Monet in them. And they will tell their children stories about the hilarious antics of the amazing cat they had growing up. And just like Sparky was for me, there is no doubt that my son will remember Monet as his best friend.

Every now and then a pet comes along who is much more than “just” a pet. I have had two. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll have a third. I hope my kids have another one like Monet someday. But I don’t know. The bar has been set and it’s very high. And no matter what I give my wife for our anniversary for the rest of our lives, I will never clear the bar that I set 8 years ago. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.