Fur Creature

Lola, a grey medium-hair dilute tortoise-shell cat, left this world earlier this week. She was a few months shy of 19 years old, and her health had been declining for several months.

She had come to us from the county animal shelter when she was about three months old. The shelter workers were calling her Mopsy, but the crew here at Blog Central substituted a moniker that they liked a lot better. Not that it mattered too much. Every cat should have at least three names, and Lola had more than her share. The most frequent nicknames, I think, were “Fur Creature” and later, “Old Lady.”

Lola’s first assignment in her new home was to play kitten games with her adopted brother, Bill, who was older than she but not by too much. He went along with her antics more or less sportingly. 

Right away Lola showed everybody that she had talent. She was smart as a whip, and independent as all get-out. All cats have those traits to some degree, but this one was special.

Not so her brother, who after a while started urinating all over the house. After many attempts to get him to alter this behavior, finally we humans banished him to the yard. When Lola saw that a feline could live outside and still get fed twice a day, she demanded that she be allowed to do the same. She didn’t accept “no” as an answer too often. And so out into the back yard they both went, coming inside only a couple of times when it got really cold.

Over the years, our boy Bill got lazy and a little feeble, but not so the Fur Creature. She could be found chasing birds, killing rodents, and climbing all over. The garage roof, the trellis over the deck, you name the perch. Every so often, you’d go to look out a second floor window only to find Lola sitting on the outside looking in. Bill tried to emulate these stunts, but he couldn’t pull them off. He’d get stuck on a balcony so often that eventually the Mrs. built him a step so he could get down rather than sit up there screaming. Lola would look on in amusement.

The neighborhood coyotes eventually got poor Bill, but they’d never catch our girl kitty. Lola had hiding places, a couple that we knew about and I’m sure a couple more that we didn’t. But when, to our horror, her brother met his demise, we decided that it would be best to get her indoors. By this time, she was into her second decade, and she went along with our strong suggestion. As part of the deal, she got back out there a few times a week to sniff around.

In Lola’s outdoor-kitty years, her medium-length hair got really long – the better to weather the winter cold, I guess. But it became a problem when it started growing into clumps, and then mats. As she got older, she gave up trying to groom away the tangles, and after a while, they were getting so numerous, big, and close to the skin that it seemed like they must be irritating. 

The crew would clip them out as best they could, but these clumps were getting ahead of us. Finally the vet suggested that Lola be shaved almost completely, in a radical “lion cut.” As spring arrived and the weather got milder, we gave it a go, and this solved the problem for months. But in the short run, poor Lola looked like she just stepped off a space ship. I think she may have been mildly offended by everyone’s laughter, but as I say, she was a smartie, and the relief she felt outweighed any embarrassment, as best we could tell. Lola got maybe a half-dozen “lion cuts” in her days, and she seemed to affirmatively like the last few. Hey, we’ve all seen weirder looks in Portland.

If there was one constant in Lola’s life, it was her obsession with food. With her in the house, no alarm clock was necessary. Not only would she demand her regular meals, but she was always on the hunt for scraps under the kitchen counter, and every day she would lobby hard for treats. I talk to the cats all the time, and I would always scold her when she was “reminding” us of the need for nourishment. “You’re a no-good food grubber!” I’d say. And then, of course, I’d give her whatever she was asking for. 

When Covid hit, the crew brought home a boy kitten to replace Bill, sort of, and when Lola showed zero interest in mixing it up with him, they added a girl as well. We figured we wouldn’t have Lola around for too much longer. That was five years ago.

As The Old Lady, Lola was as steady as a rock. I would tell her all the time that she had become “a smooth house kitty.” “She doesn’t have to live outside with the raccoons!” I’d say. And “She’s way smarter than those babies. She’s seen it all, and done it all.” Which was true, all right, but I’m making this speech to a cat.

Now, to show you how far off the deep end I’ve gone, in her last year or so, I swear, there were days when I thought that Lola was channeling my mother. Mom lived into her 90s, wondering aloud why she was granted all those years when everyone else from her original circle was gone. As hard as life got, Mom hung in there. At one point, they kicked her out of hospice. That was Lola, putting one rickety paw in front of the other, possessed of a spirit that wasn’t giving up without a fight.

I had a long time to think about what it would feel like without her, but of course, I didn’t really get it. There are more empty spaces than I vaguely pictured. The “baby” cats, now adults, seem to be wondering where their auntie is. I wish I could tell them for sure.

She had a great run, yes. We gave her everything we could, yes. But still.

So long, Fur Creature. We love you, and we miss you.