Tuesday, 21st August 2007.

Requiem for a Tiger

I've put off writing about this because I didn't know what I'd say, but it needs to go in here.

In the end, it was fairly quick. It was last Wednesday when my phone rang mid-morning, in the midst of dealing with another problematic typesetter. The caller I.D. flashed our home number and I answered, gleeful of any interruption.
"What's up?"
"It's Woody," came Emily's anxious voice. "There's something wrong with him."

I'd suspected as much for days. I'd hardly seen him over the course of the week - not uncommon in summer, when he takes advantage of the good weather to languish outside as much as he can (away from wantonly aggressive toddlers, for one thing). But he'd been taking longer to eat his food, and he'd stopped asking for it. Again, not totally unusual behaviour - Woody's tendency to pester has diminished over the last two years, certainly since we had Joshua and particularly since we had Thomas. It's as if he finally recognised that we'll feed him when we're ready, and that I can't be persuaded otherwise, and he'd got used to the idea.

"What's the matter with him?" I asked.
"He came in and he just looked ill. He's at the vet. They say he has an ear infection and kidney trouble and possibly even neurological damage. But theydon't know exactly what."
"I thought he had an ear infection anyway - it's been slightly rough there these last few weeks, like his been in a fight."
"No," she said, "this is inside. But they say it's going to cost five hundred pounds to find out what's happened."
"How much?" I said, in disbelief.
"Once they've carried out all the reports and tests. And then they could try and fix things but they don't know what's wrong with him, so...well..."

We talked some more and decided that it was money that we just didn't have. And that there was no guarantee that it would be money well spent. It's not, she said to me later on during that last, fateful trip, like a broken leg that they can fix. There's no guarantee that we would be doing anything other than prolonging the pain and under the circumstances...if I appear to be justifying myself it's because, at the time at least, I felt rotten about it. Part of me still does, even though I know that we did the right thing and the only thing we could. I wished, for a moment, that I'd had the same sense of devotion that my parents' next door neighbour has for her dogs - she would have just done it and found the money from somewhere.

You put things in perspective by telling yourself it's (he's? it's?) just a cat. Part of the family, yes, but a cat. We have no idea how old he was. The rescue home didn't know, so they estimate it at five unless there's a good reason not to. That means he went out at somewhere between eight and ten years old, and probably at the top of his game. I keep telling myself that this is a good thing - that it's better, as Emily pointed out, than the ancient, cancer-ridden cats that lose all sense of drive and can do nothing but linger by firesides unable to walk or even eat. I know she's right, but it's still hard to deal with.

Woody's past is something of an enigma; we suspect from the somewhat obese state in which he was received that he belonged to an elderly lady who fed him far too much and seldom let him out. We always thought he'd outlived his sister, Nora, who went missing not long after Emily got them both and who, as it turns out, is now very much alive and living in Cambridge with a family who have christened her Jebbu. Woody never seemed as happy, Emily said, as when he was living in Sutton Courtenay and later in Didcot - although it's a miracle that he hadn't got hit by a car before now, given the neighbourhood's boy racer tendencies, and I suppose that it's better this way than finding him lying in a gutter at three in the morning after an accident with a Fiat Uno.

I was still bowed down by guilt, and I asked her if there was anything we could have done to prevent this.
"Yes," she said. "We could have not let him out and kept him a prisoner indoors. Then he wouldn't have got ill. But..." And there was no need for her to finish the sentence; it spoke for itself.

If you've never seen an animal put down before, it's done in as humane a manner as possible. They pump it full of strong painkillers until its heart slows down and stops. It's like going to sleep, apparently, for a very long time. They'd left us alone with him - I surveyed the mewing furry lump on the table and almost burst into tears. Emily explained to Joshua what was about to happen - he'd been anxious when they'd left Woody at the vet earlier that morning and we both wanted closure, so decided the best thing to do was tell him the truth. Then we all stroked the cat and I kissed the top of his head in the spot that always made him purr.

"I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil." I watched as his breathing slowed to a stop. And then I closed his eyes.

When I was eleven I lost a guinea pig, but this was the first time I'd lost any pet with whom I'd formed a genuine emotional attachment. As Emily predicted I cried more than any of us. I have very fond memories of that cat. It took about a year for us to really get used to each other - he resented having to share his bed space with me and I resented being woken at 5:30 in the morning by an invasive paw that had no concept of personal space.

But initial resentment mellowed into grudging acceptance and eventually genuine affection from both sides. I learned to live with the frogs - his midnight gifts, hoisted onto the end of the bed - and the birds, that were usually kept underneath. He was never the sort of cat who sat on you - and, indeed, remained jumpy and paranoid to the end of his days - but on the rare occasions when we managed to pick him up he enjoyed the attention. I remember his passion for cheese, and Instant Whip (although never the chocolate flavour). I remember the way he'd walk into the bedroom during thunderstorms to check we were all right. I remember the time Emily and I were watching music videos one Valentine's Day and he was perched on the couch next to us, and when (during one of George Michael's more flamboyant outings) she asked "Are you gay, Woody?" he suddenly lifted his paw in an appropriately limp-wristed fashion, and the two of us burst into laughter.

Most of all, I'll remember the companion that he was during Emily's stay in hospital when she had Joshua - his knowledge that something was up and a sudden renewed affection and desire to keep me company through those long nights. I once read (and I'm prepared to admit that there are exceptions to this rule) that the affection of dogs is pretty much a given, whereas with a cat you really have to earn their respect. That, in itself, is a nigh-on perfect analogy for the free will defence, but this isn't the place to get into philosophy. Still, it meant that when we'd bonded I felt like I'd achieved something.

Telling the truth to Joshua seems to have done the trick. He's too young to really understand and just knows that we've said goodbye to Woody and that we won't see him again. As for me, it's at nights when I miss him the most: when the sudden gaps in the routine remind me of his presence; when Emily has gone to bed and I wander the silent hallway, feeding the fish and waiting for a silent cat flap to swing one last time.

So farewell, Woodrow Wilson III. You were a pain in the neck and almost impossible to get to the vet's without a fight, but we wouldn't have had you any other way, and whatever frustrations you may have caused us you were a wonderful cat. Happy hunting. I won't miss cleaning up the cat vomit from the living room carpet. But I'll certainly miss you.