Sometimes, when we adults are falling apart emotionally, our children say just the right things.
One night last week, as I was reading to Thom before bed, my phone rang. Before I even answered, I knew who it was and what was going to be said.
It was the vet. She had stayed late to do some blood work on our almost 12-year-old cat, Mozzy. Mozzy had been into the vet a few times over the last couple months, first with a limp that we thought was a leg injury, which we now had pretty much determined was just one of the signs of a brain tumor. The tumor was growing quickly and there wasn’t much left that could help her.
In recent weeks, Mozzy had begun stumbling, often running into things and falling down. I watched her have a seizure. She was getting sick around the house. She had recently developed a neck tick, and her head was always cocked to one side. Sometimes, you could see in her eyes that she just wasn’t there.
You know when it’s time. And when that phone rang, I knew what the conversation would be.
When I returned to Thom’s bedroom, I just couldn’t hide it. He asked what was wrong, and I told him that Mozzy was sick and wouldn’t be coming home. I made up some story about Mozzy going to a park that was full of other kitties and treats, that she was going to be happier there.
“I’ll miss her,” he said.
And as he leaned over to give me a hug, pushing his favorite book to the side, he said, “It’s OK, Mama. Don’t be sad. We’ll just have one kitty instead of two.”
The next day, in a room at the vet’s office, I said goodbye to the orange cat I had always wanted.
You see, as a child, every year I’d ask Santa for a cat. I wanted an orange one, and I didn’t care if it was a boy or girl, long-haired or short, young or old, it just had to be orange. As an only child, I wanted a companion I could play with at home, dress up in costumes and curl up with at night.
Santa never came through, and somewhere along the way, I gave up on asking.
Years went by, and when I moved to Emmet County in 2005, at the age of 27, I finally got my orange cat.
I remember walking into the Little Traverse Bay Humane Society and telling the woman up front that I wanted a cat and it had to be orange.
Mango (who I renamed Mozzy after the British singer Morrissey), had been at the humane society for nearly three years. She was 4-years-old, and while she would never grow out of her shyness toward strangers, she was the orange cat Santa never brought me.
She had a perfectly placed patch of white fur under her chin. She was short and stocky, her long orange fur always soft and feathered back, prompting a friend to call her the “Farrah Fawcett of the cat world.”
Tufts of her orange fur will be found in our house for years to come, I’m sure.
She loved laying on anything soft she could find — a blanket, one of Thom’s stuffed animals, a pile of clothes left on the floor. She never mastered the meow, Squeak would have been a more appropriate name.
There’s that saying that good things come to those who wait. I’m glad Santa never brought me that orange cat, since it wouldn’t have been Mozzy. And while I’ve never considered myself a cat person, there was just something about this one.
A friend of mine believes the best way to honor a lost pet is by getting a new one. The reason being is that you show how much you cared for that lost animal, by not being able to go without getting another one.
During our first night without Mozzy, as Thom was playing with our other cat, he asked, “Do you think Weezie misses Mozzy? I think she wants a dog to play with.”
You know buddy, I think so too.
Rachel Brougham writes about a variety of topics in this column which appears each Thursday. Email her at rbrougham@petoskeynews.com, or follow her on Twitter @RachelBrougham.
