The Abyssinian mutt with serial killer eyes
A tribute to Nala, my most brutal editor
I’d be writing and I’d look over and there she’d be sitting on the porch outside my studio door. Studying me through the glass pane with those serial killer eyes, looking like an imperious furious editor, impatiently waiting on copy.
As I write this now I can sense her studying me, unmoved by my writing, disappointed in the predictable themes, looking askance back out the window.
Sometimes I’d be typing away and Nala would walk in front of me, face my computer screen, plant herself on my keyboard and claw away at the screen furiously. My disappointed editor had come yet again to shred my writing, to save me from myself.
I can hear her ghost. “Don’t make me puke Friskies all over your keyboard. The world does not need one more columnist writing about their pet. Not one more. ”
I have no choice, boss. I have to exorcise our story.
It began when Ellen and I got home around 9:30 Wednesday night after seeing a wonderful cabaret show called “Meow Meow”. We went home and while shutting down the house Ellen heard meowing from outside on the porch and found our old cat Nala, on her side, hiding between three potted desert plants, wounded and gasping in pain.
She’d been attacked by something.
We had been expecting the old girl to die any day now from old age. We were ready for the end. But not like this. Not like this.
We bundled our beloved bag of bones in a towel and placed her in a cardboard box and told her she’d be okay and that we’d take care of her. As I carried the old girl in the cardboard box out to our car I remembered when I found her in a similar cardboard box more than twenty years ago.
We were walking around a Flowing Wells neighborhood when we came across kids with a cardboard box. “Free Kittens”. I plucked one from the box. Small daughter Sarah was smitten by the kitten. Hello, tiny mewing “Nala”, the one-millionth cat to be named “Nala” by a little girl in the year of “The Lion King”.
Nala stayed behind as the kids grew.
Once a kitten pin-balling through our home she was now a bony, noisy, old crone, meowing loudly in the echo chamber of the bathroom just to hear herself howl.
Nala got to be very rude. She would often show up for Arroyo Cafe show rehearsals at the writers table to inspect our spread. As my friend Elliot texted, ”Wouldn’t be a table read without her licking the cream cheese.”
As I carried our wounded girl out the front door in her box I wondered where was everyone you’ve ever known, old girl? Why aren’t the other cats here, lined up to say farewell to their sister and mother? Three children grew up with you in this house. Cats came and went. Dogs, too. Where is everybody?
We buckled in and before I started the car I looked down at her and back at the house she ruled for 23-years.
God damn it. You deserved a farewell tour of the house you explored, the closet where you had kittens, the shower you puked in, your favorite window sill, your favorite napping stoop, the sink you chilled in and the bureau drawer that you’d sleep in after batting my socks onto the floor.
And the spot on my bed you always claimed when I was absent.
How did you end up on my head some mornings?
God damn it. God damn me for leaving you outside. I betrayed you. I didn’t keep you safe, old girl.
I sped us down the hill to the pet hospital. Ellen held Nala on her lap, stroking her and cooing at her. We heard her labored breathing. We saw her shivering.
How could such a rude cat break my heart?
Every morning the old crone would hop on my chest to wake me with her foul breath, smearing her gross drool on my face, and purring like a motorboat until I got the message. “Get up and feed me you ape. Go, go, go.”
Nala could unlatch our bathroom door. And would. Finish your shower and there she’d be sitting atop your towels, refusing to stop mow-mow-meowing until you leaned over and permitted her to groom and lick your wet hair.
Gross.
Are you in my tribe or am I in your pride?
We pulled into the emergency veterinarian’s parking lot. I looked at her stoic suffering and remembered my promise.
Years ago I was going through bladder cancer immunotherapy. I’d come home with my bladder engorged with the toxic TB serum and I’d lay on my bed in the dark curtained bedroom, in the middle of the day, terrified and miserable. Out of nowhere Nala would arrive, hop up on the bed and gently lay across my groin. The sensation of a purring heating blanket on my suffering was magical. After each treatment I napped the pain away under Nala’s healing warmth.
In spite of being a cynical and unsentimental ape who cringes when any human anthropomorphizes any animaI and in spite of being the guy at the party who repeats sick jokes like, “Taking a cat to a vet’s like taking a disposable lighter in to be fixed”, I promised my beloved cat I’d return the favor. I would be there with her to comfort her when her time came.
Was it a Bobcat? A Harris Hawk? An Owl? Something came into the yard in the dark and tried to carry her away and the fierce old cat resisted. She survived to crawl away to safety. Odds are somewhere out there is a hungry bobcat missing an eye.
While she was being “triaged” at the pet hospital Ellen and I watched cheery pet videos on the TV in the waiting room and held hands.
After a bit Ellen plaintively whispered to herself, “Good kitty.”
As our “good kitty” got older she came to follow me everywhere from the bedroom to the kitchen to the porch to the TV room to the studio where she’d claim my chair, bat my computer screen or plant her self on the long desk in front of the studio window next to my work desk where she’d watch quail or swivel her head my direction like a surly owl to stare at me.
Nala was a tough editor. She hated sentimental tripe. I can hear her meowing at me now. “Stop writing this rodent scat right now. Good God. Really? Another sentimental dead pet story?”
“What if I threw in our story about the time you cornered a baby rattler under our dining table?”
“Feeble.”
“But-”
“Stop writing this dreck. Do something meaningful. Scratch me right here, under my ear.”
Every morning she’d weave between my legs, trip me on my way to the kitchen, hound me for breakfast and then follow me out the front door to get the paper, sniff the wind and then follow me back inside.
We followed the nurse into a small room. “Wait in here for the doctor.”
Most afternoons after meeting my deadline I’d find her enjoying her favorite sunny spot in the sun on the back stoop and I’d sit next to my old friend and savor our shared idleness.
Please don’t let her die alone behind that ‘Employees Only’ sign.
The kind veterinarian returned with the news. “She’s in shock, has puncture wounds, we’ve stabilized her breathing, her pain is under control. We don’t know the extent…”
We returned home after midnight to wait for the diagnosis. I lit a candle on top of my bureau, tugged her favorite penthouse drawer open and prepared it for Nala’s return.
In the early morning I woke to see the text from the hospital. Nala would not return. Internal injuries. It was best to let her go. “We’ll be right there.” We returned and waited in another small room. While they prepared her I studied the cremation urn choices and my thoughts wandered to Ellen’s cat, Cleo. She died 10 years ago. Will the two kitties remember each other with the same indifference they shared in life? Will the other cats, Bluie, Bowie, Ciaro, Tor and Greta greet her? Will Ellie and Tipper, the mutts, run up to play with her? Will she bat them both across their noses? Will there be vermin in kitty Valhalla to torture and golden toilets to drink from? Will there be garden pails full of fetid mosquito water to savor and mouse heads to gnaw on?
They laid Nala down in front of us. We stroked her and I got in her face and looked into her black and gold eyes and rubbed her neck gently. As the good doctor injected mercy into her old wracked body I wondered if Nala knew I was there for her as I had promised. Are you? A moment later Dr. Yi pressed her stethoscope against her chest and said, “Her heart has stopped. I’m so sorry.”
Ellen drove us home while I held the small cardboard coffin on my lap. I drew a cartoon portrait of our cat, smiling with a halo, on the lid of the small cardboard box. I looked away at the passing traffic and shook with quiet grief.
While we were at the vet “letting her go”, my adult son Matt had dug a grave in our pet cemetery for the cat he’d known all his life. Nala had puked on his bed just last week. Matt didn’t care. He loved her.
Nala now rests with Tipper and Ellie and one jackrabbit bunny and all the other cats and rodents and lizards buried in a sunny patch of desert by the pool where they’re shaded by an old mesquite and two palo verde trees.
After we buried the best cat in the world we shared stories and tears and laughter and then I excused myself to write this.
And now that I am done with this post I suspect my beloved feline editor is cranking out a “ letter to the editor” in her heavenly litter box right now complaining about this column. “Treacle that goes down like a furball.”
What I wouldn’t give to hear her usual aria, lamenting my writing, coming down the hall from inside the bathroom. “Yowrrrr. You call that writinggg? Yowrrr….”
At dusk I made a salad. I counted it as a blessing that Abyssinians live longer than most breeds as I looked out the kitchen window at our pet cemetery and the pinking mountains beyond. There was no rude annoying old cat to shoo off the counter. I sat my weary sad self down and over cold coffee and a salad I read the bill for Nala’s care. It had the succinct flavor of an e. e. cummings poem.
Emergency Exam
Medical Waste
Methadone Hydrochloride (ml)
BG/PCV/TS/Lactate
Catheter, Intravenous
Hospital Admission overnight
Fentanyl (ml)
Nursing care III per hour
Blood Pressure-Daily Monitoring
Fentanyl (ml)
Radiograph Two Views
Euthanasia
Ready to go
My finest editor, and best cat ever, Nala, slayer of mice, nuzzler of necks and healer of men is survived by her daughter, Professor Tubbles, Finn and countless hummingbirds. In Nala’s memory please consider donating to these wonderful groups,
https://pawsitivelycats.org/
https://www.hermitagecatshelter.org/
https://sacatrescue.org/
https://www.desertcatrescue.org/
A beautiful feline tribute!
I believe your editor was still present.
My condolences.
This was a 'Gotcha' story, coming from one who always makes me laugh, or think, or growl, or at the very least, "react!" I''m in tears. Worse, I'm bawling. --- This shared story, the feelings, the sad finale, even the vet bill, ALL have brought me back into my own stories of the 'four-legged friends' I've known for all of my 91 years. Thank you ... and bless you ... I think. --- Elaine