Ivy died today.
She passed peacefully at the vet's office this evening, after spending the day mostly in her window. She had lots of good Paul Newman food, and a bit of vanilla cookie and ice cream.
She spent the day in the company of people who loved her.
LadyRanger has written a memorial.
Goodbye, Ivy.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Emily Dickinson
"Hey, Ivy," I coaxed one May afternoon. "Want to come and watch a movie with me? Come on- Nazis blowing each other up- great stuff! What do you say?"
Ivy had been in the doorway, preparing to go into the livingroom and climb up to her favorite sunny window. She looked over her shoulder at it, looked back to me, then wobbled over. It took her a little while to climb up beside me, but she settled in and together we watched Tom Cruise try- and fail- to save the world.
When Ranger got home that evening we had our first serious conversation about Ivy's health. After more than three years and many dire predictions, she had finally begun to seem frail.
One afternoon a little over three years ago, I pulled up in front of our house after work and noticed something in my rose bushes.
"Somebody has thrown a greasy old rag into our yard!" I thought. "That's not very nice!" I marched up the steps to grab it and get rid of it.
But it wasn't a rag. It was a cat. A tiny, ragged, dirty cat scarcely bigger than my hand. She was crouched under one of my miniature rose bushes and didn't even turn her head to look when I touched her.
"Somebody is not taking good care of their cat," I thought. She was so emaciated that petting her felt like fondling a pack of needles. What fur she had stuck up in greasy spikes. She scarcely reacted to this stranger inspecting her, not moving from her dispirited huddle.
We had been keeping extra food and bowls around for the local strays, so I went in and fixed up some food and water for the cat. I left it on our porch and then went inside.
I peeked out several times while doing my afternoon chores and saw the cat jump up on the porch, eat a little, then jump away again.
When Ranger got home I told him about the cat. By that time she had taken cover in the overgrown ivy at the far side of the yard, and he moved the food and water over there.
He said he didn't expect her to make it through the night. She was hyperventilating and seemed very weak. We agreed that if she was still there in the morning, Ranger would take her to our vet on his way to work.
Unbelievably, she was still alive the next morning. Ranger put on some long work gloves and took a box out to the yard. One paw flashed out as he closed the lid, but she was captured.
Our vet was rather hard on Ranger for bringing her in. "See that? That's a collar," she snapped, pointing at an outsized blue flea collar around the cat's neck.
Ranger asked why anyone who owned a cat would let it get into such horrible condition.
"Because people are no damn good," said the vet.
(We sometimes call our Vet the House of veterinary medicine. With affection.)
The cat was in terrible shape: severely underweight, malnourished, so covered with fleas she had not just flea anemia, but a skin infection from the bites. She was also very, very old. At least 12, said the vet. Probably older.
The vet gave her three days to live- tops.
She needed multiple tests and procedures. We paid what we could, and as the bills mounted the vet agreed to dip into her practice's Stray Cat Fund to help out.
While she underwent treatment, I canvassed the neighborhood with posters, trying to find her owners. Ranger had taken a picture of her hiding in the ivy:
We printed the picture with a description of the cat and some contact info, and I walked all over the neighborhood, knocking on doors or leaving the picture in mailboxes.
At one small house the door was opened by a skinny, shirtless guy with long hair, vacant eyes and a weirdly pleasant smile.
"A caaaat?" he said, staring at the picture, then at me. "Noooo."
(This was when I realized that Cheech and Chong could have been based on real people- who lived in my neighborhood. Disconcerting.)
I never found anyone who recognized the cat. About ten days later, she came home with us.
Ranger named her Ivy, because he had found her in the ivy.
We found her at the end of April, and by that Christmas she was an inseparable part of our family.
And I mean our whole family. We took her on our annual Christmas visit to my parents, and she charmed them as well. My parents have a much larger house, with wall-to-wall carpeting instead of our plain hardwood floors. Ivy would flop in the middle of the floor as if to say: This whole house is one giant cat bed! Cool!
My parents let her sit or sleep anywhere she wanted, floor or furniture. After three Christmas trips, she had tried out every chair and bed. And she always gravitated to the kitchen when there were people talking and eating. We all took turns feeding her milk from a spoon.
I began to wonder if she had been the pet of a large family. Some big house with lots of food and people always laughing and talking in the kitchen.
Ranger took a picture of her that first holiday, peeping shyly from beneath our Christmas tree:
She had already lived many months more than expected. We had watched all through that spring, summer and fall as she quietly, determinedly, put herself back together again.
"I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself." -D.H. Lawrence
The vet had given us carte blanche to feed Ivy whatever she would eat in those first months, and soon she was working her way through big plates of tuna packed in oil with saucers of vanilla ice cream for dessert. She was so weak that sometimes her head shook from the effort to hold it over the food, but she ate it. And ate it.
And slowly put the pounds back on.
"Old, lost, gaunt, frightened
you were no barn cat.
Dignified as a dowager
your craving for chicken scraps and fat
declared you once belonged,
were somebody's pampered pet.
With your unkempt black beauty and trustful affection...
...you cheated death..."
Cat from the Animal Shelter
Kathleen McKinley Harris
We watched Ivy's taste in food for clues to her past identity. As fall came and the weather cooled, I often had a cup of hot tea with lemon in the evening. As soon as Ivy smelled the tea, she would come trotting over and sit next to me, sniffing the cup and giving me an expectant look. Then she would peer around the cup at my other hand.
It turned out Ivy had a taste for vanilla cookies. We would crumble up a cookie and let her lick the crumbs- just as someone else had once done. Someone who also liked hot tea with lemon. She liked opera, too, and would purr loudly whenever Ranger played his favorite aria, Delibes' Flower Duet.
I began to wonder if she had been the treasured pet of an elderly retiree who sipped tea in the afternoons.
Other things pointed to an indoor past. She was never afraid of the sound of my sewing machine, or the blender, or the dishwasher or even the vacuum cleaner. She never tried to claw the furniture.
When we brought home a new rug for the dining room, she knew what it was before we even unrolled it- and began purring immediately. Thereafter she made a point of walking on it whenever she passed through the dining room, as if to say: This is how civilized cats behave.
But she never forgot the outdoors. That first year, she would climb onto the desk and peer out the window for long intervals, as though waiting for her 'real' people to come and claim her. When we did take her outside, she made a beeline for the front of the house and the ivy patch where she'd hidden. She would sniff there and then try to charge across the neighbor's yard and up the street. There was sense of purpose in her stride.
The last time we put her on a leash was this June. She led us right down to the sidewalk and halfway up the street before her legs gave out and she had to sit in the grass and rest. She sat there scanning the horizon as if to say: It's here someplace. I know I'll remember in just a minute...
We did our best to be good substitutes for her real family, but with Ivy it could be hard to tell. I have lived with several cats and Ivy was by far the most modest and retiring. She seldom spoke and never pestered us for anything. Her only gambit was to sit in front of you and simply stare you into submission while you tried to figure out what she wanted. Attention? A bite from your plate? Fresh water? New litter? Confronted with that patient, unblinking gaze we would try one thing after another until we hit on what she wanted. Then we might be rewarded with a curious, soft purr that sounded like the cooing of doves, not a cat.
Just when we wondered what she thought of us, she would suddenly show us great empathy. Two summers ago I got a nasty cold which plunged into my chest. I had been to the doctor and gotten a prescription, but continued to cough and wheeze. Late one afternoon I finally had to lay down. I'd had a case of pnuemonia years before and the gurgling sensation in my lungs was starting to frighten me. As I was lay on the bed, struggling to breathe and not panic, Ivy suddenly walked in the bedroom, which up to then had been Maddie's fiercely patrolled territory- no Ivy allowed!
Completely ignoring an outraged Maddie, Ivy hopped up on the bed and sat pressed against my leg- another first. She trained that calm, unwavering golden gaze on my face and kept it there for what seemed an eternity, until the medicine kicked in and my breathing began to ease. Then she hopped down and left the room.
That would remain her way with me. She would hurry over and inspect me for signs of serious injury, lingering until she was satisfied that I would recover. Then she would quietly slip away, with no further fuss.
We called her Little Miss Head Pats because that was the only kind of petting she really liked. She would put up with having her back stroked or her tummy rubbed, but she would actually walk up to you and ask for head pats, pushing her head under your hand.
She hated being chucked under the chin. She would make a face and jerk her head away.
She wasn't a lap cat. She preferred to slip in between us when Ranger and I sat on the couch to watch DVDs and was exposed to a lot of bad sci-fi and movies this way. That didn't bother Ivy; she was happy to snooze between us while we watched.
Each time we took her in for a checkup we were warned she probably couldn't last much longer.
"Her teeth are in terrible shape."
"That's probably arthritis in those legs."
"She has high blood pressure and kidney disease."
And checkup after checkup, she slowly wore the vet down with that alert, patient, golden gaze, until the hardened professional was reduced to cupping Ivy's face in her hand and cooing,
"You're such a pretty cat, Ivy."
She became a kind of mascot for the whole practice. "Is that the same cat? You mean she's still alive?"
The three days had become three years. I used to joke that Ivy was the Cat of the Thousand Days.
She wound up with many nicknames: The Ivester, Tuxie Girl, Old Miss, Little Miss Head Pats, Granny Biscuit, Granny Cat, Lil' Bit.
We never learned her real name, but maybe that didn't matter. Ivy always knew exactly who she was. The age and identity issues were everyone else's problem.
In the end she was braver as a cat than I have ever been as a human:
She survived God-alone-knows how many weeks or months lost and alone at the end of winter, with no dependable food or shelter; She fearlessly adopted a whole new family, calmly adjusting to their strange new ways; She won the respect of a cat half her age and twice her size, and lived alongside her in peace and dignity; She remained sweet and loving even as her vision dimmed and creeping paralysis took her back legs, quietly adapting to her new limitations without complaint.
From the first day to the last you astonished all of us, Ivy. Thank you. And sleep in peace.
It has been a tiring week at Chez-Ranger. Along with the usual life-events (annoying as those may be) we've been faced with the fact that Ivy has grown steadily more frail. We've taken to carrying her to her destination as much as we can. It's been a pretty simple process, since Ivy goes to a)the food/water bowls (the steam-tables for the buffet are on order) b)the litter box, the sides of which we've cut down to offer easier access, and c)the back of the couch. Ivy still loves to nap up there in the sunlight.
Oh, yeah...this is nice.
LadyRanger and I have been pretty beat. We've not even taken time to properly enjoy Lady's lilly patch in the back yard.
Pretty, isn't it?
The only member of the family who seems to be her usual, alert, energetic self is Maddie.
And, yes, she's looking daggers at little Ivy, bogarting the back of the couch. At least she's being mostly nice about things.
...is not always good. We apologize for skipping our posting duties last week, but Ivy was giving us a very exciting time. And not in a good way, poor girl. We heard a small yowl as we were waking up early Sunday morning, rushed into Ivy's room and discovered that she had dislocated her right shoulder. Still have no idea how. Looked awful. Got to the emergency vet in record time, I'll tell you. After having Ivy in the back for 30 minutes or so, the vet called us in and said that as soon as she'd turned Ivy on to her left side to examine the shoulder, it popped back into place, and that Ivy was walking on it without a limp. <insert sound of vast human relief>.
That's when the vet hit us with "So, how long has she been non-visual?"
<insert sound of stunned silence followed by two humans struggling to not faint>
Seems Ivy was walking around bumping into things at the vet and not reacting to visual stimuli. After another hour of examinations (and some blood-work) it was determined that Ivy has some vision and has probably been seeing light and shadow and movement without much detail for some time. On our follow-up visit to our usual vet, the Doc agreed that Ivy's vision, while impaired, is not gone. In fact, the doc thinks that Ivy has significantly more vision than the emergency vet had led us to believe. Not 100%, but more than indicated during the trauma visit. Ivy's just learned to cope. (typical, really...while we humans wig out about all the cat-news, Ivy quietly goes about solving problems)
We brought her home and, save for the continuing weakness in her back legs, she seems her normal self. She's up to 6 pounds. Still interested in the daily life of the family. Still loving her foods (especially the fingerfuls of whipped cream she's been getting off of our special occaision cake) While we are carrying her to where she wants to go as much as possible, she still manages to give us the slip and does for herself as much as she can. Still capable of getting on the bed or the couch, though it can be a struggle. Can't stop her, though. Really, she just goes about her daily activities as though there's nothing wrong.
What? Still worried about my legs? They're *all* here! See? One, Two, Three....and you'll have to trust me 'bout the other one...
Let us pray...Dear Bast, please keep Maddie out of my litter box, and let her not notice I've been in her box. Or that I've been in her food bowls. And in her bed. And keep the whipped cream coming. And the sunlight. And headpats. I like headpats. Amen.
Really, we're amazed at how she's recovered from this episode, and at how she's adapted to the diminishment of her vision. Pretty special kitty, we think.
And despite Ivy's monopolizing the couch, Maddie still gets her sun time:
More room to spread out, down here on the floor. But don't tell her that! Can't be too nice to her...
I suppose I should be nice. She'd just better not get in my litter box, or my food bowls, or my bed...
Don't know what'll happen in the near future, but for now, we'll take what we've got.
As if the trauma of Ivy's adoption (three whole years ago) wasn't enough for poor old Maddie to deal with, now she has to cope with the fact that Ivy is Stealing Maddie's Sun! Oh, the felinity!
You see this, dont you? This...this...shadow! In my sunlight! A shadow cast by that other cat! This is simply insupportable!
I'm not even looking anymore. For goodness sake, how's a cat supposed to enjoy her sunpuddle when some stray tuxedo is making like Batman in it?
How does Ivy react to the carping? Surprisingly obliging.
<sigh> Fine. Just fine. I'll sit down here if it'll quiet you down.
<giggle> This is just as nice as the couch-back, but I'm not telling her! heehee!
It's starting to get warm here at Chez-Ranger. The garden is enjoying it, the humans are enjoying it, and, yes, the cats are enjoying it. Ivy is spending more time on the seat of the couch.
I suspect the sun is a bit too direct for her now, on the back of the couch. Ivy is still rather frail, and still seems to be losing strength in her back legs. We've been subQ-ing her daily for the past week, though, and she's been eating more. She's managed to gain some wieght. Up to 6.5 pounds at the last weigh-in. Still having trouble keeping her back-side out of the refuse in the litterbox, which necessitates the indignities of a butt-wash, but she tolerates it well enough. Ivy has even turned into a dedicated lap-cat. Sits on LadyRanger as we hang out in the eve.
Maddie's been getting her share of the sun, too. She's been very careful to not harsh Ivy's vibe while the tuxie sunbathes. Once Ivy moves, though, Maddie's there.
Watching carefully to see if Ivy's coming to claim the sun, but enjoying it all the same.
And of course, it couldn't be summer without Matilda sightings. Here's our neighbor-cat having a pleasant summer's evening.
You can see that she's left plenty of room for her human to sit with her. She's generous that way.
...for the wee tuxedo cat. Ivy's up to 5 pounds 6 ounces, which is a nice change. We are to give Ivy her subQ fluids every day now. Ivy tolerates that well, so we don't think it'll be too traumatic. Had a talk about the ultimate visit <shudder>. Dr G. feels that, while she doesn't see Ivy lasting through the summer, she's bright and alert and enjoying life now.
Darn tootin' I am. I'll be enjoying it more when my foods get here, y'know...
On our way, old miss....
Ivy, of course, topped this vet visit on our return home with the worst case of wobble-leg we've seen in months. She has been stopping and resting every 5-10 steps as she wanders through the house. While she is taking it well, you can see her going through the cost/benefit analysis of an action with all the precision of a true mathematician.
Hmmmm...is effort, x, less than or equal to happiness, y, which I shall derive from being on the back of the couch?
Oh, yeah...
Ivy has come up with a strategem to avoid those vet visits.
Yep. She's hiding in the laundry. Presumably, she'll figure out that she has to have her white tummy up, so that she's more camouflaged. Of course, We have Maddie around to find her.
Here she is! Take her away!
No?!? Crumbs! Then I'm napping 'til this is over!
Ivy's been with us for another week. She's down to 4.5 pounds, and is having troubles hopping up to her favorite napping spots. Doesn't stop her from finding the sun, though:
She really enjoyed this spot. Napped here for quite a while.
You can see, to the left of the pic, the scratch-pad that we glued to a box. Ivy uses this as a step to ascend and descend the slopes of Mount Couch. Showed her how to use it once and it's now routine. Makes it easier on her frail old legs. Ivy still bottoms out more often than not. We think we're seeing some signs of diminishing quality of life, too, but she still seems to enjoy those fine feline pleasures of sun, sleep and supper. We'll keep Ivy fans up on all the tuxedo news. Many thanks to all of you who've expressed their best wishes.
For all Maddie fans, don't worry. Ivy still enjoys an occaisional nap on the bed, and that's when Maddie grabs the sunlight:
Just keepin' this spot warm for Ivy! (I do *not* believe I just said that...what *am* I coming to?!)
You're a thoughtful girl, Maddie.
First off, Ivy's still with us. Down to 5 pounds, but showing interest in the life of the family and enjoying her new food. Thank goodness for Paul Newman. Ivy's been doing nose-dives into her bowl and finishing it all, which is unusual for her. I will sadly notice it's not upping her weight yet, but maybe that will come. Ivy has been moving a bit better, with fewer back leg issues, but it's still not easy for her. She's still able to get up on the couch, though, and perform couch acrobatics (in extreme, super-sleepy slo-mo...)
Here's the same moment from another view:
You can see that, as well as doing a head-down semi-slide, she's incorporated the infamous feline twist. Front half pointing right, back half pointing left. Sadly, the East-German judge only awarded her a 7.2! Scandalous! Fortunately, Ivy is unperturbed and starts her preparation for her next trick:
Lemme see if I can do a full, tummy-up twisty down the east face of the couch... that'll show 'em
Interesting human/cat relationship occurance last night: at dinner, LadyRanger unintentionally tried inhaling a piece of potato. A brief choke and drop to the floor served to dislodge the spud (and stop my heart, but that's beside the point). As we sat on the floor, making sure that LR would continue existing, Ivy toddled up as fast has her gimpy back end could carry her and immediately sniffed at LR's left leg. Ivy's left leg is the one that most often goes out on her. Ivy gave LadyRanger a good sniffy, and was convinced that all would be well. She probably wanted me to give LR some subQ fluids, but the Mrs wasn't having any of it. A glass of white wine seemed to be restorative enough, when coupled with the obvious love and concern of the wee tuxedo cat.
Maddie's been doing well. As Ivy has monopolized the couch, Maddie's been back on the bed or, if she's curious about the outside world, on her box in the dining room window.
She's just waiting for Matilda, the neighbor cat to show up in the garden so's she can fuss at her.
Today is Ivy's Third Gotchaversary!
Yay Me! zzzzzzz......
We found her in the ivy patch on May 3, 2006, starved, ill, and alone. Took her to the vet the next morning. Dr G privately gave Ivy a life-expectancy of about 3 days. Ivy beat that by about three hundred sixty times. And Change.
Yay Me!
We brought her home to stay on May 10. Over the past three years she's been the model of calm, poised, quiet feline charm. Except when she's had to a) scramble to get away from Maddie or b) when she's gotten her Irish up and chased Maddie off the bed, out the door and half-way across the house.
Yay Me!
Ivy's been spending a lot of time relaxing on the couch recently, enjoying LadyRangers roses and the traffic on our highway.
She can get so relaxed that she doesn't even mind her ear bending up on the window.
Cute, huh?
Yay Me!
Maddie has reponded to all the fuss surrounding Ivy with her usual good grace.
I am *not* coming out 'til you people come to your senses...
Anyways, we hope to give Ivy a happy gotchaversary today.
Yay Me!! Yes, Ivy. Yay You!!
And now for grimmer news. Ivy has been getting more and more frail for a couple of weeks now. Her back legs are not supporting her meager weight well, especially when she hops off the furniture. She's even having trouble hopping onto the bed or the sitting room couch. Her weight has stayed the same for two weeks in a row, but her overall condition seems to be deteriorating. We don't know how much longer Ivy has. Could be a week or two, could be longer. God knows she's still got some spark in her, and you all know she's a quiet, graceful little survivor. We'll let you know. Meanwhile, we'll all rejoice in the three years we've had.
Yay, Ivy!
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