Baby Ree

This has been a hard post to work on. It rambles more than my usual posts because the memories and feelings flooded in without cadence or order and I didn't have the energy to sort them all out.

My sweet, fussy bobtail Rhiannon died in my arms in the early hours of April 17. For 13 years she was my sweet Baby Ree. My first sight of her in the morning was the highlight of every day. All I have now is an urn on the mantel and a million vivid memories of what I've lost.

I adopted her three weeks after I adopted Grendel in 2006. I thought he needed a companion and she charmed me at the shelter with her sweet disposition, head-butting, and her wee, waggly tail. There was a bit of a rough patch between her and Grendel at first, but eventually the two connected and were amicable and even friendly (for a while).

Christmas truce, 2006

When I adopted Maebh in 2007, the relationship between Grendel and Rhiannon faded to the same proportion that Maebh and Grendel bonded. Ree was the odd cat out, even after she grudgingly came to accept Maebh as a new housemate. Tension could get high, but I often found all three bundled together on the bed, on a couch, by the big window in the sun, or beside a fire. I have many fewer pictures of those moments than I wish, but the memories of seeing them all together are still a delight to my soul.

She was fussy and bossy, although it took her a little while to fit into her bossy pants. At first, if she wanted my attention, I would feel a gentle tapping of a paw on my knee as I worked at my computer. I'd look down to see her soulful, pea-green eyes looking imploringly up at me. That look would make me drop everything to go sit where she could snuggle with me. We'd sit together until she'd had her Dave fix and got up to potter about and eventually sit in the sun, or by the fire, or near a heat vent. She was an insatiable heat-pig.

Snuggling up to my warm laptop

Loving the warm fire

After a few years, if she wanted anything from me she'd just come up behind and yowl accusingly at me. Her face then was less imploring and more an indignant expression of "I'm not gonna pet myself." That didn't make time spent with her less sweet. To the contrary, her insistent affection endeared her to me all the more. And because she was the odd cat out, I felt all the more eager to give her my affection in return.

Working herself into hyperfuss

She always loved to be with me. In the early hours of the morning when the cats were in the preliminary stages of waking the human, she'd often come up to snuggle near my head. I'd lie on my right side with my right arm extended out. Rhiannon would lie along the length of my arm with her head in my cupped hand and her back pressed up against my arm. Her stubby tail would waggle constantly, tickling my upper arm. All the while, she'd purr and purr. If I were capable, I'd have purred myself. The last time she did that, was just a week or so before she died.

My favorite coworker

One has to be very particular with cats. You can really only interact with them on their terms. It's not for nothing that we have expressions like "herding cats" to represent the essence of impossibility. Like working with wood, when you deal with cats, you have to work with the grain, not against it. To violate that rule isn't to court trouble (well, sometimes); rather, it robs you of the natural beauty that the grain reveals when you respect it.

My beautiful girl

Rhiannon's grain was beautiful, with a few knots. She didn't like to be picked up. Not at all. I could easily sling Grendel (and now Bogart) over my shoulder without any resistance. Rhiannon would curl into a ball to make it very hard to hold her. That never really changed, although as she aged and it became harder for her to get up on things, she seemed to welcome being carried upstairs or onto the couch or bed.

She stomped. Sir Aurthur Sullivan wrote a lyric about pirates moving with cat-like tread as the epitome of stealth. Rhiannon could walk stealthily when she wanted, but many times when she wanted to make her presence—and her annoyance—known, she'd stomp as she walked. Her stomping was most distinct when she walked on pergo or linoleum, but she could even stomp on the pile carpet. Maybe it was intentional, or maybe it was an occasional effect of her being a bit on the plump side and having short legs. Whatever it was, I always had to smile when I heard her whump! whump! whump! into a room.

Hogging the orange toy thingy

Since Grendel died in 2016 I've been more apprehensive of the potential loss of another cat. I'd always had that in the back of my mind since I adopted them, but going through those terrible weeks in the late summer of 2016 let me know just how devastating the loss of one of my furry companions can be.

I noticed Rhiannon aging over the years. She was once the champion jumper of the house and regularly made a death-defying leap across the chasm of the stairwell so she could sit in the sun on the deep sill of the upper window. And it was her sill. She was the first to sit there, but soon after Grendel started sitting there too. One day, a few weeks after I adopted her, she was snuggled next to me on the settee in my den. From that spot, we could see in the glass of a framed map at the top of the stairs the reflection Grendel camped out on the sill. Rhiannon got down off the settee, stomped out to the hallway, leaped up on the banister and then across to the sill. Once there she proceeded to swat Grendel on the head several times. After that, she leaped back over and returned to her place next to me, leaving a bewildered Grendel staring around wondering what just happened. As the years went by, She no longer had the strength to jump and the sill became empty except for the cobwebs.

Feeding time was a unique situation with three cats. Grendel approached comestibles with the appalling devastation of a swarm of locusts. I couldn't leave food out for the cats to graze on or he would eat it all, to no one's benefit. Instead, I fed them in three spots in the kitchen and sat by monitoring their manners. Rhiannon's spot was on top of the island in the kitchen. It stands about 3 1/2 feet tall and she would float up to the top like a pixie and gobble her food. After several years, she needed to do a 2-hop onto a chair and then up. Eventually, I'd have to place her up there because even the 2-hop was a hop too far. Only after Grendel died did I feed her and Maebh together on the floor and let them graze.

It became more difficult for her to get on the bed. I'd awake at night or early morning to hear frantic scrambling to climb onto the bed, which would culminate with Rhiannon's face—wide-eyed and desperate—appearing at the bedside as she dragged her way up and on top. I bought little stairs for the bed and the couch in the living room. The right arm of my leather recliner is covered in punctures and scratches from years of her coming onto the chair with be by that rout.

She loved my stinky shoes

She'd been losing weight over several months. She was always a bit chubby and her weight loss really just brought her back to normal for a cat with her small frame. But having been chubby all those years, the weight loss was concerning, even though it's natural for older cats. She also showed a lot more signs of slowing down and being unstable on her four feet.

I took her in for a vet appointment with the hope that they could recommend supplements that could help her as she aged. I had every expectation that she'd live to be 20 or more. I started to think she'd outlive us all, being too fussy to die. The vet's examination revealed a large mass in her abdomen. Her kidneys and liver were just so-so. Her heart and lungs were good. Her teeth, amazingly were good. Every visit to the vet, they'd say she had a bit of tartar and gingivitis that needed watching. Grendel and Maebh both had to have teeth pulled, but Rhiannon's teeth stayed the same her whole life. But the mass in her abdomen was serious.

They took her out to do blood work and when they brought her back, she'd collapsed. She remained there for the day on I.V. They wanted to send her over to an emergency hospital for overnight monitoring, but the panic within me was afraid that if she went, I'd never see her again. By the afternoon, she'd recovered sufficiently that I could take her home. Fearing that her death may be near, I was resolved that she'd die at home, not at the vet's with tubes stuck in her.

The vet prescribed prednisolone, which I had compounded to a liquid for oral injection, and an appetite stimulant. A friend of mine also provided material and instructions for syringe-feeding her when she wouldn't eat.

For the next week, she nibbled a bit or I'd try to force some food into her. She drank a lot of water, but she'd plop her chin in the fountain and get all wet down the front and on her paws. She was clearly getting weaker, but I hoped that the prednisolone and stimulant would kick in and she'd get back to a stability that could be maintained for a foreseeable future, even though the fear still gripped me tighter that she was dying. She was 18. I could hope for more, but couldn't really expect it.

By late afternoon on April 16th I knew she couldn't last. I'd wanted to call in a vet who could put her to sleep at home the way I had done with Grendel. However, her situation seemed dire and I didn't think I could arrange it soon enough. I made an appointment to bring her into my vet for the next afternoon.

The day before she died

That night, I put her up on the bed with me, but she crawled off and flopped down to the floor and then crawled slightly under the bed. I slept fitfully dreading the next day. Just before 4:00 am, I awoke to hear her groaning. I went to her on the floor—she'd crawled during the night to the other side of the bed—and knew that she was at the end. I picked her up and brought her downstairs where I sat on the couch with her in my arms. Her head was on my left shoulder with the rest of her lying across my chest, over my heart. Her breathing was labored and she gasped several times. I petted her and soothed her and told her how much I loved her. As her breathing became less labored, I finally told her that she could go now. A moment later, she breathed her last and lay silently in my arms.

I sat with her like that for another 20 minutes or so, just petting her over and over. She had such soft, plush fur. Maebh was nearby looking perplexed. I could have stayed that way all morning, I think, but I wrapped her in a towel and put her in her carrier—she always hated being put in the carrier—and prepared to bring her into the vet for cremation first thing in the morning.

I got her ashes back just over a week later. Her urn is smaller than Grendel's, which is fitting. She was my little girl, my wee one. I called her Ree the Wee, Her Weeness, etc. From her thumb-sized tail, to her small nose and tiny paws, she was the picture of petiteness.

Two urns now

It's as hard for me to say goodbye now as it was to let her go that Wednesday morning as she lay dying in my arms. I thought I'd shed all my tears, but they're coming now as I write this.

Goodbye, baby girl. My heart aches to think that I can't hold you anymore. You were my sweet baby, the delight of my life. I always told people that I had no favorites, but it was you. Just seeing you always brightened my day. Whenever I'd been away, I never felt that I was home until you stomped up to greet me. You've left a hole in my heart that nothing can ever fill.