I keep looking over from where I sit at the computer to see how he’s doing. He’s needed help getting on and off the sofa and bed for some time now, even with the stepstools I put next to them.
The kidney disease wasted his muscles. He’d gotten so wobbly when he walked — or sometimes just tried to walk — that I started carrying him between the food and water dishes, the litter box, and his places to sleep. I had to support him when he was in the litter box so that he didn’t fall over. The other day, he rolled off a pillow and became stuck between the edge of the bed and the wall until I saw him and picked him up.
I found him at the SPCA in October 1989. When I took him out of the cage, he snuggled against me, and the bond started right then. The vet estimated his age to be about 14 weeks.
Like all kittens, he was playful. I remember how he’d attack my socks while I was putting them on in the morning. He kept his playfulness as an adult until the last few years, when arthritis limited his mobility.
He used to sit on the sidewalk in front of the house so that passersby would stop and pet him. When they did, he liked to follow them afterwards. More than once I received a phone call from someone calling the number on his nametag saying, “I just stopped to pet your cat, and he followed me home. Can you come and get him?”
One time a neighbour I’d never met stopped by. He was moving, and he wanted to say good-bye to Benjy.
He loved to explore the garden or just sit in the sunshine. His other favourite places were the patio deck and table or anyone’s lap. As stories of coyotes killing cats increased, I wanted to keep him in the yard. For a while, I only let him outside on a long leash. When he wasn’t able to climb any more, we fixed the fence so that he couldn’t get under or through it, and he was able to enjoy the backyard on his own again.
Like many cats, Benjy had a fascination for running water. He used to jump up to the bathroom sink to drink from the tap. When he couldn’t jump any more, I lifted him up to the sink. Eventually I got him a pet water fountain and plugged it into a timer so that he wouldn’t wake me up in the middle of the night to demand running water.
He was about 13 when the health problems started. Kidney failure, liver disease, arthritis, and hyperthyroidism added to the aging process. Still, he did well for a few years. Then he gradually got thinner and weaker. He’d always been very affectionate, but he became more emotionally needy as he became more dependent on me physically. He often sat or slept on my lap while I was working at the computer. At night, he waited for me to go to bed so that he could sleep next to me, and he wouldn’t stay on the bed until I was there.
His kidney disease meant that he had to use the litter box increasingly often. In the past couple of weeks, I got up several times a night, as soon as I heard him move, to carry him to the litter box. He could walk (although barely) once he’d been up for a while, but when he first woke up, he could walk only a few steps. His legs would give out under him, and he’d look up at me in confusion and wait for me to carry him to his destination.
How attached can a person and a cat be? We couldn’t share words, but that never felt like a barrier in our communication.
Yesterday morning, he could barely raise his head. His breathing was sometimes laboured, and he was having difficulty swallowing. He wasn’t at all interested in food or water. It was his time.
I don’t think he was ready to go. I certainly wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him. But his body had given out, and he was suffering. He lay on my lap for hours while I stroked and brushed him until the vet came. Soon after that, it was over for him.
I still keep looking to see how he’s doing.
