are there plastic bags in cat heaven

last week i had to say goodbye to my perfect orange boy, chumley.

the “how” isn’t important; it’s enough to know that one minute he was fine, and then he was not, in a way that even if i could go into an exponentially large amount of pet-related medical debt, he probably still would not have been fine afterwards.

we had just about 10 years together; i adopted him in october 2012, at a time where i wanted a second cat to keep spats, my feisty tuxedo, company, but also i was like, with what free time will i welcome in a second cat? at the time, i was volunteering for the obama re-election campaign, running phone banks in my ward and basically giving all of my extra time to that cause.

and then i walked into my neighborhood pet supply store, who happened to be doing an adoption event, and saw the biggest orange cat imaginable in a cage. he was just this big round orange orb, flopped down in the cage, and i was like, oh, this is a kindred spirit. when i went to poke my fingers through the cage to let him sniff, in a prelude to petting him, he instantly rubbed his face on my hand and started purring.

well, shit, i said.

eventually i was able to open the cage and stick my whole hand in. his fur was dull and tacky, that kind of gross sticky feeling you get from animals that haven’t been well taken care of. his story, according to the shelter, was that he belonged to an elderly person who had recently passed on, and the remaining family didn’t want or couldn’t take care of a cat.

he weighed 20 points, he was somewhere between 5-8 years old, and he just would not stop purring.

i picked him up. my coat got covered in fur, and i struggled to hold a - again, let me remind you - 20 pound cat.

i said, i need to take this cat home with me. so i did.

i discovered very quickly that he had a lot of personality, and it was largely food-based. he would eat anything you left down, including people food and non-food objects. plastic bags were his favorite, he’d chew off the handles, swallow them, and then throw them back up because he never learned the lesson that he couldn’t digest plastic.

sometimes he’d just chew on the bag without swallowing it, and just leave a series of holes in the bag. he chewed on purses, on books, on papers, on cardboard boxes, almost never on me, on those reusable tote bags.

he chewed through shoelaces. he ate his way through a bra strap once, which i didn’t discover until i went to put on the bra. one night, many years ago, i woke up to the sound of gagging next to my bed; he’d started to eat a very long ribbon, which i had to complete the disgusting task of pulling the whole thing back out through his mouth.

being a pet parent really solidified the fact that i do not ever want human children.

he’d had his share of health issues over the years. a bout with pancreatitis, maybe two, i can’t remember now. UTIs. over the years, he’s been slowing down. a few years ago i realized he’d lost a lot of weight, more than was expected from managing his diet and feeding him healthier food.

turns out he had a thyroid problem, so he was hungry all the time but not keeping any weight on. we were managing it, but there were good days and bad days. he was slightly over nine pounds at the end, so skinny, so bony. he wasn’t hiding, per se, in that sick cat way of trying to make themselves disappear so they can die in peace, but he did spend most of his days sleeping, curled up in boxes or cat beds, nestled in blankets. purring all the time, though.

i think he knew.

writer and iditarod racer blair braverman wrote a piece about dealing with the passage of time with an aging animal. she’s written previously on grieving, an article which when i initially read it, i sobbed because i wasn’t ready to hear it, but a good friend linked me to the newer article after i talked about saying goodbye to my boy, and i still sobbed my way through it, but it was a comfort this time.

every word is precise, and hard, and terribly true.

chumley knew better than me what was coming. we always think there will be more time. we always think we will get to choose the way it ends.

i’d always wanted to do it at home, in comfort, so spats could see and know and grieve too, instead of sitting and looking at the door, at the empty carrier, and wondering if his friend is coming home.

instead it was 1:30 in the morning, in a surgical mask, alone save eventually for a vet who hardly looked old enough to be out of school, and a vet tech who treated me so gingerly, like i was going to break.

“i wish i didn’t have to do this alone,” i said, over and over, while i was waiting to be okay with pressing the button that summoned the vet one last time. but that is what life gave me, and here i am.

he went as he did everything else in life: swaddled in blankets and purring, with my hand on his head, telling him that he was so, so loved.

he was a good boy, but he was ready to go.

one time i found him drinking out of the toilet.

one time he jumped into the shower with me, while i was showering, and just stood in the back.

one time i had a party and had to post signs on the doors with pictures of the cats, warning people to make sure they weren’t allowing any escapees when they went in or out.

vets always had a hard time hearing his heart and lungs because even at the vets he would not stop purring. (rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball waved under their nose will get them to stop, fyi.)

one time he literally broke into my downstairs neighbors’ apartment in the middle of the night; i woke up to hearing shouting from downstairs: “there’s a CAT in here”. a quick inventory of my own cats revealed i was one short and that the front door was wide open. i went downstairs, snatched up my cat, and then proceeded to never speak to those neighbors again, because what do you say to someone whom your cat did a b&e?

he was so easy going, my test cat for when i brought home other foster animals over the past few years. he didn’t necessarily like them, but the worst he’d do would be hiss and swat, unlike spats, who has tried to fight at least two foster dogs.

one of the things we talk about in animal rescue is that even an imperfect home with someone is better than life in a cage, or at a shelter that has to start making hard choices when they get overcrowded.

i have regrets, sure. we all do. there are things i’d do differently now, especially over the past few weeks, if i’d known.

but he had a good home. he had a good life. he had all the food and treats he could ever ask for. comfy cat beds and a couch and all the laundry piles he could have dreamed of to sleep in and get dirty again.

he had hugs and cuddles when he wanted them. he had space and solitude when he didn’t.

saying an animal helped me or changed me feels so cliche, but there are countless hours that he spent being my pillow, letting me hold him while i cried, while i was sad or stressed out or in pain.

we helped each other, in the end.

i will miss him, so much.

hug your own pets closer.

—

if you’d like to honor chumley’s memory in a way that doesn’t involve eating and regurgitating plastic bags, a few places you could send a few dollars to:

• friends of animal care and control, chicago: this is who i adopted chumley from, when he was a round, sticky, weird cat who needed a home

• one tail at a time: the organization i’ve been fostering through for the past two years. i particularly like their pet mutual aid program, which helps provide communities with resources to keep their pets fed and healthy

• chicagoland rescue intervention and support program (crisp): helping keep loved pets from being surrendered by helping with vet care, training, mediating landlord issues, etc.

• or support a shelter or rescue near you