Cat Scratch Fever [part III-fin]

Continued from Part II

Mokie was, to put it politely, aggressive. But only with strangers. With me and the X he was a great cat. Affectionate, playful. Sat on our laps while we watched TV. Slept at the foot of the bed, always on X's side. Amused us in ways only cats can.

Like the time he jumped on top of the TV, while we were watching it, and settled down for a nap. I guess it was warm there. He stretched out, draped his back legs in front of the screen — yes, it was annoying, but cats can get away with a lot — and spent ten minutes or so licking his front legs. Then he put his head down, to sleep. As he fell dozed off he slowly leaned farther and farther back, and then, before any of us realized what was about to happen, he fell off the back of the TV.

He immediately regained his footing, then placidly began licking his paws again. He looked at us as if to say, "What? I meant to do that!"

He was the best cat. With us.

With everyone else, our friends, relatives, relative strangers, he was... well, aggressive. OK, downright nasty.

There was the time our friend Ken came to see our new apartment, one of those typical Montreal flats with a long hallway. Mokie blocked his way, and when Ken tried to walk by, Mokie lashed out and clawed his leg so badly we had to put a gauze bandage on it. Ken is a cat person; he loves cats; he was nice to Mokie, at least he tried to be.

There was the time a bunch of us were in the livingroom, watching a playoffs game, and following a particularly tense power play, late in the third period, when Montreal scored a shorthanded goal, Debbie screamed. Mokie lunged at her knees, claws outstreched. Scared her so bad that after that we had to promise to lock him in another room before she'd come into our place.

There was the Cat Nanny who looked after him once, when we went on vacation. She left us a note saying she would not look after Mokie again.

Mokie the Killer Cat became a joke in our circle. A tense joke. There were those who, in unguarded moments wondered aloud why we kept him. How we could possibly love him.

But we did.

Even after he bit me so bad I had to go to the emergency room. The doctor who looked at my punctured hand pulled a pen out of his pocket and drew a line on my arm, about half way to the elbow. To mark the red zone, the progress of the infection.

"See where it's red?" he said. "If that keeps moving up your arm, and reaches your heart, you're going to be dead. You have cat scratch fever. Like the Ted Nugent song."

"That's a real thing?"

"Yes. The only mammal's saliva more venomous than a cat's is a human's."

Mokie had been out in the back yard with the X, who had been raking the leaves. It was Mokie's fifth home with us, our first house. The yard had a six foot solid wood fence, with horizontal two-by-fours running around the inside. Mokie had jumped up on top of the fence. He was watching another cat, in the neighbour's yard. His back was arched, his hair was standing on end, and his tail was swishing meancingly back and forth. And I was stupid enough to grab him. He sunk his teeth into the soft part of my hand, between my thumb and forefinger, and just held on, like a clamp. His eyes looked up into mine as if to say, "I'm sorry, but I can't help it."

"I hope you have a cure?" I asked the doctor. I was reasonably certain that people today don't die of cat bites.

"I'm giving you a prescription for antibiotics. Take them, then come back in ten days and I'll look at your arm. Don't wash that mark off."

"OK, thank you," I said.

"Oh, and, about the cat," the doctor continued.

"What about him?"

"You have two choices. Either we can cut his head off and autopsy his brain, or you can quarantine him for ten days. Personally, I prefer the former option. That way we know right away whether he has rabies."

"He doesn't have rabies. He's an indoor cat." I told the doctor how Mokie had come to bite me.

"Fine, then, we'll send animal control around in ten days to verify that he's not rabid."

I don't cry much, as a rule. Hardly ever. But I cried the day Mokie died.

* * *
I woke up very early on Monday morning and found Mokie under the coffee table, dead. He was right where I'd left him on Sunday night. Before I went to bed I petted his head, and he purred, but he was very weak, and I knew the end was near. He hadn't had the strength, that last week, to walk up the stairs to the bedroom, and when I'd carry him up, those last few days, and place him in his favourite spot, on his favourite blanky, on the corner on the X's side, he'd jump back down and crawl under the bed instead. It was heartbreaking to watch him jump down. Even though there was a box at the foot of the bed to help him down (it had been there for two years now, ever since he'd started to have difficulty jumping up) he stumbled and fell. He'd been doing a lot of that the last week.

But he wasn't in pain. I know, because I've known Mokie longer than I've known most of the people in my life. He was lethargic, and he was dying, and we both knew it, but he still perked up a little when I'd offer him some raw hamburger, and he still purred when I picked him up, right until the end. I'd been hoping, and would have been praying, if I were to do such a thing, that he would simply go to sleep and not wake up. I couldn't bear the thought that I might have to kill him.

So that Monday morning I braced myself for what I'd find at the bottom of the stairs, and when I found it, I didn't cry. Not then. I wrapped Mokie in his favourite blanky and held him for a while. Then I called my aunt Lo, who lives out in the country, and asked if I could bring Mokie there.

My uncle D dug a grave in a nice shady corner of the field near their barn, and that's where I laid Mokie to rest. And then I cried some. And later that night, when Jack called, I cried a whole lot more.

I'm crying again now, but just a little.

My aunt said she'd plant some catnip there.

* * *
In the next story, Postmodern Sass has a very strange dream.