Category Archives: cats

Let light perpetual shine upon him

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We said good bye to Thomas Merton this afternoon. It was a difficult decision but the correct one. For the last several days, he had been eating less and less. It was obvious that it was hard for him to chew and swallow, and especially sad when he came downstairs and banged his dish around the kitchen to try to wake us up or get our attention. That was something he learned early on and was a very effective method to get humans to respond to his needs. Unfortunately, last night and this morning when we tried to give him something after he had banged for our attention, he refused pretty much everything we offered.

A visit to the vet this morning confirmed that the tumor had grown considerably. In addition to making eating difficult, it’s likely Merton was in considerable pain because the cancer had entered the bone. But there was little sign of suffering. He was still jumping around,watching chipmunks and squirrels from our back porch, and even playing ball–catching it with his feet and batting it around.

So the vet and a vet tech (who had stayed with our cats in the past) came by the house this afternoon and ended his suffering. He died on my lap.

I’ve written about Merton’s final journey here and here. He’s been a good friend for almost fourteen and an amazing cat. He was very smart, very stubborn, and regal. We will miss him keenly.

Again, my favorite photo of him, relaxing with Augustine’s City of God:

162829_1565031438172_3235424_nThanks again to Dr. Tom Bach and all the good folk of Lakeview Veterinary Clinic.

About those cats …

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Yes, they are still with us, Junia and Macrina. They are slowly acclimating to life indoors and to life among other cats. Macrina, the kitten, is more skittish around humans; but is absolutely fearless around the other cats. Her mother Junia is tamer. It’s actually quite amusing to watch mom arouse into action when she hears her baby crying, usually because she decided to wrestle an adult cat 6 times her size and is in a headlock.

Here’s Macrina:

Macrina

And here’s Junia:

Junia

Cats, cats, and more cats

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Corrie and I have cats. Our first, known as the Magnificent Maggie Pie, joined us in 1990. She passed on at the age of 19 in 2003. Before she died, we had adopted two others, Margery Kempe, whom we found making a pilgrimage between two of the chapels at Sewanee crying at the top of her lungs (Google her to find out more about her namesake). When we moved to Spartanburg, we adopted, or rescued (from Fundamentalists) Thomas Merton (whose conversion we continue to pray for daily). After Maggie’s death, Bodhi (Bodhisattva) joined our family, adopted from the Buddhist Vihara in Mauldin. At Thanksgiving, 2004, Pilgrim (she of many toes) joined the family.

At that point, I put my foot down. I said, enough is enough. But this spring, as is probably inevitable, we began to see a mother cat with kittens in our backyard. By the time we mobilized, or decided that we would have to take responsibility for them; there were just two, a mother and her kitten. We were able to catch them, get them their shots, and now they seem to be becoming a part of our family. But really, six cats is more than enough. The mother, whom we’ve named Junia (read Romans 16) is all black except for three white paws and a few white spots; the kitten, whom we’ve named Macrina (you can Google her too, to find out why we found this name appropriate) is all black. They seem to be adjusting to life indoors, and with four other cats, but if the perfect home were to come forward, we might consider adoption.

What I love about cats is their contrary nature. They are deeply needy and dependent, just like dogs, but they don’t want you to know it, so they perform all kinds of rituals to assert their independence, but in the end, they will sit in your lap, and demand that you scratch their ears, after all. And one would think, that with six cats, there would always be one in your lap, but no, they must assert their independence. But one is sitting on my wrists even as I type this.