One week ago today, we said another sad, wrenching goodbye. It’s taken me this long to write the essay because I’ve just been…numb. We lost all four of our boys within less than a year and a half. I’m confident the Universe doesn’t engage in such tactics, but I feel…punished.
Our last boy succumbed to the failure of his beautiful body last Wednesday. We don’t know how old he was…he was already full grown when he came to us. He lived with us for almost 12 years. I recorded his arrival into our family in kind of an offhand manner, back in August of 2009:
“Bozo—the beautiful runaway who showed up at the restaurant a couple of weeks ago, and is now ensconced in my bedroom, waiting to be integrated into the indoor cat community. (Such a stupid name for a gorgeous and obviously expensive cat...but the hubs started calling him that, and it has, unfortunately, stuck. Maybe I should just spell it "Beauzeau...")”
We actually DID start spelling it “BEAUZEAU-X”—which eventually morphed, as it seems all our cats names do—into something completely different. “BOX.” We called him Box.
Here is his story:
One day at the restaurant, I looked out the front window to see a gorgeous, BIG cat begging to get into the taekwondo studio across the street. I’d never seen that cat before, and I spent a LOT of time in that neighborhood those days. The beautiful cat looked lost and haunted, and he kept breaking into these fits of sneezing the like of which I’d never seen emit from any being, let alone a cat. I remember worrying that he would get hit by a car, because he seemed so desperate to be somewhere that he wasn’t fully aware of his surroundings.
But, as I was tethered to The Job That Ate My Life, I could do nothing more than look out the window and worry as I went through the motions of my over-burdened existence. Eventually, the cat disappeared, and I sent up a silent prayer that he was safe and back where he belonged.
When the evening crew came on shift, one of the kids came up to me and said, “Did you know there’s a cat in your car?” I hurried out to my van…to find the big cat curled up on my back seat, sleeping the sleep of an exhausted lost soul.
I left the poor frightened boy where he was; he needed the rest. And I thought to myself “If he’s still there when I get off work, he’s going home with me.”
He was, and he did.
When we got him home, we found that he was neutered and declawed. Certain that he was someone’s treasured housecat who had got out and got lost, we took photos of him and posted flyers in the neighborhood.
Box's mug shot for the flyer
The response we got to the flyer told us so much about the traumatic journey he had been on…and made us determined to give him a safe, quiet home where he could recover.
A flakey woman turned up at the restaurant in response to the ad. My goal from the start was to get her to give him up, before I even knew her story; because I was convinced that anyone who had let him escape and wander the streets of Scappoose confused and afraid did NOT deserve to keep him. After I heard her story, I was even more determined to get him away from her.
Seems this woman had a friend who worked at the local animal shelter, and for whatever reason, this friend had told her they had picked up a beautiful cat that looked like an expensive animal. She went to the shelter and “adopted” him…not because she loved him or she wanted a cat, but because she thought he was a purebred of some kind, worth a lot of money. I don’t know if her plan was to then sell him on craigslist, or whatever. But she took him home…where she had a Chihuahua who had, up till this time, ruled the roost. The nasty little dog proceeded to endlessly harass the cat.
So the cat would run out of the house every time a door was opened in his vicinity, desperate to get away from the dog. He would “run and run and run” according to the new “owner,” and the only way she could get him back was to get him cornered and throw a blanket over him.
We asked her what she knew about the sneezing. She said she had taken him to the vet, where she was told he had probably had a very bad upper respiratory infection in his past, and it had done permanent damage to his sinuses and nose. Though the infection was gone, he would probably be prone to these sneezing fits for the rest of his life.
Oh. My. God.
Poor, poor kitty!
Apparently, by the time he ended up in the back seat of my van, flakey owner was fed up with chasing him all over the neighborhood. It was not difficult to get her to hand him over to us.
So that’s how a damaged, traumatized, chronically sneezy kitty was entrusted into our care.
I would like to say everything went on smoothly from there, he was “integrated into the indoor kitty community” with ease, and he became one of the family with only the normal hiccups associated with introducing a new member to the household. But that is not Box’s story.
Circumstances surrounding his arrival on our doorstep, and his own scars from the traumas of his first years, combined to determine his position in our household.
First of all, I was working 70 hours a week and was stretched to my limits in every way. I had very little time or emotional energy to invest in slow, incremental introductions where we could give him time to warm up to the other inhabitants of the household, and give them time to warm up to him. And one of the “coping mechanisms” we couldn’t seem to talk Box out of was heading for any open door and running away when he got out. This complicated things about a hundredfold.
The other human members of the household were more hindrance than help in this regard. The husband was as strung out as I was. His attitude tended toward, “Well if he gets out and runs away, let him go!” And we had the additional complication of my flakey sister living with us three days a week. She could not be trusted to remember to play the “keep the kitty in the house” foot dance required to prevent our poor orphan from breaking out and disappearing. So between being desperate to keep him in the house and not having time to introduce him properly to the rest of the indoor kitties, Box ended up staying in my bedroom. Which was upstairs, away from any portals to the outdoors, and had a door that could separate him from the rest of the herd.
Box became the “bedroom kitty.”
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| Box enjoying HIS fire... |
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| ...and his window. |
Which he remained for the rest of our tenure in that house. Ten years.
Don’t feel sorry for him, though. Our bedroom was H.U.G.E. Between the bedroom, the bathroom and the walk-in closet, there was probably 600+ square feet of living space. There are indoor cats who thrive in homes that small. And he had a bed, two chairs, an ottoman, three windowsills and a fireplace. Cushy carpeting and lots of sun to enjoy through west-facing windows. And Mom and Dad to himself every night. Up to that point, I had NEVER allowed cats to sleep with us at night. Box moved in and claimed that privilege. He did NOT have a bad life.
Box in his "burrito." After many years, he got over his fear of being inside a blanket. He chose this one as his own.
When we sold the house in Scappoose and moved into our majorly downsized retirement digs in Eugene, I knew there was no single room in that house that was big enough to be “Box’s Room.” My bedroom has room for a bed and 2 nightstands. NOWHERE to put a cat box and cat food dishes.
So I had the bright idea of moving Box to the house in Eugene first. We had possession of the house for three months before we sold the Scappoose house and moved all our things down to Eugene. I brought Box down and installed him a couple of weeks before we brought the rest of the crew down. I had no idea how that was going to work out, but it just occurred to me that this would be the right way to do things.
And what a success it was! Beyond my wildest imagination. The simple act of moving the other cats into Box’s house entirely changed the dynamic between Box and the rest of the herd. The boys—Alvin and Theo in particular—no longer followed him around and bad-vibed him relentlessly as they had done in the other house. Apparently, they accepted that this was his house, and they had better leave him alone if they wanted to live here, too.
So Box settled into comfort and amity in the midst of the family for the last 2 years of his life.
Box's favorite bed...in the middle of the family room in Eugene.
And then we lost them. All. Between November of 2018 and last week.
Four boys in 17 months.
We are down to 1 cat: The Princess—that little black waif I bundled into a cat carrier and kidnapped off the Scappoose property at the last minute so as not to leave her behind at the mercy of the new owner’s 3 dogs. We haven’t had only one cat in our home since 1977.
I hardly know how to be. I don’t think the Princess knows how to be, either. She has spent the last 2 years trying to develop a relationship with a swiftly-shrinking family of brothers. One after another, they disappear on her. Sometimes I think she wonders if she’s next.
Box and the Princess on my bed in Eugene.
I am sad. And I am tired. And I wonder if I’m capable of withstanding the loss of one more sweet spirit from my life. And I wonder why the Universe has seen fit to call all these pieces of me back to itself in such a short period of time.
We have been so blessed and so protected during the pandemic in every other way.
But this…
Please.
Just…please.
Goodbye, my sweet, complicated, quirky Box. We miss you. So much.
My favorite Box picture. "Box of the Galaxy eyes." 💕💕
