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Inmate Central Inmate Central, where civil and family-friendly discourse about off-audio topics (other than religion and politics) is welcome. |
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In Reply to: Thoughts and prayers needed... posted by popsy on April 25, 2015 at 19:09:12:
...and had many friends who adored their cats. I have a cat (Annie, 13) and can't imagine life without her.A friend of mine recently lost his cat ...a very, uh ...special cat. After his cat passed he penned this wonderful eulogy...
A eulogy for the incomparable Stanley Catz - AKA "Stanley the Magnificent" - AKA "Bigs". - Born - Sept 1998 - Died April 8, 2015
Stanley was born deep in the mangroves to a outdoor semi-ferrule mom and a dad hailing from a ferrule cat colony adjacent to Capt Slate's Atlantis Dive Shop on Key Largo. Stanley was a thirty pound orange Tom Cat with a head the size of grapefruit and a bad ass alpha cat mentality. Stan didn't need to be photo-shopped into a picture to look impressive, he was just a big kitty. We did not own Stan he simply choose to share space and his life with us.
Stanley started out life as an indoor/outdoor cat and as his body and reputation grew he quickly became the undisputed ruler in the animal hierarchy of our neighborhood. Stanley feared nothing. Stories of Stanley backing down dogs and showing up at neighbors houses for dinner became fairly commonplace. His outdoor reign of terror finally came to a head in a most unlikely and enlightening way. Our family went on vacation and when we returned a week later the person who had been taking care of Stanley informed us that he had escaped from the porch the first night we were gone by eating his way through the screen and disappeared into the night.
As we canvassed the neighborhood to find out if anyone knew of Stanley's whereabouts we began to hear stories that gave us some insight into his midnight rambles. Our next door neighbors had not seen him this week but detailed how Stan would often show up in the afternoon at their house and take a nap under their boat or in some other remote corner of their garage. They admitted to always being afraid that they might accidently shut him into the garage when they left for a long weekend. Another neighbor said he stopped by most evenings howling for a handout and that he never turned down table scraps. The folks across the street recounted how he would boldly enter their garage and tear open a fresh bag of dog food and treat himself to a little afternoon snack. There were many stories of Stanley sightings by several of our neighbors, some we felt we had to make apologies for. It would seem that Stan was a bit of a rogue.
We eventually worked our way to a house about a block down the street and upon inquiring about Stan they said yes, there was a giant orange cat that frequently stopped by their house and begged for food. They gladly fed him and thought that he was just a stray. The husband was a lawyer and he told us that his secretary's cat had recently passed away. He said he thought the big orange cat was a stray and it might be just the tonic to help her get over her loss so he took Stanley to work and gave it to her as sort of a consolation prize. We had a good laugh and he gave us his secretary's phone number so we could call her and retrieve the beast. The secretary was very nice and told us how thoughtful Joe was for bringing her the cat. She went on to say that her cat had just passed and she was not ready for a new cat just yet. She explained to us how she had taken the big orange cat to the Safe Harbor no-kill animal shelter here in Jupiter so they could find the big orange cat a good home. We thanked her for her thoughtfulness and then called Safe Harbor to make arrangements to pick up our wayward Stanley. The woman who answered the phone at Safe Harbor did not hesitate when I asked her if they had received a big orange tabby a couple of days prior. She told me he was the biggest cat she had ever seen and that he had, effective immediately, established himself as the undisputed Grand Poobah of the shelter cats. But ..... she continued, there was a fellow who had phoned in a couple of days earlier saying he was missing an orange tabby and she had called him to come down and take a look and see if this was his cat. She told me the fellow came in and admitted that this was not his orange cat but, most likely speechless and stunned by Stanley's magnificence, he would take him anyway. I guess to some folks one orange cat is as good as another. I got the fellows phone number and thanked the shelter lady for her time and good work. I could never work in a shelter because my house would surely fill up with strays.
I rang the fellow up right away and recounted the whole bizarre chain of events, from Stanley being a void filling gift for someone's secretary, right up to the arrival of the big orange cat in his home. I thought he would be amused by the story, I mean, who could make that shit up? He immediately got defensive and asked if I could prove that the big orange cat in question truly belonged to me. Obviously, Stanley's insidious charm had already taken hold of the man's better judgment. He asked me for some distinguishing characteristics. I countered with pink paws, pink ears and a pink nose. In a condescending tone he rebuffed me with, all orange tabby cats have pink accessories. I was silenced. I had no idea if his statement was true and, if it was true, who kept these kind of obscure cat records. I later came to believe that he made this little factoid up on the spot. Undaunted, I reached deep and remembered that a few days prior to our vacation we had gotten Stanly "fixed" and the vet said that the stitches would dissolve in a couple of weeks. I gambled that there would still be remnants of the sutures in his private parts and gave the man instructions on where to look. He put the phone down and after a minute and got back on the phone and told me flatly, "Come on down and pick him up.". There was a distinct air of disappointment in the man's voice.
The fellow lived on a floating home in the inter-coastal waterway off US 1 in north Jupiter. These were not houseboats but small homes on floats with narrow twenty foot pier style walkways connecting them to land. A few years later all the floaters were wiped out by hurricane Francis or Jean or perhaps both. I rolled up to his walkway with one of many kitty carriers that I purchased during Stanley's life. Stanly did not like kitty carriers and would chew his way through and out of them on the way to the vet's office in a way that I can only compare to the way Houdini used to escape from straightjackets and locked chests, only Stan did it with his teeth, not hidden keys. Stan preferred to stand in the passenger seat with his paws up against the window while howling his head off and surveying his surroundings. I pulled up and honked my horn a couple of times and the fellow came down the gangplank to meet me. I told him how Stan hated water and that I would just pop him into the kitty carrier to transport him over the narrow walkway with water on either side. He told me that it wouldn't be necessary to use the kitty carrier and said that he would bring Stanley out to me. "Fine", I said, " Have it your way." I could tell that he was pissed about losing his new big orange cat but I still did not appreciate his attitude and, I didn't really feel like it was my responsibility to fill him in on Stanley's negative experiences with water though in hindsight, he might have benefited from the story about the big cat on the small surfboard in the swimming pool incident. So out the door they came, the man carrying his big orange cat for the last time under his front arms, body dangling down and facing him. As they left the doorway Stanley became acutely aware of the water flanking him on either side, started to panic, and that is when the shredding began. Stanley's claws were flailing away, finding their way deep into the man's arms. As the man quickens his pace down the walkway the pace of the panic and shredding increased at a directly proportional rate. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, it was Newton's third law come to life for me in a way that no science teacher could ever have hoped to portray it. Man flying with cat, cat flailing on man. Why the man felt it was necessary to get Stan all the way to the end of the walkway and not put him down somewhere along that bloody route has always puzzled me. He handed Stan off to me with the business end of the cat still facing him, his arms cut and bleeding like he just lost a fight with a tree chipper. I stuffed Stan in the kitty carrier, recommended that he visit the drop in clinic and thanked him for taking such good care of the big orange cat.
Thus ended Stanley's outdoor activities.
Stanley, by virtue of his misadventures, had now become a strictly indoor cat. Upon this unfortunate turn of events Stan turned all his alpha male energy into becoming the undisputed and absolute ruler of the house. Stan must have seen me as the current reigning alpha male and decided I needed to fall in line behind him. I honestly believe that he was plotting ways to bump me off or if all else failed make me one of his bitches. I don't believe that Stan ever gave up the idea of becoming the supreme ruler of the house. After several tense months and some shocking cat behavior it was either Stan gets with the plan or Stan hits the road. I knew a guy with scared arms who lived on a floating home who might still want a big orange cat.
Eventually Stan's behavior became somewhat less disturbing and sufficiently tolerable. He reluctantly "settled in" though it was quite clear that he was not at all happy with his place in the pecking order. Stanley was not our cat, we were the tormentors that also fed him and cautiously petted him when it suited his whims. Stan's demeanor around the house was more like that of a dog than a cat. He feared no one and would sit in the middle of a big party and wait for some unsuspecting innocent to pet him. He bit family and friends with the same lack of discrimination and remorse. Despite profuse warnings, people would be lured into his web by his big wide eyed cuddly cat routine. Stanley would set the trap. He would approach his victim all sweet and purrrry, then rub up against the intended victim's leg as if to say, "Come on, don't listen to them, you know you want to pet the big soft kitty". Trap snaps shut, BANG, his teeth are imbedded in the back of your hand and when you manage to wrestle it away from him he doesn't back down and stands there staring at you with a look on his face that that says "Well, why are you looking at me like that, they warned you didn't they?." Cat people, they just can't resist petting the big orange kitty. Stan sent several unsuspecting cat lovers to the clinic for antibiotic treatments.
Stan had his favorites and on the top of the list were our sons Ed and David. Dave, however, was our youngest and therefore the smallest human in the house. Perhaps Stanley was attracted to this feature of Dave the same way a big cat in the wild would be attracted to the smallest animal in a herd while hunting. Although his bond with Dave seemed to be very tight I remember two separate incidents that often made me stop and wonder exactly where Dave figured into Stan's idea of their relationship. When Dave was about 11 years old he came running through the family room as boys often do. Like a bolt of lightning, Stanley shot out from behind the sofa and took a swipe at Dave's trailing leg just as a lion would trip up an impala on out on the Serengeti. Dave went down like a sack of spuds, Stan just stood his ground. Another time Dave and I were lying on the floor watching TV, I had an odd feeling someone or something was behind us. I turned my head to see Stan standing behind Dave's head with his mouth wide open as if he was sizing it up for consumption, perhaps he was just yawning, but I have my doubts. He was a odd housemate.
Even if Stan was a tad hard to live with you had to respect him for he was, if nothing else, fearless. I will never forget the time our oldest son Ed had a friend over at the house for a day of playing in the pool and hanging out. His father showed up at the prearranged time with the family German Sheppard to pick up his son. While the boys were getting ready Christie went out on the front walkway to talk with the father and pet the dog. Stanley got wind that something was going on in his domain and put his front paws up on the window ledge only to see the full grown German Sheppard standing about 10 feet away from him. Stanley freaked, he puffed up to about twice his already considerable abnormally large cat size and started to growl like a mountain lion, which, was about the way he looked. The dog stood at attention when he saw Stan in the window and then started to back away when he heard Stanley's growl turn into a full caterwaul. Stanley then began to eat his way through the screen on the window, the only thing that he could see separating him from this uninvited intruder. Meanwhile, the dog cowered behind his owners legs as I cautiously pried Stanley off of the screen and away from the window. I always knew Stanley was a bad-ass but in an odd way I was particularly proud of old Stan that day. The dog was easily three times his size but all he wanted to do was get a piece of him, that was the essence of Stanley Cat.
Stan stayed true to form right to the very end. Stan was approaching his 17th birthday and he seemed to be going downhill for the past few months, losing weight along with his appetite. He had trouble walking and even getting up and down from the floor was becoming a visibly painful chore. He never complained and looked like a proud old male lion getting ready to get in his last licks with some unseen adversary. Christie and I took him in to the vets office yesterday not knowing what to expect. The vet had to put Stan under to do any type of exam or draw blood because no one wanted to stick needles in that cat when he was awake, Stan had already sent one vet tech who tried to hold him down to the hospital. When we left the house we both knew that Stanley might not be taking the ride home with us but not a word was spoken about it. Once inside the examination office we let Stan out of his kitty carrier, he knew where he was and he was not happy about it. The vet tech nervously marveled at the old orange cat's size while I petted him to try and keep him calm. While purring, and without missing beat, Stanley spun around and took a big bite out of the back of my hand as if to say, "Hey, I'm dying already, stop being such a pussy and let's just get what needs to be done here done!" Upon examination they found a lump the size of a tennis ball in his abdomen that had his insides all screwed up and he was bleeding internally. The vet ushered us back to the room where his body, limp from the gas was spread out on the table. He had Christie feel the lump in his gut and showed us the x-ray of the damage that could not be fixed. We balked and said we would take him home so that Dave could come down from Gainesville to say goodbye, but the vet said that since he was already under the best thing was to let him go now. We called Dave and put the phone up to Stanley's ear and Dave said his goodbyes. Christie and I both said our goodbyes to his large orange lifeless body with the little pink tongue hanging out, it was the first time I could remember him ever looking vulnerable. Three went in and only two came out. As we left the vets office, the back of my hand was still throbbing from the bite he had given a few of minutes earlier, I thought to myself, well played old friend, well played.
I never met Stanley, but feel now feel as if I knew him. As for my friend, you'd never know he was a cat-person by looking or speaking with him. It just goes to show how much a part of our lives these little furry characters become.
I am terribly sorry to hear about Chloe and will be sending good vibes your way.
Best regards,
Dean.
reelsmith's axiom: Its going to be used equipment when I sell it, so it may as well be used equipment when I buy it.
Edits: 04/26/15
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