When I first got him I named him Viva, after a friend of a friend who was the bartender at Arturo’s on Thompson and Houston in the city. He was only a few weeks old when I adopted him from the daughter of the other bartender at Arturo’s. He was small and black and skittish and Chester, the big cat, ate his food.
When Jon came onto the scene only a few months after Viva arrived, he took him under his wing. Chester was my favorite. Jon felt badly about that.
He went through a series of names throughout the years to come–Viva morphed into Vee Vee (said in a stupid voice) which morphed into Grievance (don’t ask; also said in a stupid voice), then to Buddy Boy. When the girls were born and I was in the thick of having three kids under 5 and my mood was often dark and I was sleep deprived and way over-touched, Buddy Boy became Schmucky Boy and I was kind of mean to him. I just didn’t have anything left to give to a freaking cat after nursing and wiping butts and not sleeping and getting slimed on by little people all day. The mean phase lasted for a few years. I feel badly about that.
We were careful not to call him Schumcky Boy in front of the girls, mainly because we didn’t think it was a good idea for our 4 and 2 year olds to be walking around saying ‘schumuck,’ but one day Stella overheard me call him that and I backpedaled quickly. “Schnucky,” I blurted when she asked me what I called him. “Schmuggy, Schnicky, Schnoggy.” It was Schnoggy that stuck and while he was still Buddy Boy, mostly he was Schnog.
Before Small was born and the other two were 3 1/2 and 1 1/2, Buddy Boy got hit by a car on the busy street outside of our old house. It was nighttime and black cats are hard to see in the dark. Jon heard him crying and we found him in the driveway under the car. How he managed to drag himself up the driveway we’ll never know. We took him to the emergency vet and learned that he had a broken pelvis. His prognosis wasn’t good. “He probably won’t be able to control his bladder,” the vet told us. For those of you unfamiliar with the relentless odor of cat urine, rest assured that an incontinent cat is the last thing we wanted to be dealing with, no matter how much we loved him. A $3,000 surgery was suggested. We blanched at the cost and at the idea of having to put Buddy to sleep.
Our neighbor had a good friend named Oz who deemed himself an holistic veterinarian. He kindly came over and looked at Buddy’s x-rays and checked him out. We had been successful in bringing him to his litter box several times a day and had thus far avoided the dreaded cat-pee issue. He seemed to be holding his bladder on his own which was a good sign. “Get a cage,” Oz told us. “Keep him in it for 8-weeks. Cats heal themselves.” We took his advice.
Buddy spent 2 months in a cage in the kitchen and we kept him as immobile as possible to give his pelvis time to heal. Bianca spent quite a bit of time in there with him. Once, during this time, I had to call a plumber to fix a leak under the kitchen sink. I had never used this plumber before and he didn’t know our family. When he arrived to do the work and I led him to the kitchen, Bianca was in the cage. Stella had closed and latched the door. It was awkward.
Buddy got better. He was able to walk and eat and pee and poop and eventually he got sprung from his cage. His tail hung down limply behind him for the longest time, but eventually it started to rise up into the air again. That was 9 years ago.
As he got older, he lost his hearing (a fact that I discovered when he stopped fleeing the vacuum), had bouts of feline dementia (yes, it exists) and had multiple episodes of peeing around the house (mostly on our shoes for some reason, but he also favored the girls’ dress up basket). This summer, Schnog began deteriorating in earnest. Years earlier, the vet had told us that he would likely develop arthritis in his hips as a result of the broken pelvis and when he walked these days, his back legs seemed to drag. We started to talk about the fact that he might not be long for this world. He couldn’t jump up onto our beds and when we put him up on them he slept and slept and slept.
This past weekend he stopped walking entirely. His legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore. He couldn’t get to his food or water. He ate a little deli turkey when I gave it to him but he wouldn’t drink. Jon brought the old baby basket down from the attic for him so he had somewhere soft to sleep. And then yesterday afternoon he didn’t seem right at all so I brought him in the basket to the vet.
“Oh, Sweetie,” Reine said to me when I put the basket on her examining table, “he’s dying.” I started to cry. I knew that he was dying but it was still hard to hear the words. She told me that if I had the courage to do it, putting him to sleep was the kind thing to do. I called Jon and we deliberated over how to handle it with the girls. Should I bring him home so they could say goodbye to him first? Should I just do it right then and tell them the sad news when they got home from school? We finally opted for the latter hoping to spare then from the anguish and ourselves from the scene that was sure to ensue.
Our vet has an office in her home and I brought Schnoggy outside in his basket and put him in the warm sun. His eyes were barely open but I think he knew I was there with him. I lay down beside the basket and pet his soft, sun-warmed fur. I took a couple of pictures of him so the girls could see how comfy and peaceful he was before he died. A short time later, Reine came out with the syringe and sat down next to us on her front lawn. She petted him as she gave him the shot and we sat together and waited. I rubbed his little head and spoke into his unhearing ears, “Good Boy, Schnoggy.”
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