A Beautiful Goodbye: 17.5 Years with Christie the Cat

Today, I have sad news to share. Earlier this week, Logan and I said goodbye to our furry family member Christie the Cat.

During the last month, Christie's health started to decline at a steady rate. She stopped grooming, lost interest in the things she loved doing, and rarely cuddled us. Last week, we became very concerned. She didn't eat or drink for 24-hours, so Logan and I took her to our veterinarian on Friday, February 26, 2021.

The news wasn't good. Dr. Moore, our veterinarian, said that Christie's weight had declined another ten percent. For a tiny cat, the news of more weight loss took my breath away. Then Dr. Moore told us that Christie developed abdominal tumors. I started crying. This was very bad news.

After talking with Dr. Moore, we decided to take Christie home for the weekend. Christie was given medication and fluids to keep her comfortable. That gave us a few more days to say goodbye.

Thankfully, Christie's last weekend was good. She ate tuna, slept on her heating pad, and wandered around with me in the early morning hours. I spent most of the weekend by her side. When Christie wasn't sleeping, she looked at us with so much love.

By Monday morning, Logan and I agreed it was time to let Christie go. Christie would have faced further weight loss, fast growing abdominal tumors, and pain. Euthanasia was the best option for Christie. It wasn't a decision we made lightly. And we couldn't have made the choice without Dr. Moore's wisdom, kindness, and compassion. We are grateful for Dr. Moore, Dr. Klein, and the whole team at Forest Animal Hospital. They are amazing humans.

Letting go of Christie was difficult and painful. And I’m grateful; grateful that she died peacefully. Dr. Moore and Jennifer—a kind vet technician—were with Christie as she died. Jennifer said Christie was ready to go and that she did not suffer. Goodbyes are hard and beautiful.

I keep expecting to hear Christie meow, saunter by slowly, or greet us at the door. Yesterday, I woke up from a nap panicked because we didn't have tuna for Christie's daily dose of medication. When I realized she was gone, I cried. It's going to take time to adjust.

In The Inner Life of Cats, author Thomas McNamee, wrote:

“ ... We love our cats with a purity and grace not possible in our love of our spouses, our parents, or even our children. People are too complicated for love as simple as what we bear to our cats. It is not agape, phileo, caritas, amor, or eros (roughly: selfless love, brotherly love, love of humankind, romantic love, and erotic love, respectively). I believe it has never been named. The kinship between our cats and ourselves reaches deep beneath consciousness, to a place before history, perhaps even before the development of self-expressible human intellect ... It is devotional, like prayer, and like prayer it is met with silence. Our devotion is what gives cats their power.”

And indeed, Christie was worth all the things – love, time, money, attention, and more.

I could write a book of stories featuring Christie. For example, Christie loved living in Siskiyou County. She was especially fond of our morning photos walks. Christie would follow me around with her tail straight up in the air. She looked like a little lion, and was so strong and fast! Christie even followed me into a wind storm; her tiny 8-pound body was at risk of being blown away. We ran back to the house together and snuggled.

I'm sad that Christie is gone. And, I keep coming back to gratitude. I’m grateful that she was part of our lives for 17.5 years. Christie had a long and adventurous life, and was a sweet and loving companion. She lived out her senior years in style and she will be in our memories forever.

***

Now onto this week's links …

1. When Your Marriage (and Cat) Turn 17-Years-Old is a letter I wrote in July 2020 about how Christie came into our lives.

2. The Inner Life of Cats by Thomas McNamee is a beautiful, honest, and informative book. Before Elaina's cancer diagnosis in 2018, I discovered McNamee's book. It’s one of the few books that I’ve keep on my tiny bookshelf because it’s so good. Over the last month, I re-read sections of the book. McNamee’s chapter on illness, aging, and death was particularly helpful. Christie, like many cats, was good at hiding her suffering. As a cat parent, it's so important to pay attention.

3. An Intermission from Instagram by Rebecca Green is a helpful essay about the benefits and downsides of Instagram. I hope you read the essay and explore Rebecca's website. I adore her art! In 2014, Rebecca illustrated our tiny house for Flow Magazine. Long story short: Rebecca sent me the illustrations for free! She didn't want the illustrations to sit in a drawer, and she requested that we frame the pieces. We framed the art and I love looking at it daily. I adore the portrait she drew of Christie and Elaina.

The Girls

Art by Rebecca Green

4. I'll leave you with The Rainbow Bridge, a beautiful poem, that our vet gave us:

The Rainbow Bridge

By the edge of a woods, at the foot of a hill,
Is a lush, green meadow where time stands still.

Where the friends of a man and woman do run,
When their time on earth is over and done.

For here, between this world and the next,
Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest.

On this golden land, they wait and they play,
Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.

No more do they suffer, in pain or in sadness,
For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness.

Their limbs are restored, their health renewed,
Their bodies have healed, with strength imbued.

They romp through the grass, without even a care,
Until one day they start, and sniff at the air.

All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back,
Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack.

For just at that instant, their eyes have met;
Together again, both person and pet.

So they run to each other, these friends from long past,
The time of their parting is over at last.

The sadness they felt while they were apart,
Has turned into joy once more in each heart.

They embrace with a love that will last forever,
And then, side-by-side, they cross over... together.

—Author unknown

***

Thank you for reading! If you find joy or inspiration from my work, please share it with a friend—or say thanks with a coffee.

With gratitude,
Tammy Strobel

Adventures with Elaina

When I attended the Creative Writing Workshop at the Paris American Academy a few years ago, I learned about the craft of writing. One of our teachers—Rolf Potts—offered lots of practical writing advice that stuck with me. His thoughts on travel writing, journaling, and memoir have been particularly helpful. Regarding memoir Potts said, “Memoir isn’t non-fiction. It is fiction because it isn’t reported journalism.”

I agree with Rolf because my memory is terrible. That’s why I’m obsessed with journaling and recording my days in my logbook. Journaling about my daily life is important because it gives me a sense of what’s happened in a typical week, a month, and over the course of the year. When I revisit my old journal entries, I'm able to coalesce themes and collect story ideas. Then I use the ideas for non-fiction articles, micro-memoirs, memoir style essays, and books.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how our cat Elaina came into our lives. I couldn’t remember all the details, and since my old journals are long gone, I couldn't use them as a source. Instead, I asked my husband, Logan, about his kitty adoption memories.

Here's a portion of the conversation we had last weekend:

“Did I lobby you for another cat after we got Christie?” I asked.

“Ohh yeah,” Logan said.

“Really?” I said.

“You lobbied for a cat before Christie, and you lobbied for another cat after we adopted Christie. And I thought it was going to continue on until we had a house full of cats,” Logan said.

I laughed because my memories of these shenanigans are fuzzy. Apparently, I really wanted a second cat. I was in luck because another kitten was about to come into our lives.

Stacy—a veterinarian student and our neighbor—found a litter of kittens in a cardboard box on the side of the road. She took the kittens home, made sure that their health was stable, and decided to foster them. And of course, I went to visit the kittens!

I fell in love with a small kitten named Alien. Stacy named the kitten Alien because her eyes were giant, and she looked like a cartoon cat. Alien was so wee that her body fit in the palm of my hand. She was all eyes, and she was snugly and sweet. Naturally, I told Logan about Alien when he got home from work.

After I brought Christie home, I promised Logan that I would not adopt another cat without him. We’d make the decision together. I convinced Logan to visit Stacy’s foster kittens. When we walked to her apartment, I lobbied hard to adopt Alien because "poor lonely Christie needed a friend."

Logan said, “I remember when we went over to Stacy’s apartment. Kittens were running around everywhere. They were climbing up the drapes, and another two were racing along the backside of the couch like little maniacs. I couldn't keep track of all the fuzzy little bodies. Alien walked over to you for a pet, and then she decided to come visit me. She subsequently fell asleep on my chest.”

“And then, you looked at me and nodded. I knew that we were going to take Alien home. You are such a sucker. I love you for that!” I said.

***

Alien was quickly renamed Elaina. I don’t know where the name Elaina came from, but it suited our new buddy.

Elaina explored our home in under one hour. She was a tiny detective. It took Christie weeks to feel safe enough to explore the bedrooms, kitchen, living room, closets, and bathroom. Christie was a skittish little kitten, not Elaina though.

Elaina exuded confidence, despite her wee size. She was so tiny that we made a special collar for her. Part of the collar retrofit included adding a bell. I almost stepped on Elaina a few times and was terrified that she’d get hurt. The bell was perfect because when Elaina wasn’t sleeping, we could hear her moving around the apartment.

Eventually, Elaina outgrew her small collar. Tiny—as we liked to call her—was anything but tiny. She was double the size of Christie the Cat. Elaina would beg for ice cream, treats, and eat all her kibble in one sitting. At one-point Elaina was so chubby, she couldn't clean her backside. That's a serious problem for a cat, and subsequently she went on a diet with timed feedings. I felt like a terrible cat parent! I shouldn’t have been giving Elaina so many treats. Plus, our veterinary told us not to free feed our cats, and we followed her advice. Thankfully, she slimmed down quickly.

Elaina loved living with us in rural Siskiyou County. She stalked lizards and mice, rolled in the dirt, flirted with fawns, befriended the neighbor dog, got stuck in trees, and followed up her activities by bringing dust into the house. We couldn’t resist her personality and snuggles. Elaina was a loving companion and adapted to all the different living situations we had over the years. Alas, Elaina and Christie were not best friends, like I hoped, but they tolerated one another well.

Elaina was diagnosed with cancer on January 26, 2018, and she died on October 25, 2018. Elaina’s death was hard to accept. But I’m thankful we had a long goodbye. We miss her snuggles, her meows, her big beautiful eyes, and her courageous nature.

Over the years, I took thousands of photos of Elaina. She would stare at the camera and pose for me. I'm grateful for the shots because they bring back good memories. Plus, the photos help me recall stories that I would have forgotten. My stories about Elaina might be slightly fictionalized, and that’s okay. Memoir isn’t non-fiction. But I don't need to write a journalistic article to show how much joy Elaina brought into our lives.

PS: Browse my favorites shots of Elaina the “tiny” cat here.

With gratitude,

Tammy

Wish You Were Here

“I’d given talks for years about how when it comes to grieving, the culture lies—you really do not get over the biggest losses, you don’t pass through grief in any organized way, and it takes years and infinitely more tears than people want to allot you. Yet the gift of grief is incalculable, in giving you back to yourself.” — Anne Lamott

Last week, I was writing at a local coffee shop, sipping coffee, and in the background, a local artist was playing live music. He started singing a rendition of Wish You Were Here, and as he sang tears welled up in my eyes because the song made me think of my step-dad, Mahlon, and I wish he was still here. 

Today—June 10, 2018—marks the 6th anniversary of Mahlon’s death and over the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on love, loss, beginnings, and endings. Part of my reflection process included journaling sessions. I also went through my blog archive and reviewed some of the posts I wrote about Mahlon while he was ill and after he died. 

Since Mahlon died, I've tried to write various books about loss, resilience, and how grief impacted my life. For example, I wrote a book proposal about resilience and loss in 2013 (which was rejected by dozens of publishers), and I tried to write a memoir about love and loss in 2014. I stopped writing the memoir because the stories were still too raw and painful.

Over the years, I've continued to journal about love, loss, and why it’s important to talk about dying and death. Despite all the writing, a book idea has not gelled, and that's okay. Some topics take longer to compost, and there are also some facets of my life that I'll probably never share in a public forum.

Like Anne Lamott noted in Stitches, I don’t think it’s possible to get over big losses. Writing and photography helped me cope with Mahlon’s death. Yet Missing Mahlon—and the gratitude I feel for our relationship—will never change.

With gratitude,

Tammy

PS: If you’re struggling with grief, illness, or want to learn how to talk about dying and death more openly, I’d suggest exploring the following resources: 

Audio

• How we die in America (and why it’s important to talk about it).

• How to talk to someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one.

Books

• Being Mortal by Dr. Atul Gawande

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

• Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

• Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott