Well, I certainly didn’t expect to hear that my dear cat George Burns, Jr. died this past week. Those of you who knew him know how special he was. And so danged cute! If I ever figure out how to upload a photo to my blog AND have enough internet speed to do it, those of you who didn’t know him will just see that he was the cutest cat on the planet.
George came to me, as most of the cats in my life, purely unexpectedly and by accident, literally. Back in 1999, I was looking for a cat and went to my vet at the time, who had a couple lost causes, brought in by well meaning people who didn’t want to, or couldn’t afford the costs of care for these two unrelated boys who had had a rough start to life. George had a broken back – possibly due to some rough play with a couple of children. They weren’t sure how much use of his back legs he would recover, but he was making steady progress and they were eager for find suckers, er, a forever home for him. His side kick at the time was Michael, who was a long haired little guy who had to have his whole body shaved for some kind of parasite issue and looked really stupid, along with having some issues with his lungs. But he is another story entirely. I think I had finally settled on George, or maybe it was Michael as “the one.” My friend who worked at the vets office was nice enough to deliver both of them to me, figuring I wouldn’t have the heart to reject either of them, and of course, I didn’t. In between their convalescing at the vets and when they finally came home, another cat showed up in the picture – Noah – so suddenly there were three new boys in the house, all about the same age. They bonded and were thick as thieves, harassing the older cats in the house to no end. (No, this isn’t where I tell you how many there were and you start the same old tired “cat lady” jokes.)
Getting to know George was pretty interesting. For one, even though he walked much better than they ever thought he would, he definitely had issues. Found it out accidentally when I pushed him off the counter and rather than landing on his feet, he did more of a kind of crash landing using his whole body for the landing point(s). The look he gave me was, well, vintage George Burns. He also couldn’t really stand firmly on all fours and seemed to carry most of his weight in his front legs, thus developing a broader chest than most cats as petite as he ended up being. When he turned he would forget to move his back legs and sometimes, well, end up a bit crossed up. Yet he could run and he could fight. When he was feeling especially feisty, he would run up and down the hall like a Tasmanian devil, harassing his elders to no end. And George could climb trees, man could he climb, pulling himself up with his front legs and using the back ones for balance only. I started to joke that he looked like the guys in the gym who all forgot to work out their chicken legs. Again, I would get that George Burns look.
At a fairly young age, he went through lives two, three and four by getting the urinary tract blockage male cats sometimes get – not once but twice - and finally having a dicey surgery to correct it. Even though that counts as castration in most vets’ books, he still acted the tough guy, yet with the sweetest disposition once he let you get to know him. He had this thing he would do, we would call it “the flop” and often we could get him to do it on command. I would call him over and tell him to flop, while pointing to the floor in front of him. He would put his head on the hard wood floor, turn his face up towards mine, then let the rest of his body just fall – flop! to the floor. Once there and stretched out ever so comfortably, I would spin him in circles a few times, stop, then spin him a couple more times for good measure. Occasionally he would get up too quickly from this and walk a bit wobbly, but mostly he would just lay there looking adorable, waiting for another spin.
All my cats were trained to come running from outside when I yelled “treats” or banged the tuna can with the can opener. They would spit and hiss at each other til I got the can opened and divvied out. George ate in his own sweet time, pushing most of the tuna off the plate rather than in his mouth and making quite the mess. I guess he even ate like an old man, which is what we would call him, because he seemed to be such an old, wise spirit, except when he was being a royal pain in the ass.
George developed various ailments throughout his life, mostly kidney infections, which I could always recognize by the amount and places he would decide to pee around the house. Lives 5 and 6 got taken up with these antics. And he almost lost number 7 when I got really fed up with it, but because he was so darned cute, I let him keep it, figuring he would need it later.
George never entirely healed from his back injury and it impacted his legs. I really think whatever nerve damage he had impacted and contributed to the ailments that came along as he aged. He had more and more trouble balancing himself in the cat box, often trying to stand on all fours on the side of the box, something even a more balanced cat would have trouble successfully managing. But he wanted to do things his own way. He also was fond of foot soaks, putting his back feet, one after the other, in the water bowl and shaking them off energetically, often knocking the bowl right over. The other cats and dogs were not amused. Yet the strangest things was, when he slept, his back legs were quite active, doing the whole running, rabbit punching thing as if they were perfectly fine. In his dreams, I know he ran like a regular cat.
George would wake me up in the middle of the night by knocking books or other objects off my nightstand as he used them to rub his face. Scared the heck out of me and I finally stopped keeping a glass of water at my bedside. He would find any sleeping hands that fell outside the blankets and rub them like crazy as well, so anyone who ever spent the night in any part of my home was forewarned to hide the hands or risk an early morning wake up loving. When he couldn’t get a hand out, he would settle for sleeping on my head, or as close as he could get to the back of my head where he would gently (most times) massage my scalp. Purrr.
In the summer of 2009 he has more kidney issues and while I spent 2 weeks on a trip to Germany and France in the fall of 2009, he spent most of the two weeks at the vet in intensive care with total liver failure. The day I was to call to tell the vet to let him go he made a complete turn around and his blood work looked great. I know I had a better time during my two weeks (other than worrying about him), but I am pretty sure his two weeks cost me about the same. Thus, 2009 took up lives 7 and 8.
In December 2010 as I readied myself to go into the Peace Corps in April and was figuring out who would take care of my “kids,” my dog Peata suddenly died. A week later, George was diagnosed with diabetes. I decided to start him on insulin and by the time I was ready to turn him over to my great tenants, who agreed to keep him and care for him, he was doing quite well. George and Debi, my tenant, shared the diabetes diagnosis, she being diagnosed in March, and they were a happy pair until his passing, when he cashed in that last life here on earth. He could not have had a better friend during his last few months and I know he was happy being the cat of the house and master of the universe he had previously shared with all the dumb animals he felt I used to humor for no good reason. He has been buried somewhere on my property – I know they picked the perfect spot – so that I will be able to sit and talk to him when I return. George Burns, Jr. Rest in Peace, run fast, flop often and pee where ever you damn well please!
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