How do you talk about someone you've known for so long? A simple
list of qualities seems inadequate, a pithy disservice. I've known
cats who were erratic, standoffish, openly hostile, passive, or
grouchy pieces of furniture that needed a wide berth at all times.
My tuxedo, Vivi, was none of these things.
I half-joke that I got him used at the age of six; my former
roommate, Alex, gave me him after it became obvious that her
fiancé only wanted one cat and she had two. When he first arrived,
I thought of Vivi as part of Alex's bed; he'd hang out on or under
there with Kay Kay as Alex played PS2. He was always pleasant, of
course, but we didn’t bond until a while later.
On December 30th, 2010, I noticed our awful apartment door had
opened by itself. This would happen if it wasn't thoroughly
locked; either the door was misshapen or at an angle, but I was
always paranoid about it being shut-shut when I left. I closed the
door and counted cats. One under Alex's bed and... that was it. I
knew I had to save him. I'd feel awful, he'd be confused, alone,
hurt, or worse, and Alex would kill me. I searched the complex and
the adjoining ones for hours until it began to get dark. I called
Alex, leaving a not-too-convincing message about “Any tricks to
get Vivi to listen to you”. My panic and sadness grew as the light
dimmed. One more walk around our building, I thought. And then,
when I called for Vivi, I heard a scared reply. He'd been in the
bushes by our corner the whole time, terrified. I approached him
and he bolted for the next shrub. This repeated twice. Of course,
he's scared. How do I get him out of there? I didn't want to dive
into a bush to have him bolt further out and the longer I waited,
the harder it would be to see anything. I went back inside,
closed, and locked all the windows except one in Alex's room
(there was no screen). I told Kay Kay to stay put (she would've
anyway) and opened Alex's window a few inches, and grabbed one of
Vivi's favorite toys, a small tennis ball. I chased him back to
the bush near the window, and held the ball out, telling him it
was ok, that I was here, that I'd save him. Slowly, he inched
forward and right at the moment he was about to sniff the ball, I
grabbed him behind the shoulder blades, thrust him through the
open window, pocketed the ball and then did a somersault throw the
open window, closing it behind me.
There were now two cats under Alex's bed. I couldn't lure him out
for the rest of the day, so I let him be; I was just happy he was
safe.
The next morning, I rolled over to see Vivi sitting in my chair
like it was his, staring at me. I asked him "Can I help you?"
With a loud meow, he hopped off the chair and onto the bed,
curling up right beside my pillow, purring as loudly as I'd ever
heard from any cat. Alex still fed, watered, and loved him, but as
she said when she left: “He's been yours for a while now.”
I was scared I'd fuck up, that I was too lazy (and looking back, I
was lax about the litter box for some time) but I was so happy I
finally had a cat, one who didn't just tolerate my company but
seek it out.
A former classmate of mine once said that the best compliment you
could give a cat was that they were like a dog and therefore, cats
were always inferior. She was smug and insufferable, but Vivi was
dog-like in some ways. He would follow me around almost always
purring, fall asleep on top of me or close by on a blanket. He’d
often steal my pillow, gradually pushing my head off or I’d wake
up asleep on his belly. He’d hop on my back as I was stretched out
reading and start licking the back of my head. I used to joke I
was pinned by him. He had his own vocabulary too, not just the
usual meows and meows, but “meh”, “mreh”, “mragh”, “murr”, sighs
of contentment, little grunts and huffs when he was upset at my
cleaning him off or medicating him and once, a rubber-duck squeak
when he relaxed off my bed. Play-biting is feline instinct, but he
did it so rarely that it was easy to forget he could. Unlike most
cats who would never let their paws be handled, he’d gladly accept
gentle handshakes and low fives, often falling asleep with his
paws on my forearm. A few years ago, when he had to be taken to
the emergency vet for litterbox issues (later revealed to be urine
crystals, fixed by switching to all wet food). Shortly before the
vet tech took him inside, he put his paw in my palm, taking and
giving reassurance. He had gone from hiding from new people when
in Alex's care to confidently coming up to them and announcing his
presence and asking for affection when they entered the apartment.
There were only two people he didn't really like; an irresponsible
scumbag of a landlord who was in and out of jail with multiple
DUIs and a former friend of mine who stole several hundred
dollars. Everyone else he greeted as a friend and got the same in
kind. He stayed by my side through countless illnesses and more
than a few hangovers. Once Ben, an old roommate, had an
inexplicable pain in his leg and passed out for hours; Vivi
perched on the back of the couch and wouldn’t move until Ben did.
Vivi was opinionated, open, codependent, loud and sometimes
overdramatic. He made noises after a particularly bad bout of
laxative-induced litter box and wall destruction that you’d think
I was trying to pull his legs off rather than clean them. We talk
about the danger of anthropomorphizing pets, but I often had
conversations with him, his responses usually translatable to a
thumbs up, thumbs down or protest. He had habit of stealing twist
ties, and once made a pyramid of foam earplugs under my bed, the
start of an inscrutable ritual. Vivi learned fetch from another
cat and would dart after wadded-up printer paper and crinkle
balls. Sometimes he would drop a fabric mouse on my bed or at my
feet, wide-eyed and expectant. Once left unsupervised, he darted
upstairs, drawn to the forbidden mystery of a housemate’s closed
room. I heard a quiet thumping and caught him with one paw under
the door, punching it with the other until it swung inward.
Years later, he defeated an automatic feeder within hours. He
figured out that even if the spout is high enough and the dividers
block future meals loaded on the belt, he could just use the
friction of his paw pad to move the belt when the motor is off. I
trained him to guess which closed palm held treats and to
high-five on command. He had his limits; the Roomba consistently
baffled and ambushed him, and he was inexplicably terrified of a
dangling tinsel-like rope toy. Once, Vivi stayed in my made bed as
I moved it across the room in the new apartment, totally relaxed,
looking at a friend & I as if it was natural and correct that
we did the heavy lifting while he reclined.
When black mold came out of our HVAC and several rooms were
unsafe, I had to sleep on the couch of an apartment I couldn’t
afford solo. When I was at my lowest, he hopped up on top of the
couch, reached down and patted me on the shoulder with his paw,
twice. It wasn't a stretch; it was incredibly human. The gesture
didn't banish my depression but took a chunk out of it, letting
the light get in. His un-cat-like habits only served to endear him
to me. A friend of mine once said that I didn't treat him like a
pet; I treated him like a roommate. As far as I'm concerned, I
lost a dear friend.
In November 2020 when I was in Virginia, I heard a scared meow
come from under a Ford explorer. I looked down there to find a
skinny black and brown tabby with one of the longest tails I've
ever seen. I beckoned him to follow me, but he stayed put until I
ran upstairs and gave him a can of Fancy Feast. After that, I was
his favorite person. I called a friend of mine who'd fostered cats
but didn't get a response. I asked the neighbors who already had
two cats if they could look after this one for the night, but they
said, understandably, they had their hands full. There were a
gaggle of GMU undergrads in the parking lot who ooh-ed and aaah-ed
and exclaimed how precious this cat was but none of them were
actually going to do anything to help him. I took him upstairs,
put him in the spare bathroom and give him another can of fancy
feast along with a temporary litter box and some water. He
attacked the food, and upended the bathroom trash can trying to
get the last Fancy Feast molecules out of there.
He gladly accepted food, water, and reassurance, but none of that
mellowed him. He shredded two rolls of toilet paper (one on the
dispenser and one on the floor), yelled incessantly, broke free of
the confines of the bathroom repeatedly, despite the door being
shut and locked from the inside. It got so bad I had to supplement
the lock with towels and several heavy boxes. I decided to call
him Charlie after the character from It's Always Sunny. When
Charlie was screaming and distressed in the guest bathroom, Vivi
walked over to the door and made calming noises until Charlie
mellowed out. I didn't have to ask him, I didn't have to coerce, I
didn't have to say or do anything. Vivi just knew what needed to
be done and did it.
The reinforcements only held for a few hours; At about 3:00 a.m.,
Charlie broke free of his confines. He could’ve done anything,
could’ve fought Vivi, destroyed furniture or appliances or carpet,
tried to break into a trashcan, opened up cabinets, anything at
all. What he chose to do was dart into my room at full speed,
lunge onto my bed and furiously lick my cheek. He was just happy
to be there.
The next morning when I got in hold of the animal shelter, I put
Charlie in an old duffle bag. He protested, doing his best
impression of the fighting cloud from old Warner Brothers
cartoons. As the bag’s weatherproof nylon strained and stretched,
Vivi, ever the dignified one, gave me a look of “Are you sure you
have this under control?” from his perch on my old chair. Charlie
destroyed that duffle bag, but I don't blame him, especially since
I don't know how long it had been since he had real food. He was
adopted within a few days of being examined and chipped and I
still think of him often.
I'd had pets before; a box turtle when I was younger who was given
to a friend of mine who stole from my family. My dad got a dog, a
Westie named Rocky who was around for a few years before his
ex-wife took him with her. Later, we adopted another Westie named
Toby who made up for his impulsiveness with enthusiasm; Dad often
joked that we’d get him another brain cell for Christmas. I only
saw him a few times a year since he was on the other side of the
country.
I’d been around cats before too. A very sweet all-white cat named
Pearl lived with us in Falls Church and cried when she saw me
packing to leave 18 months later, and a reclusive, mercurial black
cat named Toulouse. I’d never had a pet who I was the sole
caretaker of until Vivi.
He was the toughest cat I ever met, hands down. After weeks of
being tormented by the aforementioned landlord’s cat, B. Vivi had
enough and chased him out of the house. I didn’t see B. for a
week. When he finally walked back inside one afternoon and saw
Vivi, he growled. Vivi shrugged and lunged, chasing him back out
onto the sidewalk. He’d made it through so much, from spitting out
a tooth to needing a bump on his forehead removed (benign, though
it was causing him enough pain to shun touch near the area and he
flinched under sedation), urine crystals, move after move after
move, helping me rescue a stray and being co-pilot on my thesis,
by my side. When I set the wool cat cave on top of his chair (my
old chair, unfit for human spines but perfectly acceptable as a
perch) he hopped in and fell asleep for five hours.
He made it to 18 and a half, about 90 in cat years. We carried him
into the waiting room like an emperor; his wool cave held by a
good friend, followed by me holding his blanket, toys, and pillow.
Despite not having eaten anything in five days, he fought the
sedation, sitting up, hiccupping, and giving me a final look of
weary sadness. With his bunny between his front paws, I closed his
eyes and tucked him in one last time.
This wall of words feels so inadequate to describe someone so
caring, intelligent, and precious. Often, and especially as he
declined, I lamented that I could not tell him exactly how much he
meant to me. I realize now that we have said everything worth
saying in every look, every hug, every purr, and every touch.
I still miss you buddy. I always will.
~Jesse Kirkpatrick
Year
2023 Tributes 