Last night, at around eleven-twenty, Maggie passed away.
I had gone to bed and was asleep by nine-thirty. HRH woke me up around eleven-forty to say, “You need to get up. Something’s happened, love. Maggie’s dead.”
She was just outside the door to my office, lying on her side with her eyes open, staring at nothing. She was still warm. There was a bit of blood and clear fluid on the floor under her head. She’d been rattling when she breathed for the past couple of days, and she’s been coughing for months. She just finally wore out. HRH had found her when he came upstairs after playing on the computer.
I sat there and stroked her for about half an hour, thinking about the seventeen years we’d spent together. She’s been with me through all my boyfriends, eight different apartments, five other cats in the family, a baby who became a toddler and an enthusiastic preschooler who was so proud of being able to pick her up. She was the first to meet us when we brought Liam home, peeking into the carry seat. She’s been with me for everything important: my university graduations, my wedding, our celebrations, writing my books, and a part of most of Liam’s milestones too.
Maggie’s favourite spot to sleep was in the curve of my stomach when I lay on my side. She was the only cat who would stay in the room when I played my cello. When I first began playing, she would jump onto the chair behind me and stand on her hind legs, resting one paw on my shoulder and touching the scroll with the other. When she was a kitten, her favourite pieces of music were Schubert’s Trout quintet and the Death and the Maiden quartet. (I’m not kidding. She used to jump up onto the bookcase that housed my CD player and sit in front of the speakers when I put the CD on.) When she was little she used to suck on one of my knuckles and knead my hand, because she and her littermates lost their mother at only two weeks old; it took her ages to grow out of the habit. She was also the only cat who would do ritual with me, walking through the circle and sitting nearby to keep me company while I worked, leaving once the circle was down. Mags was usually the most social of our cats, coming out to casually insinuate herself into a group of friends until someone realised that there was a cat on their lap. t! coined the term “Breyfogling” to describe a particular sideways prance she’d do as a young cat, her back arched and her head tossed back so that she was all angles yet flowing, because if she’d been wearing a cape while she did it she’d look just like a Norm Breyfogle panel. The tip of her left ear was bent back, from an unidentifiable accident when she was a kitten.
Maggie was just always around me. She’d be on a cushion on the floor of the office if I was working. She’d be next to me on the bed if I was lying down. If I sat on the couch to read, she’d be in my lap. I used to have to push her off my office chair if I’d left it to get a drink or a reference book, because she’d steal it whenever she got a chance. She had dozens of nicknames: Mags, Maglet, Princess Maggie Puss-Meow, Mugwort, and the name almost everyone knew her by, Maggie. Her full name was Margaret. She loved bagels and would claw through a plastic bag to get them. She was even more insane about old-fashioned doughnuts dipped in granulated sugar. She would literally climb your arm to get to one if you held it above your head to keep it out of her reach. She also loved french fries (specifically McDonalds’ fries, not that we had them often and stopped eating them years ago); she would hook one out of the box and catch it in her mouth, then give a sharp shake of her head to, well, break its neck before she ate it. She enjoyed the occasional slice of olive from a vegetarian pizza. She also liked drinking mint tea.
Telling Liam this morning was almost as hard as making myself stop stroking her last night, as wrapping her in a deep brown towel before laying her gently in a cat carrier. I took his hands and said, “I have something important to tell you. Maggie is dead. She died last night while we were asleep.” “She’s gone?” he said, and his face began to crumple up. “But I want to see her again!” Then came the question of why, and I had to explain that when cats get very very old, they slow down and get tired, and eventually they just lay their heads down and die; it’s part of life. We assured him that he would see her again in the Summerlands, and that Gully was taking good care of her for us right now.
Some past Maggie-themed posts:
Maggie gets her own back at the annoying machines that steal her laps
Maggie turns sixteen
And there are others that were lost in the Great MySQL Crash, notably the “Here at the Maggie Institute for Lentil Research” post that recounted the day t! came over for lunch and Maggie sat on his lap, carefully hooking her paw over the edge of his bowl of soup and delicately coaxing a lentil out of it.
She was my baby, the first cat I ever got on my own. Seventeen years is a long, long run, and she had a wonderful life. I will miss her, but I’ve known she would eventually fade away. She’d been fading for months, feeling slower and slower when I placed a hand on her, feeling lighter and lighter as if she was losing energy. I always hoped she’d die in her sleep, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there at the very end for her. But she knew I loved her deeply. And somewhere in the Summerland there’s a big orange cat butting his head against hers, and another black and white cat who is perhaps less annoying in the afterlife than he was in this life licking the top of her head like he used to do.
Because she died at home, I don’t have a memento of her in the way of the fur a vet shaved from the area for the injection, the way we do for Gully and Roman. It feels odd not to have something of hers left, although I know that somewhere we must still have the black collar she used to wear. She never had a favourite toy or blanket. Once upon a time I thought I’d want her cremated and her ashes back, but I know I don’t need that now. I don’t really need a memento, because she’s always with me.
Thank you for everything, Maggie. I love you so very, very much. I hope I gave you as much joy and comfort during our time together as you gave to me.
Well, here I am, writing my now annual night-before post. There is cake, but no icing yet, as HRH is designing the cake illustration this year and I had no idea how much icing to mix up. I have wrapped a couple of small gifts from us for the boy (one home-made, two actually separate parts of the same gift). There are small, adorable home-made gift bags to send home with small guests. There are a pile of balloons in the bathtub, hidden by the shower curtain. (There is nowhere else to safely store them overnight.) I have just finished printing thank you cards for those who have gifted the boy, but who are not small children and thus will not be here tomorrow. There’s not much else to do, as I’ll be mixing pizza dough and chopping fruit tomorrow morning. I’m not doing cookies this year, or extra cupcakes, since I am not feeding a small army. Small people, yes, but not large numbers.
This morning I woke up around ten past seven, and heard HRH and Liam talking about going to see Grandma. It’s Liam’s first Grandma day since she fell ill last month, and both of them have been missing their alternate Fridays together. By seven-forty Liam had his shoes on and was cheerfully heading out the door with HRH. I waved to them as they drove away, then made myself a cup of latte and settled down to enjoy my morning of nothing. This is my first day in ages of not being home with the boy, or taking him out to childcare then getting home to begin the day around ten and hit my stride around twoish, only to finish around four or four-thirty and go get him again.
This was the boy’s pre-birthday weekend, also known as The Third Birthday! Family Edition.
All the day’s correspondence handled (responses, business, weekend planning, proposals): done.
Both literally and figuratively.