eimarra | He's gone

Cloud died this morning, two months shy of 14 years.

When I adopted him from the rescue society in the East Bay (he had been a feral kitten), they told me his name was Ferris. Silly name for a cat. Sillier, still, I suppose, is the fact that I thought they said Ferrous, and my first reaction was that that was the wrong color.

Dancer was easy to name. She was tiny with these long, graceful legs.

Cloud, though? It took me a day or two. He was silver and gray with undertones almost of lavender, and wonderfully fluffy. Skittish, too. He would run if anyone approached him, though he was happy to curl up next to someone on the bed and go to sleep. I woke up in the morning to a semi-overcast sky, with all these different shades and the light shining through and making some glow. That's when I knew that Cloud was his name -- for the colors, for the fluffiness, for the fleeing nature.

Dancer was so affectionate, she was almost a dog. She loved laps, would climb up onto people's shoulders to get closer to them, and played fetch with the little fur-covered plastic mice.

Cloud would lie there and watch me playing with Dancer as though he wanted to join in, but he never did, even when I threw the mouse in his direction.

He gradually warmed to people -- first to me and the kids of the family I lived with, letting us approach and pet him. He always liked women and kids better than men; maybe he'd been frightened by men while wild. I don't know. Still, he spent more time hiding than visible when people came to visit, and some friends teasingly suggested I was just making up the second cat.

Introducing him to Jazz, the dog my husband had when we first met, was interesting. Jazz was eager to meet the cats, cornering them. Cloud didn't like that much, and Jazz got a scratch across his nose for his trouble. Once Jazz calmed down (after several more visits) and left the cats alone, Cloud calmed down a fair bit, too.

In fact, my mother-in-law came to visit us shortly after we got married, and she brought her dog with her. Rain was a beautiful dog who was a bit spacy. She played with invisible friends. When she came to our house, she walked by Cloud like he wasn't even there. This annoyed him, and he started following her, trying to get her to notice him.

Cloud lived with me in seven different places, apartments and houses. As he got older, he mellowed more. He didn't always run when my husband came near him. He shifted to sleeping with the 7yo when 7yo was about 2-1/2 or 3. He started coming out to greet visitors, and would even jump up on the couch and try to get them to pet him. He never was a lapcat, though.

Over the last year, he's slowly gone downhill, and I've made no secret of my worries about him. Yesterday, I knew his time had come. I sat down with him on my lap for a couple of hours and spent what time I could throughout the day. I did my best to keep him comfortable. He didn't move much, and I made a bed of towels for him in the kitchen to rest on.

When I got up this morning, my husband said Cloud was still with us. By the time I got out to the kitchen, though, he'd stopped breathing. He was a good cat, and he will be missed.