Maji the Cat

Sixteen years ago, when I was working as an assistant manager at Motel 6, I was in bed one night when the security guard told me he needed to talk to me (yes, I lived on site). When I opened the door, he told me that he was trying to catch a tiny kitten that he had seen by the freeway. Unfortunately, he was trying to catch the kitten with a donut or something equally lame. I suggested beef jerky and milk and went back to bed. Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the door again. This time he was holding a struggling little brown kitten. "careful! She bites!" he told me. "Nonsense!" I reached out and took the little kitten and cuddled it to me. She settled down immediately and the security guard was pretty disgusted since she had bitten and scratched him more than once. I made the kitten a nest in the bathroom, complete with a make-shift litter box, and some milk, and went back to bed. I spent the next couple of days getting acquainted with her. After there was a minimal amount of trust established, I decided that she needed a bath. Come to find out, she wasn't brown at all but gray and white!

My mother stopped by to visit a couple of weeks later. At that point, Maji was hiding under the bed because she didn't like strangers. My mom (a psychotherapist) crawled under the bed to have a little session with Maji. When she emerged, she announced that my new little kitten had PTSD. Maji never quite got over her distrust of strangers and was very suspicious of people in general until she had a chance to get to know them.

She was my only cat for a couple of years until I was working at Cammar Growers and we wound up trapping a couple of feral kittens. Rambo and Socks are brothers - Rambo came home with me first by a couple of weeks. When Socks arrived, he was pretty panicked in the bathroom so we sent Rambo in to comfort him.

Maji was the alpha cat of the bunch. She distrusted strange cats as well and would greet new arrivals with hisses and posturing.

She was my little house alarm. She usually met me at the door when I arrived home unless something was wrong. Her spot, and everyone knew this, was on the right side of the bed. No one else dared to sleep in her spot. Even me.

When I had my surgery in 2003, she spent hours and hours curled up with me - carefully avoiding the incision. She would sit on the arm of the chair and just purr at me to get better. I could never hope for a better cat.

Three years ago, she was diagnosed with hyper thyroidism and high blood pressure. She had to go on medication twice a day for it. Our lives were ruled by Maji's medicine. She would wait on the bed at 6am and meow imperiously at Roomie until he brought her the medicine, cleverly disguised in soft cat food or baby food. At 6pm she would turn up in the kitchen and meow until we gave her her evening medication.

Six months ago, she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. She was eating about every hour and a half or so. She was constantly hungry. Last weekend it seemed as though she was taking a turn for the worse. She was having difficulty breathing. We took her to the vet on Tuesday and her little lungs were almost completely filled with fluid. There was an analysis done of the fluid they pulled from the lungs and there was a tumor in her lungs. Basically, she was on borrowed time.

On Friday, July 2, 2010, we had her put to sleep. Her last meal was tri-tip and milk. She was in so much pain, she could only lay in one position and she didn't walk so much anymore as totter everywhere. She spent most of her time under the ottoman in the livingroom and she couldn't eat very much anymore. By Friday, you could tell her lungs were filling up again and she was having difficulty breathing. She was down from her original thirteen pounds to six pounds. She knew her time was drawing near because she had spent the two nights prior to Friday, talking to Roomie and visiting with him, something she normally didn't do. I spent most of my time downstairs in the livingroom last week with her.

She hated going to the vet's office. The one thing I remained firm on was that the vet was coming to the house when it was time. I didn't want her last minutes filled with fear. She died in her safe spot, underneath the ottoman in the livingroom. It was a small enough thing to pay the extra bit of money for a house call after all the joy and comfort she gave me throughout her life.

It is so very hard to say goodbye. She came into my life a little ball of fighting fur and she left my life, fighting just as hard. She kept my secrets and listened to my worries and woes for sixteen years. She was cranky, opinionated, and didn't like very many people or cats. And I love her. I haven't slept since Friday because I've spent the last sixteen years sleeping with a pissed off fur coat and it's so very difficult to suddenly realize that the fur coat is no longer there to meow angrily when you accidentally encroach on her side of the bed.

Enjoy the rainbow bridge, Maj. My life was so much more enriched since you came into it, and it's dimmed considerably since you left.