To Everything There Is a Season

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from the Cat

By Andrea Peebles

It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.
~Eleanor Farjeon

After months of pleading, my husband had finally agreed I could have a cat.

And Cody was definitely mine from day one. He was in my lap, between my feet, on the arm of my chair, on the side of my tub and even once from a miscalculated jump, in the tub with me. For twelve years he followed every step I took.

When you are that close it's amazing what you can learn about an animal that cannot talk. I learned that he loved to drink warm water that dripped from the faucet. He was a lefty. He loved to be combed but not brushed. He preferred to sit on my right side. And when he got mad at me for any reason, such as clipping his nails, he would park himself in front of me where I could clearly see him and turn his back to me ignoring any pleas for forgiveness. His favorite food was chicken. He never drank water that was not dripping or running. But he always had to have a fresh bowl of water on the right side of his food dish. He knew the word "milk" even when you spelled it and went running full speed to the refrigerator anytime it was mentioned.

He had a claustrophobic aversion to closed doors. He wanted all inside doors open at all times even though he had no desire to be on the other side of them. He dearly loved milk and ice cream together -- vanilla but not chocolate. And he could apparently tell time. On more than one occasion when our power went out, he would come to my side of the bed, lock his claws into the sheet, and "pop" the sheet until I woke up. And was the sole reason that we were never late to work.

From the very beginning we noticed something strange about his eating habits -- he never put his head in a bowl and ate from the bowl like other cats. Instead he picked up his dry food with his left paw and raked it over the edge into his water bowl, swished it around, and then fished it out and ate it off his left paw. If his bowls got mixed up and the water was on the left he would push and shove until he turned it over trying to get it where it belonged. He couldn't or wouldn't eat canned cat food because when he placed it in the water bowl, it sank to the bottom and disintegrated and he couldn't get it back out.

For twelve years it was our nightly routine to spend a half hour before bed in my bedroom recliner. I would read and my faithful friend kept me company on the right arm of my chair. He used to fall asleep there every night, at which point all four paws would dangle off the sides and his head would be hanging down over the end. Although it looked uncomfortable, for twelve years it remained our way of winding down the day. Wherever I sat, if he wasn't in my lap, he was on my right on the arm of the couch or chair I was in. We were close and we knew each other very well, which is why when he started nudging and pawing at me I couldn't help but notice behavior that was out of character for him. Cody hadn't been himself since just before Christmas and at first I attributed it to a ploy for additional attention and just passed it off.

All through December he got slower and slower. He slept more and ate less and seemed to be having difficulty getting around. In mid-January he took a turn for the worse. My friend kept urging me to "do what is best for Cody and let him die in dignity." I knew she meant well and though I tried, I could never make peace with that decision. I couldn't look in those big gold eyes and convince myself that was best for Cody. He wasn't himself but he never seemed to be in pain. He got slower and his breathing seemed labored at times, but he still followed my every step. I justified my aversion to euthanasia by thinking about how I valued the older people that were in my life. Their breathing was sometimes labored, they had slowed down, their memory wasn't what it used to be -- but they still had a purpose and a place in my life. I simply couldn't do it. And so he lived. And he continued with his strange new behavior of nudging me in one spot... for attention.

And though I did notice that it was always the same side, since he sat primarily on my right I assumed it was just convenient. However, after three months of him pushing his head up against me and just leaving it there, he began to do something else strange. He began to place his paw on that same spot and just hold it there even if he had to lock his claws into my clothes for support. Finally, one night out of sheer exasperation at carefully removing his claws from my new sweater for the fourth time, I just blurted out to my husband, "Do you suppose Cody knows something about this spot that I don't?" And that is when he looked up from the TV and said, "Isn't that the same place where you have that unusual dark spot?" I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact it is and maybe I should go and have the doctor look at it after all."

I had noticed an odd looking mole more than a year before and had been watching it for any changes; since none had occurred I had pretty much forgotten about it until now. However, I began to think back and realized that Cody had been gravitating to only this one place for the past few months, so I decided to make an appointment with a dermatologist just to be on the safe side.

I made an appointment to have that "mole" removed. Nine days later, my beloved Cody-cat died peacefully in his sleep in a little bed I'd made him in my closet while I sat quietly at his left side.
My one last gift to him -- to allow him the peace and comfort of dying in his own home with the one he loved at his side. And his one last gift to me -- a biopsy confirming malignant melanoma in the earliest possible stage, caught early only because of his persistent nudging in the last days of his life.

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