Have I told you about the time I tried to quit journalism? It’s true, I did. Between 2006 and 2009, I gave up on it. It was too hard. Looking back on it, I think I needed to take time to figure out how badly I really wanted to be a part of a profession that didn’t seem like it had much space for someone like me. I had to know how much of me would be missing without writing.
Those were intense years — years I felt a noticeable void. Seeing how I was struggling, Joe suggested I take a writing class. I didn’t need to be a working journalist to still practice the art of writing, something I have always enjoyed. I followed his advice: I bought my first Moleskine and eagerly arrived at the local art school. I was the youngest person in the class — which was entirely comprised of women — by at least 20, 30 years. For an entire semester, we spent one evening a week getting comfortable with giving our words to other peoples’ eyes. There are several times in my life when I thought I was broken beyond repair, and was rebuilt by the kindness of others. This class was one of those times.
One piece of advice my teacher gave was to try not to write about our pets. The class was not only predominantly female, but it was also predominantly attended by cat ladies — myself included. The cat vibes were very strong. The instruction was to the effect of: “instead of projecting your emotions onto your cat, try writing about them more directly.” Good advice, really. But also, maybe she didn’t want to spend a semester reading about cats.
For all this time, I’ve adhered to that advice. I haven’t written about my cats (or my dogs, for that matter).
But this week, we said goodbye to one of my beloved old girls. And I decided the time is right to break the rule. I’m finally writing about my cat. To people who have lost actual people this past year, I will caution that this may seem ridiculous — to write an obituary for a cat. I’m trying to wrestle with how ridiculous I feel, too, having let this beast curl around my heart all these years.
PICCOLA, age 18, died on Monday, May 10 at home, in the sunny spot where she liked to nap, surrounded by her family. She was adopted from the Spokane Humane Society in 2003 at six-weeks-old: one member of a large multi-colored litter extracted from a barn somewhere near Cheney, Wash. Her adoption was the realization of a lifelong wish for an orange cat. I grew up in a very animal-friendly home that had a strict female-cat-only policy. Orange girl-cats can be hard to find.
Piccola (pronounced Pee-Coe-La) was small enough to stand up in a pint glass (I know this because I stood her up in a pint glass). Within days, she proved that she was not a kitten, but a miniature apex predator. Shortly after her adoption, she dragged a fully-seasoned T-bone steak — waiting for the grill to be lit — off the kitchen counter, onto the floor, and into the living room. She had a tendency to meet visitors belly-first: she would fling herself at the screen door when they knocked, like it was a velcro wall, or like she was a real-life window Garfield. Instead of suction cup hands, she had razor blades. Most people who met Piccola as a kitten did not like her.
Her conflict with windows was life-long: she could not resist the call of warm sunshine and cool air, and yet time and again, this love would vex her. In the first apartment Joe and I shared — a first-floor unit in a 1904 brick building in downtown Spokane, raised about 8 feet off the sidewalk — Piccola would chirp to visitors filling their parking meters below. Once, though, she leaned too hard on the screen and fell out the window, tumbling to the sidewalk below. It was rush hour; we sprinted outside to save her. Years later, at a house we rented, we backed out of the driveway, only to see she had become sandwiched between the locked front door and its screen when we closed it.
We liked to joke that Piccola was a “diva dictator” — the lovechild of Celine Dion and Kim Jong-Un. Sometimes, we wondered if she was actually a ginger-colored raccoon. She is the reason every garbage can in our home has a flip-top. Used Q-tips were her favorite food. For a time, she realized she could open the bathroom cabinet with her paw, open a box of tampons inside, grab their crinkly packaging in her mouth, and ferret them into hiding places around the house. Once, we came home from a vacation to a living room floor covered in tampons, like confetti with their colorful wrappers. Funny, except my grandpa had been helping cat-sit, so that was weird.
A vet remarked early in her life that the wispy soft kitten fur that covered Piccola would thicken with age, but it never did. I like to wear black clothing, which means I was often covered in a thin icing of Piccola. Once, after a day of cross-country flights, I arrived in upstate New York to find that a large hunk of orange fur, affixed to my leg, had made the journey, too.
Joe believed Piccola was trying to kill him, and there was a mass of evidence proving this. In every home we’ve had with stairs, Piccola would wait at the bottom, cutting across his path mid-descent. More than once he cautioned that if I arrived home and he was dead, likely Piccola was the culprit. Early on in our relationship, Piccola attacked him as he slept. When he walked down hallways, she’d leap out at him from around corners, scurrying away from the scene. She napped inside of his bass drum — the sound of her entering and exiting like a cork exiting a bottle. Long after tampons had lost their fun, we found a setlist his band had written out in advance of a show. She had hauled it upstairs, and shredded it to pieces at the base of her cat tree. The band took Piccola’s advice and changed the set. In the end, I believe Joe loved her the most.
Piccola lived in three states and 15 different homes, escaping at least once from each. She enjoyed laying in front of the television speaker, her fur muffling the sound of every program. In the final years of her life, she found the playmate she always desired in a Boston Terrier puppy, named Magnus, who she would chase to his terror and ecstatic delight. Several times daily, she would bow her head and give him a silent command to lick her face.
Someone smart told me once that you can be a journalist to get an up-close look at life, or you can be a journalist to spectate other people living life. I have worried during the pandemic that for years I have spent far too long in the latter camp: too busy working to live my own real life. (I’m not the only one, I guess: I read a great story today and proclaim myself a Glennon. I have uttered these words almost exactly: “I don’t understand what ‘fun’ is. I understand what ‘rest’ is. I understand what ‘work’ is. I kind of understand what ‘self-care’ is,” she said. “But this idea of ‘fun’ of which you speak is not something I’ve grasped.”)
The end of her life has made me realize that throughout it all, in the face of every choice that mattered, Piccola was there. Every stressful decision, every difficult story, every move, every bit of joy and loss and anger and fear has been something I shared with this small being. Her fuzzy head and drooly mouth and unbelievably loud voice (you can hear it Two Minutes Past Nine) were constants I could rely on. She has been there since I was a person I can barely remember being anymore. Her loss is like winter in my heart, but I know feelings like this mean I’m not spectating life after all. I’m living it, at least a little — even if its a weird, cat hair-covered life.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw a flash of orange out the front window and assumed it to be one of the rabbits that feasts on our unmowed grass this time of year. I stood up and peeked through the blinds, only to see a ginger cat with piercing green eyes staring back. They were eyes that promised mischief. I jumped back from the window, startled. How the hell did Piccola get out? I was ready to run outside to grab her, only to see that she was curled up in the living room, sleeping in the sun, where she always was. That was a young cat outside. Sometimes it was hard for me to remember Piccola had gotten old.
The morning of her final day, I checked our security camera from overnight: at two minutes to midnight, there had been activity at the front door. I clicked the video on my phone, and watched as the orange cat quietly crept up on the porch, and peered inside our house. Paying its respects, I think, to a great and fearsome goddess. Or maybe that’s me projecting my emotions on my cat.
All I know is that if I come home one day, and there’s a Q-Tip, or a tampon, lying on my welcome mat, I will know for certain that for 18 years we were not living with a housecat, but the mystical force of nature we’d suspected all along.
10. Orange
I reflexively dislike cats but this was legitimately moving!
Awww Leah, so sorry to hear of Piccola’s passing. If it’s any consolation, her obit had me grinning ear to ear. She sounded like a wonderful kitty with a life well lived. ❤️