I didn't want to love Scooter. For a long time I didn't let him get to me. That seemed to be fine with him, because for a long time he didn't warm up to us.
Scooter used to live in a big old house in Tunkhannock, PA with three other cats and one human: Sarah's piano teacher Jean. Whenever I went with Sarah to her lessons, I sat among furry bodies that purred. Jean had a lot of health problems, but it was still a shock when we learned of her sudden death. This was Sarah's first experience of death, and as part of helping her with this, we decided to take one of Jean's cats, even though we already had one cat at home and had just recently adopted a little kitten. We let Sarah pick which one she wanted, since she knew them all better than we did, and she chose the "runt" of the community, a beautiful black Persian named Scooter. He was gorgeous, with piercing greenish yellow eyes, but he was not happy about being uprooted. When we brought him home, he immediately hid behind the piano. We tried to coax him out with tuna juice, a favorite treat that Jean used to offer him. Nothing that we did would make him come out. Late at night we'd hear him sneak into the kitchen for food and hear the scraping of his paws in the litter box, but when we tried to sneak out to see him, he made a run for it back to the piano. I'd look behind the piano and talk soothingly to him, trying to win his trust. Alas, I was faced with those piercing, almost spooky green eyes staring back at me out of the dark. We played classical piano music on the CD player to try to make him feel at home. He wouldn't come out. This went on for months, and we resolved ourselves to the idea that maybe we'd just have one invisible cat living in our house. I resented it a little that he didn't "like" us and was refusing our hospitality.
But one day, he and Dobby the kitten got out and made a break for it. We saw them out in the yard but couldn't catch them. Scooter simply disappeared for awhile, though Dobby stayed close to home, as if unsure of his decision. We caught Dobby after a few days, but still couldn't get anywhere near Scooter, though he did sneak up on the deck to eat the food we put out for him. I refused to let him get to me, so I resolved that it'd be ok if he stayed out there. He didn't seem to like us anyway! Finally one night we came home to an ecstatic and heroic babysitter who told us she had captured Scooter and brought him inside. Sarah was dancing in the living room, hugging her babysitter and laughing. In the following days, Scooter stopped hiding behind the piano. He started coming into the den while we watched TV and sitting on the floor next to the couch. Then he'd jump up onto the couch and "let" us pet his head. He interacted with the other cats. They groomed each other. Scooter and Carmel started chasing each other, batting each other playfully with their paws. We wondered if this was just a cat that
looked like Scooter, but was in fact another cat. He was so different! After several months, he ventured closer to Larry and put his paws on Larry's lap. It became clear that Larry was the Chosen Human. When we watched T.V., Scooter jumped up onto the arm of Larry's chair and leaned his head toward Larry as if to say, "you can pet my head now." He didn't like to be pet anywhere else but his head. If you tried, he kept squirming away and putting his head under your hand.
We moved a couple of times over the next couple of years. In Waverly, PA, we lived in a parsonage that had no carpeting at all. The cats hated it, and let us know with loud howling at night and ceaseless meowing all day. When they ran after each other, they skidded across the slippery wooden floor, and if you laughed at them, Scooter turned those piercing green eyes on you as if to say, "what are you looking at?"
At Waverly, we noticed that Scooter developed an addiction to pens. Our pens started disappearing off of tables and desks. We'd hear a loud moaning and turn to see Scooter carrying a pen in his mouth. He seemed to be in ecstasy while carrying a pen in his mouth and would moan with an almost drugged delight. When we moved out of the Waverly parsonage, we moved the couch and discovered Scooter's cache of pens. We knew Scooter had stolen the pens, but we didn't know until that day where he put them all!
Then we moved from Pennsylvania to Nebraska. None of the cats liked the cat carriers at all, perhaps because they associated them with trips to the vet, or, by that time, with moving ...AGAIN. Each cat traveled in his own carrier. Carmel was simply catatonic... no pun intended. He just stared ahead for three days, and shook. Didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't meow. Scooter and Dobby meowed. Loudly. For 1900 miles over three days. Scooter knocked over his food and water and didn't use the neat little pan we provided for a litter box. Every night Scooter was covered in litter, cat food and cat poop all matted in his fur. We stayed at pet-friendly hotels and Scooter howled all night long. In a weak moment, we considered just letting them out! But fortunately, reason prevailed.
When we moved to Gibbon, he seemed to settle in better, as did the other cats. But he developed a further addiction to Dixie cups and toilet paper rolls. His moan had an echo to it when he was carrying a Dixie cup in his teeth, so we were able to differentiate whether he was carrying a pen or a Dixie cup. We were forever picking up toilet rolls and used Dixie cups all over the house. We also learned not to keep any pens out on the table if we wanted to find them in the same place later. At Gibbon, Scooter came out of his comfort zone even further. While Larry sat in his chair, Scooter started out putting his two front paws on Larry's lap and letting him pet him that way. This went on for weeks. Larry didn't push him, just let him take his time. Perhaps that's why Larry was Chosen. He let Scooter be himself, settle in at each place and into our lives at his own pace. After awhile, while Larry literally held his breath, Scooter put all four paws on Larry's lap and laid down, tentatively. He started jumping up on our bed when we went to bed and insisted that Larry pet him for a long time before we went to sleep. We found long black cat hairs on the kitchen counter, in the bathtub and on the kitchen table. Apparently Scooter felt at home. Many days, he laid out on the floor and was so relaxed we would periodically check to make sure he was still breathing! Occasionally small garter snakes got into the house through holes in the foundation. Scooter batted them around with his paws a bit, but didn't kill them. I have a picture of him taking a nap while a garter snake slithered nearby.
We didn't know how old he was, but in PA the vet estimated that he was about 6. We knew he was getting older and that he'd most likely be the first one we lost. But in the last several weeks, we noticed that he was unusually thin. He'd always been plump. He was very furry and had thick, long hair, but when he laid down, his belly was pleasantly plump. The weight loss was very sudden and so we kept planning on taking him to the vet, but put it off. Perhaps we were afraid of what we'd learn. But he was getting disturbingly thin, and so I made an appointment. Sarah and I took him, hoping that we just needed to change his food or he had something that could be treated with medicine. But the vet found a lump and an ultrasound confirmed that he had a large mass on his liver. I didn't even know before that day that cats could
get cancer. As a hospice chaplain I suddenly had a new horrifying appreciation for what people go through when they get such prognoses about their
human loved ones-- if I felt this brokenhearted by a cat. There wasn't anything left to do. If we did nothing at all, he would have starved to death. This cat that I wouldn't allow myself to get attached to in the beginning, was now shattering my heart.
We brought him home for a couple of days, so we could all have our goodbyes. We fed him tuna and didn't shoo him away when he got on our laps and tried to lick our plates. He went even further and jumped onto the bed and settled on my chest-- something he never did before. He ventured onto my lap while watching TV--again, something he didn't normally do. Larry was his human, but now he was letting me love him. We spent more time petting him intentionally. He was a part of our family. He'd been through some turbulent years in our lives and been a constant, a comforter, and he made us laugh. Sarah didn't want to go to the vet's with us, so she said her goodbyes at home. Larry wanted to be there with him when they put him to sleep, and I wouldn't let him go through that alone. And so he went to sleep, and looked as relaxed as he usually did as we pet him and cried, thanking him for his life with us. For his comfort, his faithfulness and his trust.
I don't know what happens to pets when they die, but I know that cat had a soul. You could see it in his eyes. He even comforted us in the end, trusting us a little bit more to get close to him. In the nights since Scooter died, Carmel has settled in next to me in bed and stayed there all night as if to comfort me. Carmel hasn't slept in our bed for a long time, but preferred Sarah's room. For now, however, it seems he knows that we need a little extra warmth.
For awhile, we may have to throw some pens and Dixie cups on the floor to make ourselves feel better....
