Farewell Fisher 1999 - 2017

A Meandering Eulogy for Fisher

In the summer of 1999, Nicholas (who had not yet become "Nick") was 6 and Sammi had not yet turned 4. We visited Blinn to pick up my part-time paycheck and then drove over to the Bryan animal shelter to find a pair of kittens to bring home.  

This had been something I'd wanted to do since we had taken a mama and her litter of kittens to the shelter back in 1994. She had shown up in our garage, given birth, and we couldn't house them all. But the one little orange tabby of the litter who walked out in a rainstorm to potty in the front yard instead of the garage got to stay. Nicholas, not yet 2, had a limited vocabulary and decided his name as "Meow." But when we tried to get Meow to come inside and be an indoor kitty, he would have none of it. 

  

This was his space, all outside, all the time.

Then baby Sammi came along, and I put the idea of an indoor kitty (or two, remembering how happy Calvin and Hobbes were together) on hold for a few years. 

Fast forward to 1999. This is a few months before we adopted Fisher, for reference:

Fisher knew them way back when.

Two little boy kitties sat in a cage looking for attention and we arranged to have them neutered so we could take them home. If you didn't live in the county where you were adopting, they had to be fixed before they could leave. 

So a few days later, I picked them up from a nearby vet and home we went.

But Hunter never quite settled. He would beat up Fisher mercilessly. 

One day, Fisher caught a mouse in the house. Bonus points for Fish-kitty. 

After a couple of months, we found a new home for Hunter, out in the country where he could be a barn cat and have roam of the place, instead of cooped up in the house where he took his energy out on his brother. 

Fisher became an only-cat, much happier to just have Ian around, who never paid him much mind. 

A year after Fisher came home, we changed homes. She moved from our rental to our first purchased home, a mile away. (We tried relocating Meow, but nothing doing.)

Fisher in her typical "everywhere's a bed" fashion.

We adopted Katy from the same shelter as Fisher in 2001 for Sammi's 6th birthday. Ian taught Katy the ropes and she was a sweet dog. As Ian got older, Katy helped us round him up from the backyard when he'd have his back to us and had gone deaf. 

Katy rounding up old man Ian from his favorite shady spot under the trampoline.

But Katy was much more attentive to cats, much to Fisher's chagrin

And she never became a cuddly cat.

So, as Sam got older, she began lobbying harder to adopt a cuddly cat. 

We tried bringing home Fluffy, who would cuddle but who missed her prior home. 

  

And her prior owner missed her. So back she went. 

Then from that same friend, we took home a kitten, Tinkerbell, who filled the cuddle quotient and Fisher didn't seem to mind her. 

Then Tinkerbell in her kittenhood sprang out of a corner and latched on to old, deaf, partially blind Ian's lame arthritic leg and in one swoop, he'd grabbed her off of him, shook her, and thrown her to the ground. I scooped up her seizing, thrashing little body and raced her to the vet, but nothing could be done. 

Fisher was declared the only cat in our house as long as Ian was alive. 

Ian passed in August 2006. 

In September 2006, Sammi lobbied again for a cat for her 11th birthday.

If this sounds like we've entirely gotten off the point of eulogizing Fisher, it's because throughout this entire saga, Fisher was the patient, if not cuddle-able animal who never caused any problems. Fisher was just the constant presence in the house. 

But Faith's entrance into the home brought the biggest surprise of our lives concerning Fisher. Since Fisher never left the house, we had not worried about regular vet visits. But with a new cat coming in, I decided as much as Fisher would rail and scratch and yowl about getting crated up and taken to the vet, it was necessary since the new cat was coming from a place filled with other cats, and I wanted to make sure she didn't bring any sickness in with her to Fisher who would have no immunity. 

I dropped Fisher off at the vet who had never met him before and went to work. I called mid-day to check on "him" and when I went to pick him up, using this pronoun in all my conversations, the vet tech stopped me and said, "Um, you know Fisher's a girl, right?"

This was 2006. We had been erroneously informed of the "male" kittens gender in 1999, and with fluffy butts, you just don't check that sort of thing. 

Fisher was a she. 

It took us a very long time to work out the pronoun switch, but it finally clicked. 

So Faith came home to be the cuddle cat and Fisher put up with yet another interloper in her space.

But her space was about to change. 

Six months after Faith moved in, we all moved out. To Bob and Nell's house. Our house sold inside of a month and we were sticking around until the end of the school year before heading for Colorado. 

Fisher spent most of her time hiding under my bed in the guest room for those next four months. 

Then, June 1, 2007, with the aid of drugs from the vet, Bob Sr. and I had the joy of getting her crated for a 17 hour single day journey to her final home. 

Bob Sr. still chuckles remembering the way she seemed to grow four more legs in our struggle to crate her.

Once in Colorado, she seemed to know this was the place to relax and the second half of her life she grew more and more cuddly, although always on her terms.  Bruiser's entrance to her home in 2011 was only slightly annoying to her. She already put up with Faith and Katy and Evan, so what was one more?

In Colorado, we allowed her out on the back deck to sun. 

And she remained a phenomenal hunter. In seconds, she could have a baby bunny hanging from her mouth. We had to stop the outdoor visits to save the bunnies when the new bunny batches would arrive in the spring and wait until mid-summer when they were large enough to evade her.

6/19/17 under the mistaken impression the bunnies were big enough and Fisher was now slow enough, she made her last kill, much to Aidan's interest. 

She'd decided her favorite places were in the front room and on the dining table. She was more irritated when the other animals invaded that space than when she was anywhere else in the house. Half the photos I have of her are on that table.

anything left on the table was clearly an invitation for her to lay on it

And the best way to offer pets was just to let her come to me.

She only returned to hang out upstairs during the months that Nick had moved home after graduation, job hunting. She adopted his room while he was here and was happy that he was all hers.

And she began to come into my bathroom each evening, waiting for me to come in, sit on the floor and pet on her until she'd had enough. She'd always love the pets, until she didn't. Then she'd swing around and swat at me, saying, "No more!" I got used to it. 

And in her last year, she developed this strange obsession with the toilet, especially the one on the main floor near the laundry room (and the litter box). If you left the lid up, she would almost bathe in it,  leaving muddy little paw prints all over the seat and then track them all around the kitchen and dining room floor. It was maddening.

  

But that was her only vice, and at the grand old age of 17, it wasn't a bad one. 

In the past months, though, she wasn't keeping her food down all the time and would howl as if in agony just a bit after eating. But only if I wasn't there. If I came in to check on her, she'd stop and look at me like I was interrupting. At first, I wondered if it was just her deafness that was causing this very loud sound, as if to attempt to hear herself.  But it began to happen without fail, less food kept down, and her back end started to get more and more wobbly.  I was also feeding her almost hourly this past week. She was skin and bones, not absorbing it when she kept it down. 

The morning she fell off the kitchen table, Tuesday, was the day I finally admitted she was not going to curl up in one of her soft beds and go peacefully to sleep forever. 

nope. Too easy.

Caring Pathways came Tuesday night. I loved on her and petted and brushed her one last time. 

While we talked to the vet, she curled up in her bed, tail over her face, as if bracing for the inevitable.  

 The vet wrapped a towel around her in her bed and we helped hold her still. The anesthesia shot caused her to howl once, in a way I'd never heard, which the vet had warned us might be the case. 

She was a little worried she hadn't gotten enough injected, but by the time she got another syringe, Fisher was completely out, eyes open, but deeply asleep, so that even touching her eyeball elicited no response. We arranged her peacefully in her bed and the vet gave her the final euthanasia drug into her kidney. She slipped away almost immediately, in peaceful repose. 

We used to joke there must be a portrait of a decrepit ancient cat in the attic ala Dorian Gray that kept her looking so beautiful for so long. 

Her passing, much like Katy's, was anticipated, but still painful. So many changes over the years, Fisher was always a constant. And now, her absence is large. I still look for her as I come down the stairs before I catch myself and lose her all over again. I look at all the little white saucers that are no longer needed for the constant plates of food. When I emptied them from the dishwasher this last time, I cried. The little things take on such meaning. 

But I know I loved her the best way I could, and gave her her the best life for 18 years. 

Rest in peace my fluffy orange fishface. Give those bunnies a running start.