Meikan, my cat, died last Wednesday. He was four and a half years old.
I first met Meikan at a pet store in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2005. I was in the store to pick up supplies for the four cats who already shared our home. I'm not sure why I went into the store's kitten adoption center, but we had lost our fifth cat to kidney disease about a year before, and I still missed him. Kittens always brighten my day.
That particular day, the third cage from the left at eye level was occupied by a bright-eyed bundle of orange-and-white fur. He was the spitting image of our departed cat; but where our older cat had been loving but shy, this little fellow was full of adventure. I held him in my hands and brought him up close to my face to look at him, and he reached out with his right paw and pulled my glasses down off their perch on my nose. I couldn't help but laugh. Both of our children used to delight in playing "snatch Daddy's glasses" when they were infants; and when I pushed my glasses back into place, the kitten reached out and yanked them off again. That was that; he was coming home with me.
Our children were delighted to have a new kitten. Because of his coat's bright orange color, we named him Meikan, after a kind of citrus fruit popular in Japan. Mrs. C was somewhat less than thrilled with our new arrival. Four cats were quite enough, she said. She made me promise that I would be exclusively responsible for his care, and I did, feeling rather like a schoolboy who has lured a stray with scraps of food and then told his parents "but he just followed me home!"
We put Meikan in the guest bathroom for his first night, to keep him away from the other cats until we had a chance to properly introduce him. When it was bedtime, I took a pillow in and slept on the floor to keep him company. He curled up next to my right shoulder and chewed on my earlobe for a bit. Then he settled down and purred himself to sleep next to my ear. I got up the next morning with every joint aching, feeling like I was a hundred years old ... but a part of me still felt like a child.
It was during a regular checkup at our local vet that the doctor noticed a pronounced heart murmur. Sometimes, he said, kittens just had them and then grew out of it; but it was always best to be sure. We took Meikan to a veterinary cardiologist, who did a number of tests and exams, including an ultrasound. The diagnosis was grim: feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a thickening of the heart wall. Little Meikan's heart rate was already abnormally high, and over the next few weeks, it continued to accelerate. They told us he would die before he was three, and we shouldn't count on anything more than two. At that, they were being generous; cats with HCM often die in their first year. The disease is incurable, and the first overt symptom often is sudden death.
We put him on a daily regimen of atenolol, to slow his heart rate to an acceptable level. It worked wonders; his pulse went to normal, and the murmur disappeared. The vets told us, though, that the murmur and the racing heartbeat were symptoms of the disease, not its cause, and that it would progress even though those symptoms were under control. I talked myself into believing they were wrong. Every morning, Meikan would sit patiently at my feet to wait for his pill; if I didn't remember right away, he would meow insistently until I gave it to him. I've had pets who hated their meds; he was just happy as long as it came from me.
Meikan and I were completely devoted to each other. If I went into a room and the door closed, he would sit on the other side and paw at it until he worked his way in or someone opened the door. Eventually, he figured out how to pull on the door handles to open the door himself (mildly distressing, if the door happened to be the bathroom door) and come on in with his tail held high. He loved to play fetch with little stuffed toys: he had a mini-beanie baby frog that was his favorite. It spent a lot of time under the refrigerator, and I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees rescuing it for him. The kids called him a "cag," because they were convinced he must be part dog.
When I retired from the military and got a job on the other side of the country, the rest of the family had to stay in Maryland for a bit till Mrs C could finish some coursework she needed to to be licensed in her profession in Nevada. Meikan came with me. He was a good boy all through our journey, resting without protest in his carrying case. The only time he expressed unhappiness was when we crossed the Rockies west of Denver; the Eisenhower tunnel is about 12,000 feet above sea level, and cats don't know about yawning to pop their ears. As it happens, a few loud meows do the trick nicely. He dozed his way across Utah and we were in Vegas before we knew it.
For almost a year, he was my only family, and I was his. Whenever I sat down, he wound up in my lap, unless I was trying to work; a quick bounce up to the desktop put him in prime position for a sprawl across my papers. "Pet me!" he seemed to say. Eventually, the rest of the family came to Nevada. It was a little stressful for him; he had gotten used to having a lot of space to himself, without other cats, and without any competition for attention. When we bought a house, he was much more content; he had room again, and always knew just where to find his favorite lap. When he needed extra entertainment, there were hummingbirds in the backyard to watch in rapt fascination.
When his time came, he was playing with Tiger, one of our other cats who was, I think, his favorite. It was sudden, it was without warning, and it was over almost before we realized there was anything wrong. He slipped away, the vet said, without any pain or suffering, and whether it was in this world or the next, I think he knew we were holding him and doing all we could. Sadly, there was nothing that could be done.
Later, after the tears, my son said "I wish I could have given him one last hug." I told him that he did; he just didn't know it at the time. All we can do is give all our pets -- and each other -- all our love, all the time.
I miss Meikan terribly, and I always will. But he will always be with me, and he will always be loved.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the kind comments below. Anyone who has ever shared their home with a pet knows how important they become in our lives and how painful is their passing. To everyone who shared their story, I'm thankful, and I hope Meikan spends some time getting acquainted with your loved ones before we all are reunited again.