In the excellent fantasy novel Green, the heroine constantly thinks back to her childhood and to Endurance, the family ox who provides inspiration by carrying on untouched by any turmoil around him.
Although it would have seemed inconceivable at the time had it occurred to us, our family gained its own Endurance in the form of a diminutive young cat in the hot summer of 1998. Inconceivable not only because she was small and not at all like an ox but because she was scared of just about everything. She showed up at our door looking for a home in a hostile world. Our next door neighbor fed feral cats that lived under her house. The matriarch of this clan persecuted Abby whenever she saw her. It was monsoon season in Phoenix with violent thunderstorms. And when there weren't storms there was relentless heat and police helicopters at night. For years afterward she was scared of ceiling fans and thunder and her first instinct when anything scared her was to look up. She was bullied by every female cat in her life (except one who ignored her) even when they were much smaller.
From September. Abby didn't photograph well - it was almost impossible to get her to look at the camera and I had to grab this opportunity even though it meant using the flash at close range
Abby arrived at a somewhat inopportune time. We lived in a small house and our good friend had had to leave her own house for a few days due to unexpected repairs. We took her, and her two cats in and kept her cats segregated from our own pair, Thomas and Lydia. There was no way to add a fifth cat to the mix so for a while we fed her outside and she had to take her chances with the strays.
As soon as we could we let her inside. Thomas accepted her immediately but Lydia despised Abby (as she was soon named) and basically attacked her on sight. In a small house it wasn't that easy to stay away from Lydia and for several weeks Abby lived behind our stove, coming out to eat and use the letterbox. Eventually she moved into our room (we put a litter box in there) and that small space became her territory.
This situation actually worked out for both Abby and Lydia. Abby was fond of us and, as it turns out, normally pretty indolent. In contrast Lydia was more of a roamer and not much of a people cat. Eventually Abby started coming out to the public part of the house but only when she was sure that Lydia didn't block her route to safety.
A few years later we moved to Illinois and a much larger house. Abby and Lydia divided the house pretty nicely between them. Lydia died just over a year later. Even when Lydia was desperately ill Abby fled at the sight of her. Lydia's death didn't change Abby's behavior much, she had her own room and bed and mostly she remained there except to eat and use the litter.
Skipping ahead to recent time Abby shared us with Max who passed away seven months ago. She had been successfully treated for hyperthyroidism in 2008 and started accumulating other health problems: deafness, an autoimmune disease that attacked her platelets, an attack by some unknown animal when she accidentally got outside at night at age 15+, diabetes, arthritis, and a balance disorder. In each case she responded well to treatment and/or soldiered on. The timid little cat had an inner core of titanium. In fact the deafness was probably a good thing - she became much less timid as she got older, probably because she could no longer hear scary things like thunder and the voices of strangers. Six months ago I would have said she had several years to go. She was still physically strong, had a good appetite, and, except for the arthritis and deafness, outwardly the same as she had been five years before.
She began to show signs of declining health this summer, losing her appetite and seeming confused and agitated. However after a couple of weeks she started returning to normal and had several good months before her rapid decline over the past week leading to what was probably a full blown diabetic coma on Sunday. Based on the vet's estimate when we originally got her she would have been between 17 and 19 when she died on Monday.
Abby was not an outgoing cat. She liked attention from us but seldom demanded it. Mostly she was content to sit in her chair. It is astonishing to us how big the void has been left by her absence, how often we spoke to her or thought about her even when she wasn't interacting with us. On this day we are thankful for the more than 16 years we had her in our lives.