My heart is aching as I write this. Our beautiful Nora died on Sunday.
Those of you who follow the Good News Roundup have known Nora for several years, because I always gave her credit as a “co-editor” for the good news stories about cats that I included in my roundups. I’m writing this memorial for the Gnusies and for everyone else in the Daily Kos community who loves cats.
We don’t know what Nora’s first couple of years were like. She was rescued at approximately two years old while living on the street and raising four kittens. She and her babies were transferred to the Cat Adoption Team (CAT), a wonderful Oregon shelter that rescues cats and finds homes for them. They named her Tippi and wrote the following description to post on Petfinder:
Tippi
Oriental Short Hair, Domestic Short Hair — black
Size: Small
Age: Young
Sex: Female
Notes:
Tippi the athlete here, preparing for a monumental jump to the top of this display. After that, the Olympics!
Two-year old Tippi is a delightful little cat...active, playful, and cuddly. She arrived at CAT a single mom with four kittens in tow. Life on the streets with four babies must have been pretty scary, but Tippi was a very good mom...nurturing and loving. Now that her babies have found homes, it’s time for Tippi to find her special family or person — someone to love and to love her back, someone to sleep beside, someone with a gentle touch and soft voice (sound familiar?).
Once you come see her in person and look into that delicate face with the great big beautiful eyes, we’re guessing it’ll be pretty hard for you to leave without her. So come by today. You’ll be glad you did!
Despite that appealing write-up, she waited and waited to be adopted. After about eight months had passed, CAT contacted the owner of the pet supply store we shop at, and asked if he would put her in one of the windowed enclosures at the store where people could see cats that needed to be adopted. My husband saw her there. When he came home, he said, “There’s a cat up for adoption at Pet Loft who looks just like Emerson” (our previous cat, who had died two years earlier). So we went back to the store together, immediately fell in love with Tippi, brought her home, and named her Nora.
We had a miniature dachshund at the time, Mimi, who had adored Emerson. When she saw this new black cat, she greeted her with so much enthusiasm that Nora wound up jumping into the bathtub, a moment I was able to capture:
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the two of them to become friends:
Nora continued to be a world-class jumper. She spent most of her time in the room where my husband and I have our desks, and there’s a cabinet in one corner of the room that’s about eight feet tall. Nora was able to jump to the top of it and hang out there. We never actually saw her make the jump, so we don’t know if she jumped up on a nearby table first or just propelled herself eight feet into the air. In any case, no surface in our house was too high for her to inspect.
After Mimi died, Nora became extra attentive and loving, even joining us on the couch to watch movies. In our quirky old house, we spend most of our time upstairs but our TV room is downstairs. So when we would head down to watch TV we would call out to Nora, “Nora, watch a movie!” and she would come running from wherever she was to race downstairs to the TV room.
A couple of years after Mimi’s death, we adopted our current dog, Rosy. Nora was initially a little miffed, but she came around, and they became friends after a few months:
As readers of my GNRs know, our menagerie also includes a Senegal parrot named Rascal.
Rascal adored Nora from a distance. (It seemed wise not to put them actually nose to nose, given that Nora had probably caught her share of small birds when she was living on the street.) Rascal is a great mimic — he can make pretty much any sound he wants to, including a perfect imitation of the kitchen timer and (very annoyingly) the high creak that the oven door makes. So he learned to mimic us saying “Puss, puss, puss,” which was the way we called Nora, and he also made an attempt at a purring sound. He was always very excited when she came into view.
Nora’s favorite place to hang out in the living room was the top of the back of the couch:
Since I live on the west coast, publishing my GNRs at 7:00 a.m. east coast time means getting up a little before 4:00 a.m. my time. Nora would be the only other member of the household to be up then, and she would often sit on the back of the couch behind my head as I responded to comments. I’ll miss that early morning companionship more than I can say.
She claimed my desk chair as hers. The top of that chair became her other favorite spot, and it’s where she decided to spend her last day.
During the past few months, Nora had been having some upper respiratory problems which our vet determined weren’t caused by an infection. So we all assumed that she was suffering from allergies to the massive amount of pollen we had in Portland’s air this spring and summer. Then she started losing weight. We increased the amount of food we gave her, but she continued to lose weight even though she cleaned her dish every morning and evening. About two weeks ago, she began breathing exclusively through her mouth, and we took her to the local veterinary emergency hospital that’s equipped to do every possible diagnostic test. Last Thursday, the hospital concluded that she was probably suffering from a very aggressive malignant tumor somewhere in her nasal passages — the blockage was impeding her breathing, and the rapidly growing cancer was causing her increasing weight loss. Confirming the diagnosis by finding the tumor would have entailed a CT scan and rhinoscopy, which couldn’t be scheduled until next month, and we were told it was unlikely that follow-up surgery and radiation would give her more than another year of life. Meanwhile her struggles to breathe grew more painful.
So on Sunday we called Compassionate Care to have one of their vets come to our house to give Nora a strong sedative and then a dose of euthanasia medication. The vet was very gentle and kind, and Nora didn’t show any pain or fear.
When her heart had stopped, I settled her into a flower-filled box that I had prepared for the vet to take her to the crematorium. I brought both Rosy and Rascal close to Nora’s body so they would know what had happened.
The pain of not having Nora’s sweet energy in our house is very sharp right now and very hard to bear. But my husband and I know that this heartbreak is part of the contract we sign when we decide to bring an animal companion into our home. And it’s a price well worth paying for the joy of having had the loving companionship of such a lovely creature for 15 years.
Farewell, dearest Nora. As a friend of mine wrote to me on Sunday, “We wish Nora a magical transition to whatever she chooses next.”