RIP Little George Washington aka Kitty

On Saturday I said a final goodbye to one of the first and best friends I made in New York: my beloved, luxuriously soft, generously sized, pink-striped gray tiger kitty, George.

We met in 2000. By no stretch of the imagination was I a cat person, but I had a mouse problem in my East Village tenement apartment. Besides that, my sister was pregnant for the first time. She was getting a baby, and I wasn’t getting a baby, and I’d be ending my 20’s before long with no lasting relationships or offspring on the horizon. What, I could take care of something small and needy and mewling, too. Look, I’ll prove it.

So I responded to an advertisement with a 718 number, oblivious, in my early years of New York living, to the fact that parts of Brooklyn could be a full hour away from my apartment. I rode the F line out to Brighton Beach alone on a Sunday. The woman I’d made an appointment with, who’d turn out to be a full-throttle kook, buzzed me into the anteroom of her house, a urine-soaked hall lined with cages full of sad, nameless cats, reaching out from between the bars with sad, probing paws.

Hello? I called. The woman had buzzed me in, but did not appear.

“I’m eating a roast beef sandwich,” she yelled down some carpeted stairs. “I’ll be down when I’m done.”

I remained trapped in the hall of crying, smelly kitties for about 10 minutes.

I finally yelled up that I planned to leave.

At that point she rushed downstairs, choking down the remainder of her sandwich.

The cat she had in mind for me, “a mush,” she kept saying, “a real mush — the perfect cat for a dog lover”—was in the basement, along with the FIV positive cats, though the little cat was FIV negative.

George was 4 months old and still living with her momma. She came out of their shared cage to play with me. She was shy. I waved my fingers and she reared up on her back feet to swat them, and then fell over, the picture of awkward charm.

We agreed I’d take her.

I tried to name her something Russian based on her roots — the woman told me she was a Russian Blue and also, she was coming straight from Brighton Beach. Sabrina, Katrina, Katerina, nope.

This little kitty was no showboat. She ran crooked. She was not a highly prized Russian blue, but on closer examination was a French sort of cat often described as looking like “a potato on toothpicks,” combined with some wild stripey tomcat. She was so . . . human, if you consider the sense of human meaning having some qualities that set you apart from the rest of the animals in a good way, and yet being quite fragile and flawed at the same time.

To be honest, and hopefully not too narcissistic, the kitten reminded me a little of myself.

When I was born, my parents made a call to many family members and taped them. One call to my Great Uncle Bill stood out. When he heard the news of a new healthy niece, my uncle’s first question was:

“Are you going to name her George?”

“We’re going to call her Meredith,” my dad explained.

“Little George Washington,” my uncle sighed.

Now that I am an aunt, I love being an aunt. It is one of my top favorite jobs that I have ever had. But in my younger years, I thought that maybe I should aim to be the equivalent of my Uncle Bill: ever single, highly indulgent, bright and unusual, always with a New Yorker magazine in one hand and sometimes with a cigar in the other. And perhaps a little Bailey’s Irish Cream.

To the continued confusion of plenty of people, I named the cat George, though she responded most consistently to Kitty.

As a kitten, she distinguished herself by playing fetch as ardently as any dog.

She was with me through an arson / suicide in our East Village apartment building. I was out when it happened. The cat, of course, was home. My door had been axed in and when I was finally let back up the wet, glass strewn stairs, homicide detectives trailed me through our smashed and smoky rooms, wanting information about the man next door who’d set the fire and killed himself in the process. I’d been trying to tell the police about that guys for months, and finally they wanted to talk with me, right when couldn’t find my pet. I was distracted, to say the least. They finally helped me find her before we did an interview. She was deep, deep, deep in the closet, and she stayed hidden in a closet for many hours a day after that.

To get away from the bad smoky apartment, we moved to Brooklyn together.

When I met my husband, the first thing he said on entering my apartment was “Oh. You have a cat.”

Never a cat lover, and prone to allergies, he eventually grew to love and care for her, once we all lived together.

Our eventual son has always been a large fan of animals (not to mention a fan of large animals), and was heard the other days saying,

“I love you Kitty, you are my FAVORITE.”

Apt words for a lovely girl who never, ever raised a paw in anger to Henry, despite his often enthusiastic pursuit of her, and his near-constant invasion of her space.

A terrible mouser, a wonderful friend, oh Kitty, you are my favorite, too. But when a pet no longer enjoys the things they enjoy, it is time to let them go. At least that is the word on the street.

George enjoyed, more than anything else, eating. When she stopped eating last week, I knew what we were facing—we had a cancer diagnosis and a weeks-old prognosis that she might have a month or two—but I didn’t digest it yet.

She was still sweet smelling and perfect looking and in a way, didn’t look sick. She’d lost several pounds but with her “frame,” she could handle it. But I could feel her spine under her fur, and she was becoming very listless. I’d put her on the bed to sleep at night, and kept getting up overnight to be sure that she was still with us.

Overnight on Friday, I felt a sickness in my chest, a weight, and a decision had been made, in my heart more than in my brain, that I would say goodbye on Saturday.

On Saturday I contacted the vet who has been overseeing her care for the last months. I was so upset that even the people at the desk — normally a pack of horrible, annoying receptionists — were kind to me. Sobbing has its benefits; I should remember that. We laid a plan.

I took (take) solace in the fact that the vet had some background information on me as I was making these decisions: this doctor was one I’d initially met after I’d rescued a cat with no eyes who only weighed a pound. When I brought the little blind kitty in one stormy night she was hypothermic and riddled with worms. I thought I was bringing her in to put her out of her misery, and I felt a little scared of her, despite her size. (Eyes are sort of a signature feature on a cat, as it happens; no eyes can be kind of scary.) This vet told me that with some deworming and defleaing and some medication, that this was a fully salvagable animal. I spent more money than I will ever admit to medically board her while I was on my honeymoon. (Those were flush, pre-kid times.) When we returned from our trip to Turkey, one of the vet techs adopted the little cat.

Through all of that, George was patient with me, and I like to think that the vet, who met me in that context, wouldn’t think I was cruel for not opting for surgery and a course of chemo for my 12 year old cat, which was our other option. Though my need to share this story about the eyeless kitty shows that I still have doubts about my actions and feel some guilt.

I did not, for sure, want to see someone I loved get as sick as they could possibly be before they died. I did that with my sister. I cannot tell you how much I hated it. But that experience made me know how important it is to be with someone I love at the end.

And I am glad, I suppose, that George and I could spend her last moments together. People talk about cold comfort but the corollary, not being there, would have been too much. So I do not like this, not at all. But given the facts, I would not have wanted it any other way.