On Tuesday, November 13th, 2012, I said goodbye to my best friend. My fat black and
white tuxedo cat. My Moocher. He found me through a friend, who had found him
begging in front of a Starbucks. She named him Saffron but couldn’t keep him
since she already had two cats of her own. The first day I saw him, he was in
her car on the way to the vet for a check up. She had told me that she had
found an older kitten and needed to find a good home for him. I had wanted a
kitty so I took a peek. When I looked into her car, at first I couldn’t see
him. He was hiding under her seat and when I finally saw him, all I could see
was his whiskers. The longest white whiskers on a tiny black and white cat. I
fell in love in that instant and told her that I wanted to adopt him.
That was about sixteen years ago. I couldn’t keep the name
Saffron because it didn’t suit him, he was a mooch, and he loved food, all
kinds of it… and his belly became as big as his heart over the years. He was
with me through it all. My divorce. Moving to Hollywood. He was my best little
buddy. My confidant. My muse. My bedtime teddy bear. My acrobat. My paper
shredder. My midnight piano player. My vacuum cleaner. He was more like a dog,
than any cat I have ever met. In that beautiful black and white fur coat, I
dried many tears. Into those big yellow eyes I sang many songs. With his playtime,
he would hide and rear up on his hind legs to wrap his paws around my leg and
tackle me as I walked by, then run away as fast as he could, I’m sure laughing
the whole way at my screams. He would chase his tail to such delight that he
would do summersaults across the entire room and I would laugh hysterically at
his antics. He fell in love with Tony before I did, and with every visit their
‘wrestling’ would become the highlight of Moochers day. I think that was one of
the things that made me fall in love with Tony and see him as more than a
friend and band mate… he played so well with my ‘child’, my cat, I knew he
loved him as much as I did. My ex didn’t even like Moocher that much, he just
tolerated him because I had wanted the kitty so damn much.
Tony became the only Daddy Moocher would ever know, and he
loved Tony more than me I think sometimes. We threw parties for his birthdays;
we dressed him up for Halloween. We even had a place at the table for him at
Thanksgiving (his favorite holiday), and he had a stocking filled with toy mice
and treats for every Christmas. Like most cats, he went through quite a few of
his lives. We thought we had lost him once when he escaped through a window at
my studio apartment in Hollywood, but thankfully we found him quickly before he
found his way to the street. Then about seven years ago, when I moved in with
Tony and I let Moocher go outside in the yard, he got really sick, twice, and
the vets had urged me to put him down, thinking he had feline leukemia. We did
everything we could for him, blood transfusions, oxygen tanks, IV’s, you name
it, and we did it. He recovered
perfectly and we called him a super kitty after the second testing of negative
for the disease.
When I became pregnant I was worried how Moocher would
react. He had been my ‘only child’ for so long, I felt maybe he would hate the
baby. But as my belly grew, Moocher knew, and he would sleep with his arms and
head on my belly and purr as the baby would kick at night, it was like they had
their own language. The day I brought
Tyler home, Moocher acted like he had always known him and loved him, and the
baby loved his kitty with his eyes until his little hands could grasp that cat’s
fur. Mooch put up with so much torture from Tyler, and not once would he
scratch or bite the baby, even if the baby was trying to pull the cat’s tail
off. As Tyler grew, so did their games, and sadly since I was so pre-occupied
with raising a child I didn’t notice that my beloved kitty was losing weight.
Well, I did notice, but I told myself that he was just getting older. He still
loved to play, and he and his little ‘brother’ would run all over the house
chasing each other. He still would beg at every meal, and had learned the best
part of having a toddler in the house was the food that missed the baby’s mouth,
would fall on the floor, and he sat at the baby’s feet beside his high chair
and wait for the inevitable.
He seemed to grow more inactive in the past few weeks and
suddenly he stopped eating all together. We knew something was terribly wrong. I
cried at his weight loss and begged him to eat but after a trip to the vet and
many tests, we found out the news of stomach cancer that was too advanced and
incurable. We said our goodbyes this afternoon and I held him till he was gone.
I loved Moocher more than I have ever loved any pet. He was a huge part of our
family. I can’t imagine another, and my heart hurts so badly now, that I don’t
want to. The hardest part of it all is not crying in front of Tyler, who seems
to understand that his kitty was very sick, but doesn’t know why the doctor
could not ‘fix’ it. He may not remember any of it, or he may never forget. I
know I won’t. Thank you Moocher for finding me. Thank you Moocher for all the years
of unwavering love. Thank you Moocher, my kitty, my best friend.
