Sweet Little Soul
It’s what Phoebe Snow called Paul Simon, when she sang with him on “Gone At Last,” and I’ve always thought there was something catlike about the graceful, subtle Simon. It’s what my wife Patsy and I called our cat Quetzal, during his brief, ardent life. He was beautiful and shy. He never asked for anything but affection. He didn’t even cry to be fed. When he wanted to be brushed, he’d sit down at my feet as I sat reading, and reach out a paw to tap me gently on the knee. As soon as I started brushing him, he would rumble out a glorious purr that made me purr along with him, because his pleasure was infectious.
When he was diagnosed with cancer by a veterinarian in New York, we brought him to a clinic near our vacation house in New Hampshire for a second opinion. No joy. The vet, Dr. Devinne, a kind and gentle man, found the lump on his small intestine and removed it. After several days of recuperation, my brother Mike, who lives nearby, came with me to pick Quetzal up, because Patsy was out west, first in California and then in Wyoming. Quetzal wore a sort of body stocking to bandage his surgical wound, but he was lively, and very glad to see me. He drank some water, but for two days he ignored his food and didn’t use his litter box.
I called Dr. Devinne, who asked me to bring him back in. This time a sonogram revealed that part of the tumor had already spread to his spleen before it was removed from his small intestine. And it had grown larger. Another operation was out of the question: Quetzal’s immune system was already compromised, and the stress of the procedure might cause a heart attack. Dr. Devinne told me, with sincere sorrow, that he had to be euthanized.
I had called or texted Patsy every day during Quetzal’s ordeal, but there was no way she could get to Peterborough in time to say goodbye to him. Mike went with me to the clinic, and sat beside me in the examining room as I held Quetzal inn my lap and the doctor injected him with the killing shot. He felt no pain, because he was already heavily sedated with morphine. But he turned his head to look up and me, and he managed a faint purr. His end was peaceful.
And now he is gone, gone at last. There is a hole in my heart where he used to be.