In those four months the boyfriend and I learned many things: how to take a cat's temperature; how to express a cat's bladder; how to wash a cat's hind quarters in the sink without getting raked bloody by his freakishly strong front paws.
We learned the quickest way to get from Hollywood to the west side (hint: there isn't one); how to give subcutaneous injections of kitty chemo at home without spilling the poisionous chemicals on ourselves, the kitchen counter or the cat; how to block up the yard so Bitey could drag around in the grass, lie contentedly under the cool stone table, or hide under the trailing strands of bouganveilla.
We learned that advanced kitty medicine is cripplingly expensive, and gratifying results come in the tiniest increments; but we also learned that kitty doctors are among the kindest people on this earth...the many vets, techs, and office staff we encountered all seem to love what they do, and love their charges so much it practically radiates from their pores.
We learned that Bitey has many friends. Friends who gave up their Sunday to lug carfuls of stuff to our house to raise money for treatment at a Bitey yard sale. Friends who wrote email after email requesting more Bitey updates, trying to make me an honest chronicler. Friends I didn't even know I had, who upon meeting me for the first time on the roof of the Formosa said, "You're Bitey's mom!" And of course, Bitey has loving grandparents, who wrote large checks for his care and support, long after their daughter should have been writing checks for theirs!
Bitey learned some things too, like how to meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, moew, until he got what he wanted: help up the stairs from the garden, help down into the garden, chicken, tuna, broccoli, butter, head rubbing, bellyrubbing, a lift into the bathtub to drink from the spigot, a lift out of the bathtub when he was done and you had forgotten he was in there. The once proud cat who could jump from the floor to the bed to the dresser to the closet shelf now has no hesistation to cry like a baby to get what he wants. I think he knows there's a certain power there too...
I learned that it was okay to leave, to not cancel a vacation to Italy to martyr myself to St. Bitey of Bladderini. My boyfriend learned how to express a cat's bladder, which is a huge accomplishment, and one of those skills that neither of thought we would EVER learn. We met two lovely catsitters, who brought Bitey to the vet each evening while I was away so that the boyfriend could have some relief from Bladder Duty.
Bitey got some more nicknames: Bitey Bum Bum, Reginald McPee Bottom, and (after seeing an advertisement for cellulite cream in Italy) Dolce Bum Bum. The boyfriend, a creative type not generally known for his skill in navigating the practical side of life, got a small taste of what it's like to completely care for another living creature: from what goes in the front, to what comes out the back (all over the nice wood floors)and everything in between. He knocked it out of the park.
I got two weeks of rest, sun, culture, gelato, granitas and gnocci so smooth it tasted like potato silk; more mozzarella di bufala than any one girl has a right to ingest, and most important, time with friends; the kind of friends that click right back into your heart, no matter how far away they live and how little you see them; the kind of friends that 'fill up the tank' so you can go back to your life and deal with all the bullshit.
Somewhere in there, we stopped paying attention to the deadline. We incorporated a daunting level of cat care into our daily lives, and learned how to say "when" when it came to expensive kitty care, which in turn helped us stop feeling like we were living on the deck of the financial Titanic. We stopped feeling like every day might be Bitey's last, but we also learned that we were ready, should that day arrive.
And lo and behold, I looked at the calendar the other day and realized that five months had passed. Bitey beat the odds. Our plucky little street cat with the big bad tumor in his spine had slithered his little backside right past the zero hour.
So now we are living in the golden hour. The time of day photographers love, when the sun is setting and everything is bathed in a warm, soft light. You never know how long the golden hour will last, or whether there'll be another one tommorow, so you take as many pictures as you can, hold your face up to the sun, and breathe deeply.
This is the view from an old stone villa in the tiny town of San Tereziano, in Umbria. Golden hour indeed.
Have you ever....
...seen a cat...
...who loves to POSE THIS MUCH????
