R.I.P. Isaac The Cat

Yesterday I had to have Isaac the cat put down at the age of 19.  Sweetpea and I had adopted him from the Milwaukee Human Society way back in the spring of 1995, and he's been with me ever since.  Nineteen years.  Sweetpea was gone by the spring of '96.

And his passing is reason enough to post to HOT POOP for the first time in more than a year.  He was the greatest cat I have ever known because he and I found that perfect spot between independence and cloying.  In other words, we gave each other just the right amount of love/attention/companionship as either of us required.  He was always around, but rarely trampled underfoot, you know?

Isaac was a very small cat, that's the first thing you need to know about him.  He typically weighed between 6 and 7 pounds, though in these last few months had dropped down to a smidge over 5.  I wouldn't say he looked skinny, or unhealthy, and having lived to the ripe old age of 19, he was certainly the picture of health right up to the end, but damn was he lean.  Not an ounce of fat to be found on him.

The second thing to know about Isaac was that he was never a very active cat.  His favorite activity was sitting in an open window and chittering at birds and squirrels.  Beyond that, he showed little interest in toys, would do a couple sprints a day from one end of the house to the other, and otherwise enjoyed attacking a moving hand beneath a blanket.  Oh, and when he was younger, he could jump to amazing heights.  Somewhere, there is a picture of him sitting on top of a door that he had jumped up to from a bed.  I shit you not.  I was sitting right there, and watched him leap high enough to grab the top of the door with his front paws and pull himself up.

I don't claim to understand feline sexuality, but I believe Isaac was at the very least bi-sexual.  On many occasions I would find him mounted on Eno, humping Eno's tailbone.  Eno looked confused, and Isaac just looked at me like he wanted me to get the fuck outta the room.  Ahh, the bachelor lifestyle!

After Eno died back in the summer of 2011, I wondered if Isaac would become despondent, because beyond the humping, Isaac and Eno were very good companions.  Eno particularly enjoyed cleaning Isaac, and the size different was such that Isaac could easily curl up inside a curled-up Eno to the extent that you could barely see Isaac within all that black and white fur.  I don't believe Isaac got despondent, being mostly an independent soul, but he did get more affectionate with me in the last three years, and for that I am ultimately grateful.

Isaac left this world in about the best way possible, I believe. I was holding him in my arms when Dr. Berg gave him the injection, and I was cooing "goodnight sweet prince" and "goodbye sweet Isaac" over and over into his ears that could not hear, and he was warm, and he was smiling.  Isaac was loved.  It may have only been Eno and me, but I believe it was more than enough to keep him going for nineteen years.

Rest in peace, Isaac.  Ha ba na da!  A boojee-boojee boo!

Hank

R.I.P. Eno The Cat

Eno the cat, the younger of my two cats, died yesterday, after 15+ years of fun and companionship.

I got him as a kitten in the spring of 1996 from a farm in Lake Mills that had more cats than it wanted or needed. When I saw him for the first time, he was walking on the back of a cow laying in a barn stall, and I was smitten. My pick of the litter was made for me, because really, how can anyone deny a cat who walks on cows?

Eno was a large kitten that became a very large cat - 21 pounds of cat, in fact, when he was weighed at the veterinarian earlier this year. He was large, but never fat - fairly tall, and rather long, with plenty of muscle underneath his long and luxurious black and white coat. Despite his size, Eno never lost his tendency to climb big, dumb animals. I don't think a day went by that he didn't climb all over me. Half the time I found this quite hilarious, half the time I found it annoying, quite frankly. You ever try reading Lem novels with a 21 pound cat trying to balance on your shoulder while pawing at your hands and the turning pages?

Eno was a vocal cat. Every evening when I got home from work he and I would talk about our days while I washed the dishes or prepared dinner. I have absolutely no idea what the fuck he was saying, but he always sounded happy and rather pleased with himself, so I always figured he was cool, I was cool, and we were cool. He also liked to sit on the back of the couch and watch the world outside the living room window. More specifically, he liked to "chitter" at the birds and rabbits. Yes, the birds and rabbits, and even that groundhog that took residence next door for the better part of 2007, but never the fucking squirrels. Eno understood the score with the squirrels, and he feared and loathed them with the same kind of passion that I do. He did. I know he did. Yes.
..........

I won't recall to you the details of Eno's last day, except to say that it all happened rather fast. He went from sick to gone in less than 24 hours, and when he took a sudden turn for the worse at about 2 am yesterday, I knew that he wasn't long for this world, and the best I could do was be near him, talk to him, and hope he wasn't in too much pain.

He took his last, labored breath at about 6am yesterday morning, and it was heartbreaking to actually witness. The finality of it, his sudden absence, was and remains surreal to me. Less than 24 hours earlier he was headbutting me awake and crawling on my back.

15 years together that started and ended with him crawling around on the back of a big, dumb animal that just wanted to sleep.

It was a fun and interesting 15 years, and I will miss him more than I thought I could, and more than he'll ever know.

Rest in peace, Eno.

Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 175

Dinosaur Jr.: Bug: "Yeah We Know" [mp3]

I came to the realization this past week that Isaac, my older cat, has gone deaf.

I had my suspicions that something wasn't right a couple of weeks ago, when Isaac stopped greeting me at the door when I came home after work, but I decided that he's a fifteen year old cat that had simply become bored with me, so to speak.

Then, about a week ago, I realized that his mewling had gotten louder. Not insanely loud, but noticeably louder. I was intrigued by this development, but certainly didn't chalk it up to anything significant, because in all other respects, he was behaving as he normally did.

On Wednesday night, I was pouring cat food into his dish, and realized he didn't come running at the sound as he always did, instead sitting non-chalantly on the back of the couch, staring absently at nothing (or the ghost) in the living room.

Long story short - Isaac has gone deaf sometime in the past 2-3 weeks, and while this is a fairly common occurrence for older cats, it still saddens me more than I thought it would or could.

Dinosaur Jr is his favorite band.

Hotcha! Hank

Modest Sideways Dashboard Mouse Maneuver

Modest Mouse. Isaac Brock. Beards. Maps. Microphonehand. Radiohead.

Hotcha! Hank

Sir Isaac Isaacs

In case you missed the link in the previous post, this is Sir Isaac Isaacs, the Governor General of Australia in the 1930's. About nine times a week I call Isaac The Cat "Sir Isaac Isaacs", though as I said, he wasn't named after this man and his regal moustache.

Here he is without the wig and the moustache. The uniform is dynamite, but I think he needs a nice hat... And the 'stache.

Hotcha! Hank

A Cat At Rest Tends To Stay At Rest

This is Isaac The Cat in early 1996, when he was just under a year old and I still lived in the huge flat above the sandwich shop in Grafton with the Reverend Screamin' Ben Jenkins and Sweetpea. The dark cat behind him is Sweetpea's cat, Tasha. She was about 19 years old at the time, and we had to put her to sleep a month or two after this picture was taken. A brutal day.

Isaac wasn't named after Sir Isaac Newton, though in hindsight that just makes Isaac that much cooler. Nor was he named after Asimov. Never cared for the little Asimov I've read. Nor was he named after Isaac Hayes, Isaac Bashevis Singer, or even Isaac Isaacs...

Isaac means "laughter" in Hebrew.

Sometimes I tell people he was named after Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat, but that's not true.

Isaac is 15 years old today. He doesn't have any of his fangs but still enjoys tuna in oil and play-fighting with his teeth more than his hind legs. He can still jump about 4 feet straight up in the air when properly motivated by dangling objects tied to the ends of strings. Hi favorite place in the house to sleep is the left arm of the blue chair (a different blue chair than the one in this picture), though lately he's been digging the floorspace next to the modem under my desk.

These things are true.

Hotcha! Hank