My husband The Packhorse and I spent yesterday crying. Our Russian blue, Illya, developed kidney failure, and we had to euthanize him. He was six weeks short of his 20th birthday.
Illya was my 40th birthday present, a little Russian Blue without papers, named for David McCallum’s character, Illya Kuryakin, on the old Man From U.N.C.L.E. show. He never weighed more than ten pounds, but he as utterly fearless and kicked ass on cats who were nearly twice his size. He was an incredibly territorial little beggar, and didn’t take kindly to other cats on his turf—unless they were part of our household menagerie. He even took on a stuffed tiger I had, which was a good deal larger than he was. He’d get a running start, jump on its back and attack its neck with teeth and claws, rolling round and round on the bed with it. That tiger lost much of his plastic whiskers to Illya, who chewed on them as the final insult. Quirky and strong-minded, Illya was a feisty little cat.
The first time I saw him, he was curled up behind the glass of a pet store showcase. He was plainly miserable, and resembled a small gray storm cloud. I took one look at him and knew he would come home with us. It was my birthday, and there he was. He screamed all the way home in the car, but settled down quickly once he was in a non-moving place. He was completely unafraid of my older cat, Corwin, who weighed a good 16 pounds and was considerably bigger than 10 week old kitten.
Although he hated cars, he made the trip to and from Maine to FLorida twice, and even flew back and forth to Japan.
He’d been slowing down for a while. He started having seizures occasionally (every month or two), due to old age. And he became thin. But the vet said that there was nothing really wrong with him but old age. Until Sunday night, he was still occasionally tearing through the house, but that night he could barely stand and didn’t eat much. We took him to the vet the next day, and were given the bad news. There were treatments, but they would only delay the inevitable, and we weighed daily fluid injections and medication or dialysis against simply letting him pass away peacefully. It was really a simple, though not easy, decision. We took him home, deciding to wait a few days so we could get used to the idea of a life without him. The next morning he was worse, and unresponsive. It was time. We carried him to the vet, where he crossed the Rainbow Bridge in my husband’s arms (coward that I am, I couldn’t bear to watch him take his last breath and retreated to the waiting room after he went to sleep).
We cried together all day yesterday. Illya was the first kitten my husband had actually raised, so he was very special to him. And last night it was damned hard to get to sleep without a little grey cat curled between us, as had been his custom. Knowing you did the right thing doesn’t make you feel less lonely or lighten your grief. Our other cats gathered round to mourn—and anyone who says cats don’t know that a comrade has gone, hasn’t spent much time around them—and to cuddle with us. It was a very lonely night.
While we were at the vets, we saw they had a trio of two week-old kittens who had been abandoned by their mother. I fell in love with the tiny tabby with white feet and a white nose, named Jack Sparrow. We put in a bid to adopt him, but Jack didn’t make it through the night. He was the runt of the litter and having trouble eating. We got the news about him this morning. Now we have a second cat to mourn, for even though we’d only held him twice for a few minutes, he was ours, and we’d already begun to love him
We’re adopting his brother, who will be called Captain Jack after Jack Harkness of Torchwood. He’s a golden tabby and the largest of the three brothers, and will likely make it. He’s also a very outgoing kitten, almost flamboyant, hence the name. He’l come home to us in a month, where he will be a bay brother for our currently 4 month old black kitten Gardeen.
The only problem with falling in love with a cat is knowing that one day, all too soon, you will lose them and that a bit of your heart will leave with them Jack and Illya have taken a piece of our hearts with them across the Rainbow Bridge..
I wrote this a few years ago, when Illya had his first seizure, and it’s pretty much how he left us:
When the time comes, I’ll talk him into the light, where he’ll run to a green field. He’ll see familiar faces there: my Mom, who adored him; Corwin, the large black cat who was half Maine coon and at least ¼ Siamese with a basso profundo meow; and his best pal, Lamis, who is Big now, instead of being a mini Maine coon and who has both eyes. They will chase butterflies together (the butterflies think it’s fun when you cut them in half; they say it tickles and they grow right back together, or so Lamis claims). They’ll take him over to Callahan’s Place where he’ll get lots of whipped cream to get on his whiskers, and quite a few science fiction writers who knew him will be there to pet him—old friends of mine and his. And maybe to the Phoenix Tavern, where a certain black familiar named Svartalf (out of Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos) rules the roost.
Goodbye, Illya. You are loved and are missed. Goodbye, little Jack, who would surely have been as dearly loved. You’re a Person in Fur we barely got to know.