It’ll never be easy to write a goodbye post to my sweet Raya kitty, but I think it’s time.

Raya was The Best Kitty Ever. I told her so all the time. Other people probably think their cats are the best, and I sympathize with them, as they never had Raya. Only Tony and I had Raya.

I found her when she was the size and weight of one half of a fart, hiding ineffectually beside an extremely busy road in NE DC. “Ineffectually” because, though she was quite small enough to remain hidden in the little nook she had curled into, she was also yowling as though she was being eaten by a dragon – in short, loudly. I called animal control but when they didn’t come, and didn’t come, and didn’t come, I picked her up and snuggled her in my purse, inside a light blue sweater that had always been my favorite. I called my boss and told him I wouldn’t be in – I had to take care of this little thing and get her to the pound so she could be adopted.

Accounts differ as to the year of this vaunted occasion, but let’s just say it was more than 15 years ago, and fewer than 20. I traveled a lot for work even then, so I had no intention of keeping her – I was going to take her to the pound so someone could adopt her. But first, I thought, just a vet visit to get her cleaned up and vaccinated. That would ease the way for the pound, I reasoned. Also, she was too tiny and cute to give up quite yet. Also too loud. Who would adopt such a loud kitty? She needed to calm down first.

Going to the vet was the opposite of calming her down. She was a viper, even at that tender age, and had the run of the place with all the vets and techs crouching in corners at her fierceness. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but it was certainly what she was going for. And continued to go for, all the days of her life. She. Did. Not. Like. The. Vet. Any vet. Ever. No matter how crappy she felt, she was able to work up enough venom that the terrorized folk in all the vet offices she ever visited would only come close to her when wearing giant Kevlar gloves that looked like they intended to reach into a smithy’s kiln.

So anyway, while I dragged my feet about taking her to the vet, and (ahem) bought a litter box, litter, bowl, food, and cat toys, my neighbor Tony (who at the time I barely knew) was also welcoming a new kitty into his household. He liked the little fighter and told me to keep her – he said he’d watch her whenever I was on work travel. Great set-up, right? Meanwhile my friend Shane said, “Stop pretending you’re going to take her to the pound. You’re keeping her.”

And so it was.

We called her Raya, for “stripe” in Spanish because of her great blonde tabby markings, but she had some good belly spots too. This “boudoir-esque” photo is just after she got fixed, 6 months.

Work travel

After a year of being a kitty mom for the first time in a decade, and loving it – though with a bit of concern for her outsized appetite – my work travel began to ramp up. Tony was as good as his word. He seemed always happy to have two kitties looking after each other, and cheering him too. He always had long, involved stories about how his boi, Sox, would lie in wait to surprise Raya on the litter box. We started calling them “the kids”, and he told me from afar one time that Raya – for that was what we named her – was growing into “quite the young lady.” I was getting to know Tony through all this, too, and realizing what a softie he was. Is! Anyway, these two were lifelong besties.

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Then my job starting taking me away for months at a time. No complaints from Tony, ever – he just rolled with it, smiling the whole time. Raya was still my lovey little baby kitty when I came home, but I had to wonder if she felt like the child of divorce. You know, a while with one parent, then a while with the other, never knowing the plan, just having to roll with it. She did NOT like it when I pulled out my suitcase. Rather than sit in it for cute Facebook pictures, she would hiss at me and run under something large, where I couldn’t get her. She was often absolutely invisible when the time came for me to leave – she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of saying goodbye and giving her kisses.

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Colombia

Still, when I came home she would hear me from Tony’s apartment and come galumphing down the stairs (she always did eat a bit, or a lot, more than was strictly necessary) and we would pick up where we left off. She was still my sweet kitty, the one with the best, most plush fur ever. We cuddled – spooned, if you like – and she purred like a John Deere tractor. Then travel would come up again… and, you get it.

Meanwhile, I met a Very Nice Man. This will come up later in the story.

Then my company offered me my dream post – in Bogota, Colombia. Raya had always established herself as resistant to change, with fervency that bordered on maniacal. She had her life in Washington and her besti, Sox, and her Unca Tony… but even so, I wrapped up her cat condo and prepared to send it to my new place in Bogota. Finally, I realized this was more about me than her, and I relented. She would stay in DC with Tony, and – I soon learned – with my sister, who had a two-year post in the city and would happily take over the apartment and the cat. I missed Raya in Bogota, but knew she was better off at home, her home, with Tony and Kyna. The shipping company was oddly not surprised when I called them and had them bring back the cat condo.

I continued to think of Raya as “my cat” (which she might well have countered) but had less contact with her. After three years in Bogota, with the persistent honey love biscuit qualities of my sweet Ramon, it was time to move. But not back to Washington. Instead, I was moving in with my Very Nice Man, in Madrid. Another cat abandonment, punctuated with my infrequent visits to Washington.

But still: do you know cat love? If you have known it, maybe this will still make sense to you: Every time I walked back into that apartment, Raya and I were as if we’d never been apart. I worried about her weight and tried to make her exercise, tried to regulate her eating. We played, cuddled, enjoyed each other’s company. When the suitcase came out, she would get pissed and yowl at the door to go back to Tony’s – angry as only a cat can be. But as soon as I came back again, we would spoon every night.

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Cats, always

I’ve always had kitties, and usually had dogs too. If you want to argue about which is better – cats or dogs – I am the wrong person to talk to about it. I love them. The fur, the eager love, the playtime. Raya, as The Best Kitty Ever, looms large, but here are some pics from earlier pet partners:

That’s Abby (Normal) top left, Raven or maybe Koky or Raspy top right – we had a lot of black cats in the day – and my first little love, Queenie. Those sheets! That shiny pillowcase! And I appear to be wearing a watch? What memories. The pics aren’t fabulous, but the emotions come through, for me, anyway.

I’ve always been around cats. The family, from Grandma Culver and her succession of all-white cats named after cocktails, to my sister and her glorious cat history, to my brother and his meaty white Maine Coon Cat. Then there’s the aforementioned Sox, and of course, Shadi. Cats make life better.

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Even strange cats

It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that cats in far-flung places have been a source of happiness for me. During COVID I wandered around La Marsa exchanging kibble for pictures of the cute little weirdos dotting the neighborhoods, living rough but with loads of love from the neighbors. Or the cats in a cat cafe – lordy, I can stay in one of those places all afternoon. I have always found cat love in the universe, maybe as a salve for missing Miss Raya Buckets. Please to enjoy. I hope they make you feel good, like they do for me.

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New normal

I was lucky/not lucky to be headed back to DC the day the vet recommended humane euthanasia, after a couple of years of medicines and treatments that hadn’t resolved a tummy problem. No one wants to do this thing. My mom, may she rest in peace, said she never cried more than when she took our family pooch, Sugar, to her last vet appointment. But as much as I didn’t want to do this thing, worse would have been letting Tony do it alone. Worse would have been letting Raya down. Together, Tony and I made it through the thing. We both resolved never to get another cat, which is a lie. We propped each other up over the coming days and weeks and, now, months.

Nearly six months after she crossed the Rainbow Bridge, it’s still hard that Raya doesn’t come scooting around the wood floors (still meowing very loudly) at mealtimes, or cuddle with me at night. Losing her so short on the heels of losing Dad seemed to intensify both losses. I wouldn’t mind going back a couple of years – 2022 anyone? – and having more time with them both.

Dad was a fan of Raya’s. He called her, quite brusquely, “Cat,” but you could tell there was affection there. And she was a fan of Dad, at least at feeding time. She was a sucker for anyone with a can of wet food, of course, but Dad knew the score.

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