Leonardo C. (for Cat) Moser

We put our cat Leo down today. I held him while the Vet, bless her, quietly shaved his leg and injected Peace. Here’s his story.

Twelve years ago we got a black and white tuxedo cat. Our Leo was, to coin a phrase, a pussycat at home. But he was mean at the vet’s, so the staff nicknamed him Adolph because of his little black mustache. They didn’t mean any harm, and when a kitten is feisty no one ever remembers that his life is finite.

We got Leo because our dog Moriah (They call the wind Moriah, and she broke wind all the way home when we picked her up.) was old and ill. One of my student’s mama cat had had a litter and then been run over. I went out to the farm to just look. I didn’t choose Leo, he chose me. He walked out of a dark corner of the barn, said, “You are my new servant,” and I took him home. We fed him at first from an eyedropper, he was so tiny.

Leo learned dog things from Moriah. He came to the door when someone knocked or rang the bell, and he Hoovered when we were cooking. He never ate the people food he picked up (except a can of tuna once when our backs were turned), but he learned the behavior. And he always wanted to be petted. Especially by non-cat people. The only person I ever remember him biting was a lady we nicknamed Madam. She petted him against the grain. He didn’t like it and told her so by hissing. We told her how to pet him, but she continued. He bit her, and she was gracious about it despite the bleeding.

Soon we had to put Moriah down, and Leo, despite being a cat, became Top Dog. He established a routine. When I graded papers he draped himself around my neck. When I wrote lesson plans, he sat where I was trying to write. When I spread out the newspaper on the floor to read the funnies, he always plonked his butt down on the cartoon I tried to read. He always walked across the computer keyboard when I was writing, creating chaos. Each night he crept along our headboard, jumped on my head, kissed me goodnight, and then slept at my feet. Each morning he walked up my wife’s legs and torso to stare at her face and lick her nose to wake her up. Somehow, he knew better than to wake me.

After Moriah died Leo seemed lonely, so we got him Mona, short for Mona Lisa. What else would we name Leonardo’s companion? Mona was frail from the start and didn’t live long. Leo, perhaps sensing her illness, constantly attacked and abused her. When Mona succumbed to duodenal cancer, we got a cute little orange tiger, our grandson Jonathan’s cat at our house, to be Leo’s companion. Jonathan named her Poppy. I thought that was a clever name considering her color, and he remembered Poppy the cat in a book he read. Leo and Poppy had a much different relationship than Leo and Mona. They cuddled, napped together, played hide and seek, kept each other warm. He protected her, or thought he did.

Every morning when I got up and went downstairs, Leo talked to me. “Mrrow.” I always spoke back. “Mrrow, morrow.” We had long conversations.

Life goes on. Yesterday morning, when my wife Ann checked the cats’ food and litter boxes, Leo couldn’t stand up. “I think Leo’s had a stroke,” she told me. He had failed to use the litter box and pooped on the floor, a first in his whole life.

We called the vet, got an appointment, and took him in. His blood tests, kidney function, and heart x-ray were fine. His pulse and blood pressure were normal, even strong. But he moved his head back and forth constantly. The vet checked his eyes – he was blind. His bladder was distended – he hadn’t peed because he couldn’t find the litter box and he had good manners. His urine, when she squeezed him, was very concentrated. But the worst part was that with every breath he growled.

He looked as if he had had a seizure or a stroke. “Take him home and keep an eye on him. You’ll do better than I could,” she told us. “I leave at six.” If he’d had a seizure he’d improve in twenty-four hours.

This morning, twenty-four hours later, he hadn’t improved. He was still disoriented and angry. He had finally peed where we put him on blankets, but covered himself with urine. He continued to growl every time he exhaled. We had to make a decision about quality of life versus quantity of life. Quality won.

I took him to the vet and didn’t have to say a word. “Is that Leo?” the technician asked. I nodded. “Room three.” The vet came in. The tech and I held him. The vet shaved his leg and injected him. Mercifully, he stopped growling, he relaxed his head, and he went to sleep. Shortly his heart stopped. "He wasn't in there any more," she said.

He is survived by his faithful companion Poppy, and his servants – us.

Are there lessons here? Yes. Leo was a good cat whose time had come. Beyond that, however, is this: I want someone to treat me as well as we treated Leo. When I get old and no longer inhabit my body, I want someone to hold me with love and give me an injection that puts me permanently to sleep. Do not treat me with less kindness and humanity than you would treat a pet.