This is an ode to Mr. Puddy, the world’s most constipated cat.
Mr. Puddy passed away on July 31 at the age of 17. He was a beloved pet, a good mouse-catcher and a role model for elderly, incontinent cats everywhere.
Puddy is survived by his parents, a Jack Russell, a cocker spaniel, a girl cat and a boy cat. His absence has lowered the pet-to-room ratio from an admirable 5:6 to a dismal 2:3. The magnitude of his loss cannot be overstated.
My wife and I loved Mr. Puddy to the utmost degree, or at least to the utmost degree you can love a cat that pees on your pillows. There were times when we wished for his death, and there were times when we wanted to kill him ourselves, but as more and more of our friends have children, I’m realizing that this is really the norm.
Mr. Puddy was our firstborn. My wife and I got him nine years ago on our first Christmas together from a friend who worked in a vet’s office. Peanut, as he was called then, had been brought in to be euthanized due to what his previous owners called a “bad disposition,” which is a euphemism for “he’s crotchety and pees everywhere.” We didn’t know that at the time.
All we knew was that a seemingly innocent cat was about to be put to death, and his name was Peanut. If there is one rule to live by in this world, it’s that you just don’t kill anything named Peanut.
We could tell right away that he was a dignified cat, the kind you could easily imagine in a top hat and monocle. But not, as we found out later, the kind that would actually wear a top hat if you put one on him. He would wear fake reindeer antlers at Christmastime, but that might say more about the Velcro chinstrap than Mr. Puddy’s yuletide spirit.
Mr. Puddy began peeing on our stuff the instant he touched ground in our house. Rugs, mats, recliners, couches, slippers – nothing was sacred. Some our friends were quick to judge, especially when he would pee on, say, their coats, or maybe their children. But those kinds of things really shouldn’t be left lying around our house anyway.
The truth was, we loved Mr. Puddy immediately, even if he was sort of an a-hole. He was ours, the first thing that was really, truly ours. Sure, he had his problems, but I could say the same thing about our friends’ kids. At least Mr. Puddy never peed his own pants.
Mr. Puddy’s other problem was that he ate obsessively. Eventually, he got so fat that he couldn’t even clean himself, resulting in a greasy, dandery stripe of hair running down his back that ranked just below Gary Busey’s teeth on the grossness scale. His fatness also made him lose the ability to meow like a normal cat. Instead, he emitted something closer to an “ech,” which we thought was hilarious. We would use it as a party trick, and people loved it. “Go get that cat,” they’d say. “Make him do that thing that’s funny!”
“Ech,” Mr. Puddy would say, and the room would erupt.
This became less funny the day that we realized that the “ech” was happening because, while Puddy had ballooned in size, we had never thought to loosen his collar. Underneath it was a perfectly bald ring that ran completely around his neck. We felt appropriately terrible, although it did make him look like clergy, which was sort of funny.
Years went by, and Puddy continued in his ways, peeing on our most valuable belongings with quiet, haughty pride. Then one day last July, he stopped eating. Just stopped. We were concerned, and took him to the vet’s office, where the doctor conducted a series of blood tests and x-rays. The conclusion was that Mr. Puddy was fantastically, colossally constipated, literally the most constipated cat the doctor had ever seen. This called for an overnight stay at the veterinary’s “feline resort,” which is like a human resort, except that instead of being pampered with massages and chocolates, Mr. Puddy was given a nonstop series of enemas.
We brought him home the following day, full of optimism that our now substantially lighter cat would resume eating. And he did. There was joy all around. The next day, however, the doctor called me at work to deliver some bad news: Some post-cat-enema testing revealed a tumor. It was cancer that was blocking Mr. Puddy’s intestines. Cancer that would require an operation that a 17-year-old cat just wouldn’t survive.
Within a few days, Puddy stopped eating again, stopped drinking and started bleeding out of his nose. By the time we took him back to the vet just a few days later, he was sunken and emaciated. The vet encouraged us to put him down.
Mr. Puddy was 8 years old when we’d adopted him, meaning we had ultimately more than doubled his time on earth. He’d had a good run. There was nothing else we could do. Plus, there wasn’t that much left in our house for him to pee on anyway.
Putting Mr. Puddy to sleep was far worse than I had imagined. We wept openly and cradled his little
body, warm and limp in the towel. His little chest was as still as an empty cradle. It wasn’t even real. Eventually, we signaled to the nurse that we were ready to let him go. We said a final, tearful goodbye and handed him over.
That’s when we saw it, a little yellow puddle glistening on the leather couch between us. It was pee. Mr. Puddy’s last pee. His final protest against the indignities of the world. One last hurrah, one last middle finger in the air, like a punctuation mark on his life.
“Farewell, cruel world!” he said. “Ech!”
One more ruined couch, one more notch in his belt. We laughed like hell. And somewhere up in kitty heaven, so did Mr. Puddy.
Showing posts with label cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat. Show all posts
We have a term in our household, "Marshmallowed," which is defined as such:
Marshmallowed (marsh-mel-ode) adjective: The state of having been tricked, duped, fooled, bilked, bamboozled, flimflammed or otherwise suckered into bringing a seemingly cute and harmless animal into one's house, only to have it turn into the devil.
I'll use it in a sentence: "Honey, the new cat just ripped off my leg and ran off with it into the woods. I'm afraid that once again we've been Marshmallowed."
My wife, you should understand, has a bit of a bad habit of bringing every injured, homeless or lost animal she comes across into our home in order to "nurse it back to health," which is wife-talk for "keep it and love it forever and ever." Dogs, cats, bunnies, horses, goats, warthogs – if she spots an animal wandering around by itself after dusk, that creature doesn't stand a chance. One minute, it's walking though a field, enjoying the cool evening air, maybe snacking on some nuts and berries; the next, it's trying to wriggle its way out of a box in our house, trapped on all sides by blankets and stuffed animals, most likely with a pink bow tied around its head, while my wife tries to feed it warm milk from a bottle.
Mr. Puddy, Maggie, Bonkers, Henry, Buffy, Teeny, Three-legger, Daisy, Marshmallow Kitty, Patterson, Miss Tiger: That, in chronological order, is a list of the many, many animals that my wife and I, by which I mean my wife, have brought into our house since getting married eight years ago.
A quick mathematic calculation reveals that we take in an average of 1.375 animals per year, a number that makes us, scientifically speaking, idiots. And of those 1.375 animals we take in, approximately 1.375 of them end up totally Marshmallowing us.
The term originated from one particularly cute and pathetic stray cat who, about a year ago, decided to start hanging around in our backyard. It was riddled with fleas, covered in mud, inexplicably shaved on the side of its head and looked overall like it had just very unsuccessfully tried to mate with a rhinoceros.
Considering that our house is the size of a walk-in closet, I was quick to declare to my wife, the cats, the dog and the other dog that there was absolutely no way we were going to be bringing another pet into the house.
"Oh, no way. There is no room for another animal here!" my wife agreed. "By the way, his name is Marshmallow Kitty."
Later that day, while Marshmallow Kitty sifted through his new litterbox in the middle of my office, I couldn't help but wonder exactly how much looting and pillaging I had done in my previous life to deserve this.
At the same time, Marshmallow Kitty did seem to be an especially sweet and timid cat. I sort of felt like we had done the right thing by taking him in. Of course, that was before he turned into the kind of beastly, bloodthirsty hellcat that, given the opportunity, wouldn't hesitate for a second to push your grandma in front of a bus.
The horror began the next evening when Marshmallow came trotting up to my wife, gave her a charming little meow and, for no apparent reason, hurtled himself through the air, latched onto my wife's shin and start shredding it like George Bush's military service records.
My wife grabbed the cat and chucked him across the room. Rather than running away like a normal cat, Marshmallow crouched close to the ground, growling like an idling tractor, his eyes glazing over with a diabolical sheen. Then, hissing ferociously, came charging back at my wife and sunk his teeth into her calf.
I quickly blasted the cat with our Waterbottle of Terror, and it scrambled out of the room, shrieking. The trouble was over. It had been a disturbing incident, but ultimately no harm had been done, with the exception of a little doggie unrest.
The next morning, as my wife was reaching into the refrigerator for some milk, Marshmallow lunged in front of her, sank his teeth into a loaf of bread and dragged it across the kitchen, finishing off two or three slices in the process. This soon became a regular habit, only sometimes the cat would forego the bread in favor of your leg. We would later turn this into a party game called "Truth or Open the Fridge."
The day after that, Marshmallow attacked my face during dinner, snatched an entire chicken leg from my plate and managed to devour the whole thing, bones and all, as he ran. Like, seriously.
The day after that, he sent a houseguest fleeing from the room after apparently mistaking her feet for a pair of plump, juicy rodents. It became clear to us at that point that Marshmallow Kitty had to go. For whatever reason, he had transformed from a sweet, homeless kitten into a little spitting, hissing gargoyle with a serious case of bloodlust, kind of like a shorter, skinnier version of Dick Cheney. And I'll be damned if I'm about to have some hairy little republican running around my house and stealing my chicken leg. Plus, he gave our nervous little dogs the runs.
So off to the Humane Society he went. It wasn't an easy decision, especially considering how much we love animals; on the other hand, it wasn't a difficult decision either, considering how much I love not having a cat lurch onto my bed in the middle of the night and try to remove my face with its hind claws.
Did we learn our lesson from the Marshmallow incident? Of course not, which is why, a few weeks ago, we welcomed yet another cat, Miss Tiger, into the fray. That makes five animals currently living in our house, which averages out to approximately .83 animals per room, 1.6 animals per floor and 2.5 animals per human.
Here's how I first learned about our new housemate:
Scene: My workplace, Monday, around 10 a.m.
The phone rings.
"Hello?"
" … um, hi."
"Oh god, you found another one."
Miss Tiger had apparently made the mistake of wandering around behind our house, all dirty and flea-bitten, with a rabies tag from 2001. So into our house she went, quarantined to – you guessed it – my office.
So, like … anybody need a cat?
Marshmallowed (marsh-mel-ode) adjective: The state of having been tricked, duped, fooled, bilked, bamboozled, flimflammed or otherwise suckered into bringing a seemingly cute and harmless animal into one's house, only to have it turn into the devil.
I'll use it in a sentence: "Honey, the new cat just ripped off my leg and ran off with it into the woods. I'm afraid that once again we've been Marshmallowed."
My wife, you should understand, has a bit of a bad habit of bringing every injured, homeless or lost animal she comes across into our home in order to "nurse it back to health," which is wife-talk for "keep it and love it forever and ever." Dogs, cats, bunnies, horses, goats, warthogs – if she spots an animal wandering around by itself after dusk, that creature doesn't stand a chance. One minute, it's walking though a field, enjoying the cool evening air, maybe snacking on some nuts and berries; the next, it's trying to wriggle its way out of a box in our house, trapped on all sides by blankets and stuffed animals, most likely with a pink bow tied around its head, while my wife tries to feed it warm milk from a bottle.
Mr. Puddy, Maggie, Bonkers, Henry, Buffy, Teeny, Three-legger, Daisy, Marshmallow Kitty, Patterson, Miss Tiger: That, in chronological order, is a list of the many, many animals that my wife and I, by which I mean my wife, have brought into our house since getting married eight years ago.
A quick mathematic calculation reveals that we take in an average of 1.375 animals per year, a number that makes us, scientifically speaking, idiots. And of those 1.375 animals we take in, approximately 1.375 of them end up totally Marshmallowing us.
The term originated from one particularly cute and pathetic stray cat who, about a year ago, decided to start hanging around in our backyard. It was riddled with fleas, covered in mud, inexplicably shaved on the side of its head and looked overall like it had just very unsuccessfully tried to mate with a rhinoceros.
Considering that our house is the size of a walk-in closet, I was quick to declare to my wife, the cats, the dog and the other dog that there was absolutely no way we were going to be bringing another pet into the house.
"Oh, no way. There is no room for another animal here!" my wife agreed. "By the way, his name is Marshmallow Kitty."
Later that day, while Marshmallow Kitty sifted through his new litterbox in the middle of my office, I couldn't help but wonder exactly how much looting and pillaging I had done in my previous life to deserve this.
At the same time, Marshmallow Kitty did seem to be an especially sweet and timid cat. I sort of felt like we had done the right thing by taking him in. Of course, that was before he turned into the kind of beastly, bloodthirsty hellcat that, given the opportunity, wouldn't hesitate for a second to push your grandma in front of a bus.
The horror began the next evening when Marshmallow came trotting up to my wife, gave her a charming little meow and, for no apparent reason, hurtled himself through the air, latched onto my wife's shin and start shredding it like George Bush's military service records.
My wife grabbed the cat and chucked him across the room. Rather than running away like a normal cat, Marshmallow crouched close to the ground, growling like an idling tractor, his eyes glazing over with a diabolical sheen. Then, hissing ferociously, came charging back at my wife and sunk his teeth into her calf.
I quickly blasted the cat with our Waterbottle of Terror, and it scrambled out of the room, shrieking. The trouble was over. It had been a disturbing incident, but ultimately no harm had been done, with the exception of a little doggie unrest.
The next morning, as my wife was reaching into the refrigerator for some milk, Marshmallow lunged in front of her, sank his teeth into a loaf of bread and dragged it across the kitchen, finishing off two or three slices in the process. This soon became a regular habit, only sometimes the cat would forego the bread in favor of your leg. We would later turn this into a party game called "Truth or Open the Fridge."
The day after that, Marshmallow attacked my face during dinner, snatched an entire chicken leg from my plate and managed to devour the whole thing, bones and all, as he ran. Like, seriously.
The day after that, he sent a houseguest fleeing from the room after apparently mistaking her feet for a pair of plump, juicy rodents. It became clear to us at that point that Marshmallow Kitty had to go. For whatever reason, he had transformed from a sweet, homeless kitten into a little spitting, hissing gargoyle with a serious case of bloodlust, kind of like a shorter, skinnier version of Dick Cheney. And I'll be damned if I'm about to have some hairy little republican running around my house and stealing my chicken leg. Plus, he gave our nervous little dogs the runs.
So off to the Humane Society he went. It wasn't an easy decision, especially considering how much we love animals; on the other hand, it wasn't a difficult decision either, considering how much I love not having a cat lurch onto my bed in the middle of the night and try to remove my face with its hind claws.
Did we learn our lesson from the Marshmallow incident? Of course not, which is why, a few weeks ago, we welcomed yet another cat, Miss Tiger, into the fray. That makes five animals currently living in our house, which averages out to approximately .83 animals per room, 1.6 animals per floor and 2.5 animals per human.
Here's how I first learned about our new housemate:
Scene: My workplace, Monday, around 10 a.m.
The phone rings.
"Hello?"
" … um, hi."
"Oh god, you found another one."
Miss Tiger had apparently made the mistake of wandering around behind our house, all dirty and flea-bitten, with a rabies tag from 2001. So into our house she went, quarantined to – you guessed it – my office.
So, like … anybody need a cat?
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