Gypsy 2001-2010

Our cat Gypsy passed away from cancer of the jaw last week. She was a sweet, gentle little girl with a remarkable stubborn streak, and our home isn’t quite the same without her.

A few weeks after I moved into my first apartment, I decided I needed a cat and answered an ad in the Herald-Sun. A Carrboro cat lady introduced me to two kitties up for adoption. They were former ferals from a colony of 40+ cats that had been living under an abandoned trailer, she said. They were still very shy around humans, but she was sure they could be socialized.

I peered under a futon and saw a pantherlike black cat wedged into the farthest corner, glaring indignantly, and a sweet 7-month-old kitten gazing at me with frightened green eyes. The shy kitten let me pet her head, and I got such a good vibe from her that I decided to adopt her and “foster” her mother.

Nine years, one doctorate, and two moves later, I still had both cats. Gypsy never was a lap cat and stuck out her claws in abject terror whenever I tried to pick her up, but she grew to love attention. She purred loudly when petted, and relaxed so much that she slumped over on one side in a signature “Gypsy flop” when I skritched the sides of her face. She was responsible for my de facto adoption of her mom, Savannah, as she looked so cute and content when curled up with her hissy, temperamental mother that I never had the heart to separate them. 

When I started dating John, the cats hid under the couch whenever he came over, but he softened them up with treats and playtime. He came to feed and care for them every day when I had mono, proving to me he was a great guy and to the cats that he would make an acceptable human slave. They, in turn, made John into a cat person. Now he’s the kind of guy who takes in stray cats and tries to rescue lost kittens by the side of the highway. Shortly after we got married, we adopted a third cat, Bingley.

In July of 2010, Gypsy’s arthritis started getting worse, even though she was only nine years old, and one night I noticed her drooling. John took her to the vet, and later that day I got a call: the vet had found a lump on Gypsy’s jaw, and diagnosed her with cancer. We decided to take Gypsy home, treat her with painkillers and antibiotics, and spoil her rotten for the remainder of her days. The vet was not optimistic: “You’ll know it’s time for euthanasia when she stops eating,” he told us. “It’ll probably be sooner rather than later.” We went home thinking we’d have Gypsy for only a few more days or weeks. Little did we know that this tough little survivor would be with us for six more months.

As the weeks passed, Gypsy grew very thin, and drooled almost constantly as her tumor grew larger. Yet she retained her ravenous appetite, peppering us with meows whenever we opened the pantry door and muscling Bingley and Savannah out of the way when we put food down. It was impressive to see two big, healthy cats give way to a cancer-stricken waif half their size. 

But then, Gypsy had always been the alpha cat when it came to food. She had a passion for “people food,” and would sometimes snatch it off our plates if we weren’t careful. We got into the habit of putting our plates on the floor for her to lick after we were finished, and she would clean them as thoroughly, if not as sanitarily, as any dishwasher. Her favorite human food was raw hamburger. At one point during her illness, she choked on a pill and stopped eating for two days. We got worried, thinking it was her time to go. That night, I made galumpkis—cabbage stuffed with hamburger and rice. On a whim, I offered Gypsy a smidgen of burger. She chomped it down and let loose with an earsplitting “MRRROOOOOOAAAAW!” It was the loudest sound I’d ever heard any feline make—and that includes the lions at the NC Zoo. Relieved, we gave her plenty of burger, which she dug right into.

Gypsy also insisted on getting up on the couch, no matter how hard we tried to keep her (and her stinky drool) off it. We barricaded the couch with pillows, and she jumped onto the arms, her rickety, arthritic legs wobbling, and dragged herself up with her claws. Scolding her did nothing. I started picking her up and putting her back on the floor, and she even got used to that. Eventually—after removing her from the couch and having her re-climb it five times in a row-- we decided it was easier to cover the couch than to keep Gypsy off it. She spent most of her last few weeks atop the couch being groomed by Savannah.

A few days before Christmas, Gypsy seemed to grow worse. Some of her fur had gotten matted, and she had stopped using the litterbox. Yet she still had that ravenous appetite, and ran around in excited circles when we brought home Christmas duck. We called the vet on the 24th, but the office was closed for the holidays. On the morning of the 27th, Gypsy sniffed at her food but wouldn’t eat it. We petted her and asked her if it was time, and she purred in response. (Meanwhile Bingley, ever the self-centered one, meowed for attention from the other room.) I called the vet’s office, and was told that Soren, our preferred vet, wouldn’t be in until the next day. We thought Gypsy would be okay until then, and persuaded her to eat a little burger. Fittingly, it would be her last meal.

The next morning, John woke up and found Gypsy passed out. We knew what we had to do, and brought her in to the vet’s to be euthanized. I’ll always worry that we waited too long, but a part of me was glad that we gave her every last bit of life that we could. Maybe that’s what our little burger-chomping, couch-scaling girl would have chosen for herself.

We miss Gypsy, but are happy her suffering is over. Bingley and Savannah miss her, too—the former enemies even curled up together on the couch last night. They seemed to want to comfort one another. If there is a cat heaven, we know Gypsy’s there right now, munching ethically raised burger and sleeping in the laps of the angels.