RIP Norman McGee 5.22.07-2.4.23

15 years.

The longest relationship I've ever had.

In 2007 I was at Berea College, doing summer labor at the Agriculture and Natural Resources office. One afternoon two fellow students brought in the tiniest 4-5 week old kitten.

Could someone help him?

What else could I do?

They'd found him under the gazebo between ANR and the nursing building.

He looked brownish-grey at first glance.

I cupped my hands around him, grabbed the Dawn dishsoap from the staff kitchen and took him to the bathroom where I let the water run until it was warm.

I bathed him gently, the little white triangle of a head and almost-matching orange freckles on his face. His nose was so pink.

It looked like his skin was moving. The more I wiped the thicker the water coming off of him became. Brackish: brown, red, black, yellow. He was covered in fleas.

Turns out he was bright white underneath it all, a little whisp of a thing. He'd been abandoned by his mama and littermates.

So I took him home. I was fostering a lot in those days and a Sustainability & Environmental Studies professor, a fellow cat person, offered to be my sponsor. He said if I could provide the space and TLC, he would take care of vet expenses and provide a stipend for food and litter.

(Dr. R.O., thank you.)

He was too young to neuter at the time. The SENS professor took him to the vet for a checkup and to get his vaccinations. When the doctor asked the cat's name the professor stammered and said, "Um, Maggie?" And the doc with the baby's legs up in the air came back with, "Say, I think McGee would be more appropriate."

And that's what his chart said for years.

A couple weeks later another Ag professor (and licensed vet) performed his neuter along with two of my fosters in the downstairs labratory. I got to watch. I'll never forget the three of them lifeless, wrapped in a bath towel, their little sedated heads bobbing as I walked them to my car. Norman was the first to wake up and he clumsily crawled to me, wanting to curl up in my arms. He loved to be held and had a purr like a chainsaw.

(Dr. D.H., thank you.)

His full name was Norman McGee.

He was a foster fail that stole my heart and bonded instantly with the late great Bruce Bogtrotter. They were brothers-in-paw.

I bought Norman a cherry red harness and gave him a name tag with my phone number on it. I vowed to love him forever.

For a few months I called him L'il Scoop and later Two Scoops because he was so small I could curl my index finger under the back strap of the harness like a hook and scoop him right up off the floor onto the couch. Then it was Big Scoop until he outgrew it. His yellow-green eyes glowed in delight, in gratitude for touch and closeness.

He grew so fast. Big and fluffy. He packed on pounds such that he looked a bit like a giant toasted marshmallow, in his prime.

The same year I got him I went to a music festival and left my brood in the care of a friend and hippie who called on the last day of the festival to tell me Norman had a lump on his neck. I raced home and missed The White Stripes without even a second thought.

Unbeknownst to the catsitter, one of the fosters had bitten him and it swelled up with infection. So back to the vet we went. After a week of antibiotics he was back to normal.

When we traveled I'd pop half a benadryl and gave him the other half. Technically I'm allergic and he was an extremely nervous traveler. He laid in his carrier between the bucket seats in the front of many a moving truck.

Years later, after two cross-country moves (east to west and southwest to northwest) one of Scott's dogs scratched him in the middle of the night, on the belly. It was a stressful scene of naked bodies, tufts of hair, and anal gland expression. Just a flesh wound, a small tear. I sanitized the wound, cleaned him up, and kept a close eye until it healed.

He had so many scars already. The hair grew back.

We got a catio a year after moving into my now-home and he blossomed in the sun. But his skin was so pink and his ears so white I had to get a special sunscreen to use on the tips of his ears. He loved to sunbathe.

I lost Bruce to a congenital heart condition in 2012 and Norman became despondent in his loneliness without a companion. So I adopted Cyrus a few years later to help fill the void. He looks so much like Bruce it's scary, and he and Norman cuddled in a kitty 69 every night.

They had their own room, with a cat door that leads out to the catio so they could go in and out as they pleased, safely.

Norman was extremely vocal and that was challenging through the years. He didn't want for anything but extra love and attention.

His favorite thing to do was to sit on the ledge of the bathtub while I was in it, dip the tip of his tail in the water and headbutt me in the face.

He loved me so.

He played and ran and got into things.

He loved to hide under the blankets on my bed. "Mind the lump, it's Norman," I'd say when I had guests or lovers over, in my 20s.

His disposition was kitten-like for his whole life until about the last year. When I took him for an exam last February, he had been quite drooly. Thick mucus with a bad smell. I was afraid he had an abcess.

The vet wanted to do oral surgery. His teeth were all but gone. I declined, agreed to a round of antibiotics, and set him on a wet-food only diet. The best wet food money can buy, no fillers, low magnesium to protect his aging urinary tract. He was healthy and happy.

We called him the Weatherman in later years because anytime it rained or snowed and he didn't want to go out in the catio, he'd announce it to the whole house. I feel awful for the times I begged him to hush while I was on Zoom calls or recording podcasts or trying to take a nap.

The house, while it's still full, is eerily quiet.

Without fail he'd wake me up between 5 and 6 every morning, ready for his breakfast. He was my alarm clock.

Until yesterday morning.

I woke up at quarter after seven and didn't hear him crying. The breakfast bell didn't ring. The first thing I do upon waking is pee, then feed the cats.

So I opened the door to the Cat Room and he was there. But he was hiding under the table in there. Pale and sad and weak.

He barely sniffed at the food.

Norman hated the carrier, the vet, anywhere that wasn't home he didn't feel safe. He once peed from fear while we stood in line for rabies shots at an outdoor free clinic some years ago. I didn't want to put him through multiple appointments.

So I made just the one. The last one.

He had been having issues with incontinence off and on for awhile. His fur had started fading and clumping from age. He'd lost a lot of weight, down to 10ish pounds from his healthiest near-15.

He was a big boy, so handsome and sweet.

The decline has been slow, over a year or so, and I think I was in denial about it.

I wrapped him in a towel and held him. He was quiet. No purr. At one point he growled at me. That was a different cat than my Norman. He was a shell, telling me that it was time.

Yesterday was the day.

When he didn't protest getting in the carrier, I knew it was the right thing to do.

When I discovered he was "leaking" on the car ride over, I knew it was the right thing to do. When he didn't even look at the "kitty gogurt" tuna paste at the clinic, I knew it was the right thing to do.

When they told me he was sweet and gentle with them installing the catheter in his arm, I knew it was the right thing to do.

They brought him to me wrapped in a cherry red microfleece blanket and let me hold him the entire time. Before the first shot, a sedative, he nestled into my shoulder and purred and purred. It was soft and low. He made a tiny biscuit or two in my hair. And as he let go I did too.

When the staff had looked me in the eye as I shared how things had been going, they didn't question me. "Sounds like typical old man stuff," they said, with such understanding, part of me wanted them to talk me out of it.

I was looking for a reason or a sign.

Those were such selfish thoughts.

The choice was for him.

When he took his last breath in my arms, and the doctor said, "he's gone," I knew it was the right thing to do. I felt it with impunity.

All the "firsts" without him are hardest right now, the reminders. Cyrus keeps calling for him. Now I have to use a plastic can topper because Norman got 2/3 and Cyrus got 1/3 of a can. His absence is palpable.

I am the least woo-woo person I know.

An atheist, a pragmatist, maybe an idealist.

But I want to believe he and Bruce are reunited basking in the sun, someplace.

That's what he would have wanted.