Ebony

Ebony, Ebs, Ebsters, Ebony-cat, Ebsony...My tiny black cat has earned quite a few names with her cuteness over the last 10 years.  I'm not sure exactly how old she is--I got her when she was already full grown, and have some medical forms that conflict in her age data--but she's at least 11, maybe 12.  So she's getting up there in cat years.

Life with Ebony has definitely had its ups and downs.  When I first got her, it was only 3 days after I'd suddenly lost my beloved Midnight, my first feline baby.  I can never call Ebony a replacement for her--Midnight left her own little hole in my heart that will never quite heal--but I got Ebony because I had lost Midnight.  Choko was about 6 months old at the time, and felt Midnight's loss (even though she hated him) very keenly.  So when a friend of mine offered Ebony to me, I accepted.  I knew that she'd been rescued by another friend from an abusive/neglectful kittenhood.  I'd met her and had tried to befriend her at previous times when I would visit the friend who took her in (and she would have none of me), so I knew there would be some issues to work through.  I had no idea just how many issues... ;)

It began in my tiny studio apartment--a room maybe about 15 feet square, about the size of my current living room, actually.  She would sit in one corner of the room, and I would be in the opposite corner, as far away as I could be, and she would be hissing at me.  And spitting if I came any closer.  She had poor grooming habits, brought on by the time of abuse I'm sure, and had incurred a large number of mats all along her backside.  I knew they were causing her some pain.  At the time, I didn't know that she'd been declawed, so about 3 weeks into this spitting contest, I determined to brave the claws and teeth and whatever else and get those mats out of her.  What a fight she put up!  But I came out of it mostly intact (a bite mark or two, but nothing else), and she emerged mat-free.  The next morning, she was a changed cat.  It literally happened that fast.  From then on, I was hers and she was mine, and nothing nor no one could tell us otherwise.

"Stop with the camera and PET ME!!"

She initially refused to use the litterbox that Choko used and that still doubtless smelled of Midnight too, and instead began to use the corner of the carpet under my desk.  Ack!  Not wanting to purchase a second litterbox for such a tiny apartment, I sacrificed an old 8x8 tin pan that I had as a temporary compromise, and she was happy with that.  Most of the time.  I later had to throw my bean bag away, and was only barely able to salvage the old leather couch I'd received from my parents...  So I washed the litterbox, scrubbing it to within an inch of its life, filled it with brand new sand, and locked my reluctant little cat in the bathroom with it.  When I went to check on her a half hour later, there was a fresh little 'tootsie roll' sitting on top of the sand.  The box had met with her approval, and I rarely had a bathroom problem with her again.  Although to this day, she never covers her work... :P

Cats are pretty territorial, and Ebony is no exception.  From the start, she has demanded a space of her own--and not just any space...a SOFT space.  My mom had bought me a pillow that had Winnie-the-Pooh on one side and Tigger on the other.  I used it as my chair cushion, and liked it very much.  Then an odd thing started happening.  I would come home from work and find the cushion not ON the chair where I'd left it, nor was it on the floor in front of the chair as if it had simply been knocked down...no, it had been pulled UNDERNEATH the chair, and Ebony was sleeping on it.  Every day.  I finally ceded that battle, and the pillow became Ebony's.  From then on, no matter where I moved to, the first order of business was to find a place to put Ebony's pillow.  Because if she had a hidey-hole space, she was a contented kitty, and no harm would befall my belongings...But if she didn't...I could rest assured that the next morning, I would find a 'surprise' waiting for me somewhere.  She's THAT consistent.

A few years back, before the Munch was born, Ebony developed an abcess in one of the glands under her tail.  Cats are good at hiding things, so I didn't even realize something was wrong until one day when she happened to walk away from me holding her tail up, and I saw a huge bald spot with lots of red in it.  Not good.  We made a quick trip to a cat hospital, and somewhere between $400 and $500 later, we had a healthy kitty again...But she's never been quite the same since.  I think that abcess was just the first of a number of little maladies that she's gone through, and it's all been piling up to now, right under my nose, and yet unseen...  She's lost weight over the past couple of years--more weight than I realized, as I look back at older pictures--and spent more and more time sleeping too.  I assumed it was the whole 'cat is getting older' thing, and did what I could to keep her comfy, fed, and loved.  But then she stopped grooming herself.  And then she stopped eating.  Today I took my tiny, barely 3 pound darling in to a different (cheaper) vet.  Three hours later, I emerged in tears, only paying for the office visit...the tests they wanted to run on her simply to find out what's going wrong and why she's not getting the nutrients she should were going to cost us more than we could reasonably afford.  I've since, through a friend here who also has cats, found a much cheaper (but still great) clinic, and will be taking her there very early tomorrow morning for the most important of the tests she needs.  The poor little cat can't even sit up to eat a meal right now, so I tried giving her an eyedropper of chicken-flavored water.  As soon as she realized what it was, she started gobbling at it.  She was so hungry.  I had to be careful not to give her too much, but we've got another feeding coming up shortly.  If that's what I have to do to get my little baby going again, that's what I'm going to do.  Her heart and lungs are still going strong, so I'm not ready to say goodbye.  And I hope she's not either.

An update on my baby cat...she passed away only a few hours after I wrote this post, at about 10:30pm.  Daddy rushed her to the animal ER when we realized what was happening (I was too emotionally wrecked to make the drive myself), but she was gone before he even got in their doors.  The loss is still soaking in, and in some ways hasn't quite hit yet, although there certainly has been a great deal of grief.  I remember making a promise to myself after Midnight died that I would never allow myself to become as attached to a cat as I had to her.  I'm glad I broke that promise.  Ebony deserved the love we shared.  But oh, it hurts.