"Beware of Cat" sign beside the chipmunk holes. On Tuesday, February 6,

2001, our dear Smokey died and if there's an aminal (as my son Neil used

to say) heaven, Smokey there, mama!

    Eight years ago, a vet in Niagara predicted Smokey would not have

many years left because he was "suffering" from a kidney problem.

    "Switch him to a low protein diet," advised the vet.

    We did.

    "Switch me back to my Tender Vittles or I'll stop eating

altogether!" advised Smokey.

    We did.

    "Oh, well," said the vet. "I guess he can have a long life or a

short, happy life."

    Just like my friend Don's mother, Smokey was always of indeterminate age. We

know two facts: When we got Smokey, he was fully grown and thus, at

least one year old, but more probably older. When he died, he had been a

part of our family for eighteen years, since Jennifer was four and Neil

was five. Ergo, Smokey was at least nineteen, probably older. To mess

with Winston Churchill's famous words, I have a message for that vet:

Some short. To mess with my mother's famous saying: Put that in your

pipe and Smokey it!

    Smokey came into our lives as pure serendipity. My kids had been

asking (begging?) for a pet and they had almost worn down David

McTaggart's resistance on that fine Saturday morning when Bill Thomas

made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

    "Please, Ev," said Bill. "Just for the weekend, till I can find him

a home. I can't keep him at my place because Malcolm will kill him."

    "Oh, Bill," said I, cradling the phone between my shoulder and ear

while David and I discussed the problem. "I don't know. We don't have

anything--"

    "Ev, no," whined David. "I'll buy a dog tomorrow. Honest."

    "Yes! Yes!" screamed both kids.

    "I'll give you enough food for him for the weekend and a litter box

and some litter."

    "Well--"

    "He'll be in the entry hall outside the office," Bill said and hung

up.

    Still mumbling about the virtues of Golden Retrievers, David drove

the kids and me to my magazine office, dubbed "The Little House on the

Prairie" for its rural location in a corn field. There, in the entry

hall, surrounded by cans of cat food, litter and a plastic litter tray,

sat a natural wicker basket. A small gray nose stuck out between the

wicker slats. A small pink tongue protruded a quarter of an inch from a

small gray mouth. We placed the basket on the back seat between our

children and started back home. We weren't even out of The Little

House's long, winding driveway before we heard hilarity in the back

seat.

    "Mom-meeeee!" shouted Jennifer. "He's licking our fingers!"

    By the time we hit Highway 406, the purring noises coming from that

basket rivalled the sounds from under the hood of my Honda Civic. David

looked at me with that look, the one my kids hated to see, the one that

says he's not really angry, but gee whiz, he's so disappointed in you.

The "Guilt Look", my daughter calls it.

    "Oh, Ev," said David, sounding so disappointed in me, "I knew this

was a mistake."

    Back at the house, the kids quickly opened the wicker basket and out

walked the face that launched a thousand tuna boats. A snowy white patch

of fur started between his eyes, bypassed his cute little snub nose and

extended along his left cheek, down his neck and into his right paw.

Except for this pristine snowiness, he was a ball of gray fur. Along his

back appeared a feeble attempt at tabbiness, gradations of gray that

never exceeded the colours rising from your average wet-wood campfire. A

raccoon-ringed gray tail waved gloriously over his back. He could have

been a poster boy for cats everywhere.

    "Mommy," said Jennifer, "can we call him Smokey?"

    "Don't call him anything," said David. "He's going back on Monday."

    By mid-afternoon, Neil and Jennifer had begun their campaign.

"Please, please, can we keep him? Please, he's so cute. Please, Dad?"

    That was the beginning of a relationship that spanned three decades

and a millennium, a relationship that survived two spouses and eight

moves. During his nineteen (twenty?? twenty-one???) years, Smokey

himself survived being lost for a week after one of our moves, having

the kids tie a thread to his paws (an act which made Smokey act as if he

had suddenly contracted rabies, climbing curtains, screaming like GM's

whistle at quitting time), being bitten by a raccoon (which was followed

by massive septicemia and three days in emergency at the animal

hospital), various bouts of tapeworm infestation (caused by eating

chipmunks and not spitting them back up fast enough to elude the

parasites, but fast enough to ruin my new wool rugs), and daily episodes

of sitting directly under my feet while I transported heavy kettles of

boiling spaghetti water.

    Only in 1998 did I discover that Bill Thomas

hadn't "found" our little bundle of joy; he'd stolen him from a Port

Colborne woman who had dozens of cats.

    "He looked like he deserved better," said Bill.

    Better he got. From the moment J called him ("Here, Smokey. Come

here, boy.")  and her father cautioned her that cats don't come when

they're called (Smokey immediately appeared to that call and  every call

thereafter), Smokey McTaggart was one very pampered, beloved pussycat.

If you wanted him when he was in the house, all you had to do was

scratch the carpet and before you knew it, that lovable patchwork face

and that sinuous gray body moved backwards and forwards under your face.

That beautiful white chin rose higher and higher as you scratched his

neck. That gradated gray back soared to prodigious heights as you

wriggled your bare toes under his soft, pale gray belly. His purrs

reached into high decibels as he lay in your lap and you stroked his

back and head.

    When he came with Jennifer at Christmas, for the first time I could

see the beginning ravages of old age. He walked into walls, he couldn't

hear you when you sneaked up on him and he didn't hop up on the window

ledge to watch the flocks of geese fly by the seventh floor. I tried to

prepare Jennifer for the inevitable, but she refused to discuss the

topic. Her motto was: Smokey will live forever.

    Jennifer called on Friday last. "Smokey's not eating," she said.

"He's very lethargic. I'm not admitting he'll ever die, because he

won't, but if he did, do you think we could bury him at 249 Warner?

Would that be a problem for Ruedi?"

    She called again Monday evening. "He still hasn't eaten," she said,

sniffling. "I even got him tuna and he won't eat. He's so thin, Mom."

Her voice broke. "He almost falls when he walks and he's sleeping in

places where he never went before. I think we have to do something."

    Over many words and more sobs, we arranged for me to go to London

and accompany her and Smokey to his last visit to the vet's.

    Huddled over the table, waiting for the vet, petting Smokey from all

directions, Jennifer and I wet his soft fur with our combined tears. If

our heads hadn't been almost on the table, bowed into the gray of  the

back of his neck, we might not have heard it, that most welcome of

sounds: Wobbly as a new-born kitten, he softly purred his appreciation.

    "He's in the initial stage of acute kidney failure," the vet

advised, after examining Smokey. "His heart is very weak. I think you're

making the right decision. He might live a week or maybe two, but he

wouldn't be comfortable. His kidneys are not filtering out the poisons."

    He administered a sedative and left us alone with Smokey. As we

continued to stroke his still shiny fur and tell him how much we loved

him and how lucky we were to have had him in our lives for so long, he

burrowed his head deeper against my chest and gradually fell asleep. He

was already so weak, we could barely see his body rise and fall as he

breathed. Dr. Kirby returned, shaved a small patch of fur on Smokey's

left paw and administered the death drug. Within a minute we could no longer

feel his respiration, but we continued to talk to him and pet him long

after the vet had pronounced him gone. By the time we told the staff we

were ready to go, we had used every Kleenex in the examination room.

    We could have gone back to J's apartment and cried till dawn.

Instead we went to a nearby restaurant and eulogized our favourite

friend.

    We designed his headstone.

                           Smokey McTaggart

                        The world's finest feline

                                198??-2001

                             "He hunted here."

    We wondered if we should try to fit all his nicknames on his

headstone. Smokey, Smokey Bear, The Smokster (Julie), Smoke, The Lean

Mean Tender Vittles Machine, Shithead (Don), Stinky (Jayne). We decided

to read my Smokey poems at his interment ceremony in Niagara. We

graduated to tales of his hunting prowess and baby bunnies thrown up on

Berber wool. We commiserated again with the dumb starling that flew down

our chimney and almost, almost, made it to the open front door before being struck down by the Smokey air force. We remembered him sitting in front of the backyard rock wall, waiting for moles to stick their heads out. We recalled his disastrous jump after an airborne bullfrog. We recounted instances of how, even in his weakened condition, he scrabbled for chicken bones in our garbage cans. We regretted the goat cheese foccaccia we never ate after Smokey pulled it down on the kitchen floor, ripped it open and gobbled all the goat cheese. Eventually we descended into litter box humour. We told Smokey stories till we shook with laughter and after each, we raised our wine glasses in a salute to the world's finest feline.

    We must have looked so joyous, despite our red and swollen eyes,

that our server, perhaps anticipating a request for a cake, asked, "Are

you guys celebrating some special occasion?"

    "No," we said. "Well, yes."

    All this, on two glasses of wine each. Actually, one each and one

shared.

    "They say we learn from every person we come into contact with," I

said to Jennifer, acknowledging Smokey as the people person he was to

the last. "What did you learn from Smoke?"

    "Cats really do have nine lives," said Jennifer. "More, when

necessary."

    She thought for a moment. "And you can never have enough petting."

    I reached across the table, patted her head and scratched her gently

under the chin. "How right you are," I said.

    She purred.

    Then, we held hands and agreed God's probably up there in aminal

heaven right this minute, warning the local wildlife. "Beware," He's

saying. "Where there's Smoke, there's ...."

Copyright © 2001 Ev McTaggart