Another Heartbeat in the room
I knew, as I pulled into the driveway, how this story ended.
Megs, the 17-year-old teen queen who rules my home, was sitting down in the driveway, her hand in a box, stroking her cat.
Tasha was an indoor cat. So, for her to be outside . . . well that�s the end.
Here�s the beginning: Tasha was a street cat, from a mean old hometown. She was given to us when rescued from what would�ve been a short life.
My mom, actually, came up with the name Natasha, which Megs shortened to �Tasha and that�s where it stayed.
Tasha was always interested in whatever Megs was doing. When it was time for bedtime reading, Tasha would jump up on the bed and listen attentively, then curl up around herself the way cats do and drift off. She slept with Meghan through the most formative years of their lives, always with Meghan, never with any of the rest of us.
She hung out in Megs� room a lot.
She was the first to see the new tank top, the prom dress, the eye shadow and hair glitter.
It was another heartbeat in the room, another soul with which to share secrets of boys and body changes and hairstyles . . . a friend.
Megs� first story on the first family computer was The Cat And Dog Story, all about her two pets. When I went on a field trip as a writer to the strange land of Lubbock, she snuck in family photos, stashed in one of my notebooks. Herself, her mom . . . and the dog and cat. I discovered it in a hotel room and suddenly felt at home.
I may have portrayed Tasha as a friendly cat. She was not.
Not ever.
She was quiet and only talked when she wanted something, like a refill of water or a taste of milk in the morning or if the food bowl was empty.
She ate only dried food and always the bowl was near Megs� bed. You could hear the crunch in the middle of the night when she dined and you knew what it was.
Tasha flitted through life with us, all the moves, all the new experiences and explorations and angles and hideaways cats always find.
She had little to do with me and never anything nice to say. Yet she�d come sit by me at dinner time knowing I�d slip her something
Once, Tasha captured a live bat which had wriggled through the eaves into the house. It flopped down the stairway as I was watching a football game. We had a big plastic bat, the exact same size, left over from some Halloween. I thought she was playing with the plastic bat. I reached to toss it back upstairs and it flew away.
Yikes.
Tasha was chuckling, I just know it.
She and the wog (that�s a little dog whose whole body waggles when its tail does, and another story altogether) would have these great rolling fights at which Tasha was always superior, always ready to end it with the sudden flash of a fang and the escape before the wogger had a clue the fight was over.
Tasha and I never got along. I think it heralded back to when, in an older house, she was sunning herself in a porch window when Bango! the sash cut loose, down came the old window and she was almost quick enough to spring away. Her tail was caught. I heard the yowl. I raised the window and was rewarded with some deep grooves from the back claws.
I suspect Tasha thought I had rigged the doom device. She never forgave me. Unless I had some bacon to share.
Another time, we came home to find a window screen knocked out and plenty of Tasha�s fur spread around it. Some nasty-looking black fur as well. As we reconstructed the break-in, a neighborhood cat had come for a visit. Tasha had protected her homestead and repelled the interloper, at the cost of a real nasty gash in her own back and general displacement of fur.
I took her to the vet. I am sure she blamed me for the whole deal.
When Mikayla arrived three years ago, Tasha was tolerant to a point. Then a hiss and an escape. See ya, new kid.
Then Tasha got sick.
She had hypertension and kidney problems, which caused her retinas to both detach, something Dr. Wendy the vet said she�d never seen before.
Even when Tasha went sightless, she still exceeded expectations, always jumping onto Meg�s bed (the vet swore she�d stop jumping), still stealthily sneaking around the house, if a little displaced by Patti�s wheelchair or maybe one of Mikayla�s bowls in a familiar pathway.
She still used her littler box and still crunched her meals.
A few days ago, she was going. She was bedraggled, listless and disoriented. We knew. Megs knew.
You could pick Tasha up and she stayed where you placed her. Mikayla never gave up trying to pet the kitty. She was exuberant that Tasha let her pet her and stayed by her. A parting gift of a memory from a lifetime family friend.
Dr. Wendy laid out the options: Probably kidney failure this time. But she let Megs make the choice.
Megs had decided that Tasha�s quality of life left with her eyesight, that she just wasn�t the same.
A best friend had made a hard decision.
When I came home too late again, Megs had Tasha in a box, in the driveway, waiting for a good friend, Ryan, to come over and help with the burial.
Tasha looked fine in the box. Her ears were up as if listening for the skittering of a spider across a windowpane, a favorite quarry to be pursued.
Megs lovingly stroked her fur, damp with tears of a girl grown up alongside this friend.
Megs had chosen to bury her outside of a bedroom window, so the rustling wind could remind her of her friend.
She was not the only one crying.
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