(Alpha, Alphy, Alphling Alph-Alph, Alphalfa, Alphadorable)
“Don’t tell Matthew,” I warned my friend Ellen, who was visiting from Michigan for the weekend. We’d just spotted movement outside the music room window and realized that five kittens were frolicking under the bushes as their mother watched. Matt and I already had three cats, and I wasn’t looking to add five more, adorable fluffballs though they were.
Of course, Matt saw them too, ’ere long; however, before he had a chance to capture them, Mama Cat had moved them somewhere else … which turned out to be the porch of the vacant house next door. One morning, when Matt was walking to work, he saw a pile of fur near its steps, and as he went to get a closer look, the fur split into Mama and kittens, one of whom fled to the “safety” of an open basement window. Worried about whether or not it could get back out again, Matt climbed through the same window and saw not only the black kitten he’d followed but another one as well, so he rescued them both.
Of the five in the litter, these two were the ones Matt confessed that he’d especially wanted, because the little black one seemed like the somewhat pitiable runt of the litter, and the other one was clearly the pick. We named them Alpha and Omega, Alpha as in “Alpha male,” and Omega because the black one was so runty that we wrongly thought at first it was a girl, so we were calling it “Meggie” for short.
It didn’t take us too long to realize that Alphy wasn’t really a true alpha male — rather than being dominant and assertive, he was skittish around strangers and generally pretty mellow around us and the other cats. But he certainly was dominant in the category of cuteness! He was a fat and fluffy tiger kitten who, as he grew up, lost his stripes but retained his strikingness. Most of his fur was a soft brown shade unusual for cats, but he had a white face, belly, and paws, except for his “dirty chin spot,” a small patch of darker fur under his jaw. A long-haired cat, he became extra fluffy in the winter, with a ginormous ruff. He had a little pink nose that was pale pink on some days and petal pink on others. His eyes were large and greenish-gold, and one of them we called his “freak eye,” because while cats’ pupils, like people’s, normally get larger in the dark and smaller in the light, one of Alphy’s pupils didn’t respond properly on one side, staying sizeable no matter what. He even had cute teeth: cats’ teeth are rarely noticeable, except for their fangs, but if you do try more deliberately to see them, they tend to be jagged and carnivorous-looking, whereas Alphy’s were these tiny little round pearls. His face was framed by long, beautiful white whiskers and brown ears that were fuzzy with a layer of lighter fur. Plus, he was cute auditorily as well as visually. For many years, he wouldn’t really meow, but his mouth would open as if he were trying to; we called it the “silent squeak.” He always had a terrific purr, loud and rumbly, but with a rusty note to it that made it particularly distinctive. And he was a big boy, over fifteen pounds for most of his life, and close to twenty at his peak. We said that it took a lot of cat to hold that much cute.
Dinner time was the one occasion on which he regularly demonstrated more alpha-male tendencies, reminding us when it was time for him to eat and nudging his siblings from their plates once he’d finished what was on his own. His appetite proved somewhat handy for us, though, with regard to attempting to keep him groomed: to try to keep his fur lump-free, we’d occasionally (and then more frequently, as he got older) shave the lumps out with an electric razor, but since we’d always give him treats afterwards, he’d fairly patiently put up with having a lump or two shaved first. In fact, we didn’t even have to hunt him down to shave him — when he heard the razor, he’d come to us. I always liked to toss the treats a few feet away, instead of just giving them to him, because I think he enjoyed “hunting” the treats. It didn’t take his feline siblings long to figure out that if they showed up when he was being shaved, they might get some treats too … but only if Alphy didn’t snag the treats before they did. If they were hovering too hesitantly over a treat, Alphy’d shoot his paw out as if he were playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos and take it for himself.
Alphy was a great cat year-round, but I think of him as our Christmas cat, since he enjoyed sitting under the tree (or in it, until we decided that that tree had gotten a bit too bedraggled and replaced it with one less conducive to being climbed) or among the figures of our nativity set. When Matt took a picture of him looming over the shepherds and wise men, we captioned it “What ruffed beast slouches toward Bethlehem…?”
I’m sure that Alphy would also have enjoyed playing with the ribbons on Christmas presents, but we didn’t give him the chance. We learned early in our time with him that he had a strange string fetish, and would eat it if ever given the opportunity. Since this is bad for cats’ digestive systems, not to mention for humans’ possessions, we quickly got in the habit of always putting shoes with laces or clothing with straps out of his reach. He turned his attention to becoming the Terror of the Towels, which is why the towel hooks in our bathroom are hung abnormally high (and have another set of hooks beneath them, that proved not high enough). We gave up on bathmats and just stepped onto hand towels that we put back over the shower curtain rod before leaving the bathroom. On the plus side, his proclivities did help us get better at putting clothing away efficiently rather than letting it linger in laundry baskets.
Alphy’s most noteworthy string triumph came when he was on the couch while Matt and I were watching TV. Matt had bought this doodad that, if I recall correctly, was supposed to help strengthen hand and arm muscles, and it involved a bright red pull-cord … or at least, it did until Alphy snarfed said cord while our attention was distracted by the screen. Perhaps my memory deceives me, but I’m picturing that cord’s being a minimum of a foot long and about a third of an inch thick, and it had just disappeared. Suffice it to say that we were relieved when it reappeared (in the litter box, a couple days later). When Matt audited my creative writing class and the students had to write a description of their rooms, Matt cleverly described our bedroom from Alphy’s perspective, titling his piece “String Theory.”
Although Alphy’s string fascination could be both annoying and worrisome, he was otherwise a pretty great cat. He wasn’t the most consistently lap-snuggly kitty we’ve ever had, but he was affectionate and clearly liked to be around us. The most amusing demonstration of this came when Matt and I were taking swing dance lessons: we would shove the couches and coffee table back to make a dance-floor space in our living room so that we could practice the moves we were learning, and whenever Alphy heard us doing this, he’d race into the room so that he could be right underfoot.
Alphy also liked to be around his siblings. For the multiple cats we adopted after him, he was always our “first-contact kitty,” since he was laid back enough that all the others seemed to get along with him. He had a particularly strong bond with Folio, who joined our home as a small kitten. Whenever Alphy would go down to the food dish to eat, Foley would join him so that they could eat together.
Not surprisingly, Foley became a bit of a chunk himself; a couple years ago, however, we noticed that Alphy was getting thinner and thinner. He’d also essentially taken up residence on the bathroom sink’s countertop. While we missed having him within snuggling reach on the couch or in bed, we’re in the bathroom often enough that we got to see a lot of him. He pretty much only left to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom — or to avoid The Nemesis (what we called the hairdryer … but since I usually air dry my hair, he didn’t have to confront The Nemesis on the daily). It sometimes got inconvenient for me to try to reach the faucet, set down my curling iron, etc., with Alphy’s often being in the way. And the white countertop perpetually had paw prints on it. At the same time, I could see that Alphy’s health was declining, so I was grateful for all the interactions that we had, even the inconvenient ones.
When we got alarmed by Alphy’s weight loss, we took him to the vet, who put Alphy on thyroid medication that we (usually Matt) administered faithfully for over a year, crushing up pills to put in the extra food we’d give him. He still ate eagerly, and seemed to enjoy his life, limited in scope though it had become … but even with the pills and the extra food, he just wasn’t putting on weight. In addition, he was losing the grooming battle, with new fur clumps emerging faster than we could keep them shaved.
Just recently, he finally lost interest in food, though we tried all of his former favorites and some new ones besides. We started wondering if it was time to make that fateful final trip to the vet. When his breathing started to become a bit labored, we decided it was.
The sink is cleaner, and has more available counter space — but I wish it didn’t. I still habitually keep putting towels and lace-up shoes out of kitty reach. And Matt and I keep forgetting to feed the cats at their usual time, because Alphy’s no longer here to remind us.
He wasn’t an alpha male in the typical sense. But he was a dominant force of love and joy in our lives for fifteen years, and I’m so grateful.