“Husbaaaaaannnnnndddddd!”
The cry came from downstairs. It was early August of 2001, and we had just moved back to Ohio, and into our first house in New Baltimore, a two-story affair. I was upstairs in the office, working on the computer, when Meredith called up to me. Her voice was urgent and slightly pleading, but not in an emergency kind of way. I dropped what I was doing and headed downstairs.
There, at the foot of the stairs, at our rarely used front door, was our neighbor’s daughter, Jennifer. She had found a tiny, tiny kitten in the woods, and she knew we had cats, so she brought the kitten to us. Meredith was holding the little thing, and the kitten was crying. That noise breaks my heart. I scooped the cat up, and for some reason she quieted down. So started a nearly twenty-year love affair with Enigma, our cranky, grumpy, angry, but always companionable cat.
I installed the not-yet-named kitten in the guest room, in a cardboard box. She was so small I had to feed her with an eye dropper for a few days, and had to express her bladder (make her pee) using a wet finger rubbed on her tummy. For the first week or two, Meredith made me go up and make sure she was still alive. She easily fit in my hand, and when I let her out of her box (which she hated), and I stretched out on the floor, she actually had to climb my side to get up on my stomach. That was adorable, so I started playing with her with my hand as the toy, which she attacked with her little teeth and small claws.
Of course, the teeth and claws quickly got bigger, and it took her many, many years to grow out of the “Daddy is a chew toy” phase of life. She had a bit of temper and tended to swipe at you or try to bite you if you petted her more than once or twice, yet she was always in the same room as we were. We laughed that we had to distract her with one hand by having it in front of her, while we used the other hand to pet her back. She would put up with that for about thirty seconds.
Enigma was named as such because her origin was a mystery. We don’t know why she was left alone, especially as one so small. Our best guess is that her momma kitty was moving her litter, and Enigma was the last one waiting to be moved when Jennifer found her.
Enigma is a bit of a mouthful to say often, so Enigma became “Emma” in daily life. But her name did not stay there. Emma became Emmy and Shemmy and Shemma and finally Shem-shem.
Emma moved with us to our new (and current) house in 2007. She stayed companionable and cranky, and she put up with her brother cats. But only her brothers. She hated other girl kitties, and the two times we tried to adopt another girl cat both ended badly, and with our finding new homes for the other new cats.
Shemmy had a major thaw once our long-time couch kitty Macska died in 2014. She decided that now that the couch was available, it should belong to her. She spent most of her time on the couch or on a large cat scratcher we dubbed her “throne.” Emma even let us pet her a little some, but mostly she liked to sit between us on the couch and stare. And stare. And stare. She was an unnerving good staring kitty. My brother said he imagined she was trying to siphon souls away.
The couch development was fun, but it made for messy clothes. Shemmy was an epic shedder; her fur grew in short tufts which would pull out in the entire clump when she groomed (or when I would tug on one just to see it come out whole). Our couch, clothes, and living room floor were often covered in white fur. She usually shed as much as the rest of the other cats combined, which sometimes was as many as five other cats.
As Emma got older, she started getting a little lame in her back legs, and she had to haul herself up onto the couch, much as she did as a kitten climbing on me. Out of consideration to her advancing years, as well as the condition of our couch, we put out a plastic step for her to use, which she did all the way up to her end. And here too, she was determined. Meredith was not thrilled for a plastic paint-stained step to be in our living room, so we tried to buy two different wooden steps that were cuter. Shemmy would have none of it. She wanted her plastic stool, and after a few hours of our trying to have her use the other ones, she won out. The ugly stool was in our living room until Monday of this past week, two days after she died.
In the last year, Emma showed more signs of arthritis: she walked more slowly, and usually only got off the couch to eat or use the litter box, or to go to the top of the stairs to escape visitors or to stare at us from above. Her grey fur on her head, which we lovingly called her toupee, faded greatly. She started having some trouble grooming, so Meredith helped her (once we found a comb she would put up with). She got a yeast infection in her ear we couldn’t quite beat. She was always a violent ear-scratcher, and with the infection, she often dug so hard as to draw blood. We tried our best to keep her fur clean and used medication to try to give her some relief. She still stared at us when we were on the couch, and she had one of the loudest and most aggressive purrs I have ever heard, even up to her death (one of our friends who was caring for the kitties while we were on vacation got Emma to purr during her last week).
We took a vacation last week to Virginia, to get away for spring break. We knew Emma was old, but she had been unusually old for the last few years (cats usually only live to about fifteen), and so we thought she would be fine while we were gone. We were sadly wrong. When we got home on Saturday (the 3rd), I found her on the kitchen floor. She had probably been dead for a few hours. We know from our sitter that she ate around noon on Friday, and so we hope that meant she felt pretty good even as late as Friday.
Emma graced our lives with a quirky personality for nineteen years and nine-ish months. We really had hoped she would get to twenty years old, but she still had a long life. We used to joke that she was so fierce that the Grim Reaper would be afraid to come and get her. I guess he had to wait a long time for age to make her a little more accessible. It is very strange to see the couch without her on it, and very strange not to have Shem-shems staring at us as we eat on the couch. We did admit she was “not for all markets,” but she was an entertaining kitty whom we loved, and she will be missed.
So glad I got to hang with her for her last week.