Linus

Back in May of 2017, I opened an e-mail. It announced that a woman had to get rid of her two sweet tiger kitties because her young son was allergic. I knew then that our household had gone from four to six cats.

Mer has always loved tiger cats, and our tiger cat, Jackson, had died two years before. She kept saying she had a tiger-shaped hole in her heart, so I knew as soon as a she saw the two tiger faces in the picture that she would want to adopt them. She did wait a week or so to see if anyone else would take them, but when no one did, we welcomed Linus and Skittles into our home.

They were a very unusual pair in my forty-plus years of being around cats. Linus was Skittles’ father, and they adored each other. Usually, male cats take off after mating, and if they do stick around, they can be a danger to litters of kittens if they feel threatened by the new ones. Skittles was extremely shy (and still is), and spent a lot of time under the bed. Linus, who was very outgoing, still often took time to snuggle with his son under the bed.

As seems to be normal with cats, Linus had his favorite places. He liked Meredith more than me, and so one of his spots was the arm of the couch on her side. He would often be found there, sometimes asleep in the most strange and contorted positions; he seemed to like sleeping on his face, with his nose buried straight down. I still don’t know how he was breathing like that, but he seemed fine. He also loved the arm of the couch because then he was right there if Mer sat down. When that happened, he often left his haunches on the arm, and put his two front paws into her lap, standing and kneading on his front legs. It was very cute, but dangerous – Linus had the sharpest claws I have ever seen on a cat, and they grew back so fast it was hard to keep them trimmed. If he grew tired of that, he would return to the arm of the couch or head to the footrest, where he would settle down. I often returned home from work to see the couch in reclined position, which meant that Meredith had wiggled her way off the couch to let Linus keep sleeping on the footrest.

Linus also loved the window seat, where he could watch the world go by or sleep in the sun. His last regular place around the house was a bit odd; he loved being by the water dish upstairs outside our bedroom, even though it was on a wooden floor, which could not have been as comfortable as the beds or couches. He was such a great “melder”, where it looked as if he was fused to the floor, that it looked like he had passed out from drinking too much water. It was funny and cute.

Linus was generally a quiet cat, but he did once or twice a day let out a foundation-rattling “Mrwap!”. I have never heard a meow that loud. He would do it if you scratched his head – just once, and then he would sit there happily getting love. Or, he sometimes just did it. On rough nights (for us), he would let off several in a row over a few minutes in the middle of the night, but these were thankfully rare. His loud cries usually had us laughing, because you always knew who it was.

Out of six cats, we had four who fled anytime anyone came over, and two who were social with visitors – Linus and our outgoing black-and-white cat, Catness. Since we love our kitties, we do like visitors to get to see them, and since Linus and Catness were both long-haired cats, they were very striking. We think it likely that Linus was at least party a Maine coon cat.

Maine coons are usually huge, but Linus was always skinny to the point of being bony. He never weighed more than about eight pounds, and we felt like he was getting even skinnier over the last couple of months. We took him in to the vet in June, and he weighed seven pounds, but his blood work all came back normal. I started feeding him high-calorie kitten food, which he loved, in the hope he would put on weight. It did not seem to help much.

About a week ago, Linus stopped eating his canned cat food, which he usually ate. I took him to the vet again, and he now weighed five-and-a-half pounds. The vet thought he might have intestinal cancer, which is difficult to detect, but interferes with food absorption. He gave Linus an anti-nausea shot, and sent me home with steroids to give him. The vet said some cats responded well to them.

Sadly, Linus was not one of those. He rallied nicely for two days, eating again and gaining some strength back. We gave him his steroids and hoped. Then, on Thursday night, he ate only to bites of canned food, and would not eat anything Friday morning. I got some anti-nausea pills from the vet, but Linus still would not eat Friday night. One more pill for one more try on Saturday morning, and he still would not eat, and his eyes looked glazed over. It was time. We took our sweet, loud, long-haired, tiger of love to the vet, and we stood there and pet him as he passed away.

Fifteen months is not a long time in a human life. Turns out it is plenty of time to have you heart changed. We loved Linus, and we miss him. If kitties can go to heaven, I expect to hear a loud single “Mrwap!” when I get to the pearly gates.