Sweet Rhea

Cross–posted here.

Rhea passed away from her cancer November 29, almost a month ago now, and I’ve been quite heartbroken. She moved cross-country with me, and lived with me in five different apartments, and finally a house. She’d been with me through a tumultuous time in my life.

I adopted her from the ASPCA in New York in March, 2011. I’d been unemployed for nearly two years during the recession, and within a week of adopting her, I got my first post-recession job. Cats had always been good luck for me. The day I adopted my first cat in adulthood, Najma, I found out I’d passed the New Jersey bar exam, the first bar I took. The ASPCA told me Rhea was rescued from a hoarder, who had upwards of 70 cats! I hope that was in upstate somewhere and not in a New York City apartment. Anyway, the second I saw her in the shelter I knew she was the cat for me, the way she made eye contact immediately, and purred when I touched her. But it was clear she wasn’t used to people. She hid immediately when I got her home and didn’t come out from under the futon for nearly a week. I felt badly when I had to go back to work right after bringing her home, but I think nothing could have suited her better than to have a whole apartment all to herself.

She really loved our upper west side apartment. And so she should: it was a veritable cat gymnasium. She’d fly up the stairs to the bedroom loft, run to the corner, and jump onto the fireplace mantle. She loved sitting on that mantle and peeking out between the bars of the loft.

But when my lease renewed in October that year, I was tired of New York – all the noise, the lack of space, the lack of money – and decided to try Los Angeles.

Rhea was the best traveler ever. Especially for a cat. We flew from New York to Phoenix, without a peep out of her. Once we landed and I sat her carrier atop my suitcase, I peeked in to see her looking about in wonder, taking everything in. “This is the absolutely coolest experience ever,” she seemed to say.

In Phoenix, where I’m from, my cousin helped me buy a car – my first, having lived in New York City for the past 18 years, basically since becoming an adult. We drove to Los Angeles, with, again, not a peep out of Rhea. It turns out, she loved car rides and plane rides – it meant we were going off on an adventure!

We found an apartment in L.A. but it wouldn’t be ready for another two weeks, so we stayed with a variety of friends and relatives, and then lived for a week in a pet-friendly motel in west Phoenix.

We lived in Burbank for a year before relocating to fabulous West Hollywood, where we had a living room with a huge balcony and a bedroom with a splendid floor-to-ceiling window. “My cat’s going to love this place!” I exclaimed to the landlord, upon seeing it. He shot me a bemused look and said, “Sure.” Yes, I’m the crazy lady who thinks of her animals first. Well, I knew I’d love it there too, of course.

And, yes, when we later moved to Arizona, I chose my first house based on what I knew Rhea would like 🙂

After five years in L.A., I’d finally had enough of the traffic. I think living in New York for so long and from a young age had a permanent effect on my ability to drive without major anxiety. And know I wasn’t alone – my New York friend who’d moved to L.A. years before I did had to drive with a mouth guard so she wouldn’t destroy her teeth by grinding. When Uber became a thing, she took it everywhere. But I couldn’t afford to do that. I had to use my own car to get myself from place to place. As much as I loved West Hollywood, I had to work, and my jobs were either in Century City or downtown L.A., which meant I had to get in my car and risk a nervous breakdown everyday. I still miss L.A. – especially West Hollywood. If ever self-driving cars become affordable and become the norm – which, believe me, will happen long before any serious additions to the Metro system will – I really may move back.

While in L.A., we added to our family, adopting first a kitten, Katusha, then a puppy, Sofia, both from the L.A. County shelter. That apartment was the biggest I’d ever lived in, so there was plenty of space for more. Still, at first, Rhea was not too happy to have to share any of her space with another, but it only took about two weeks before she and Katusha got along.

And soon they were sharing space, particularly the big window overlooking the deck. So many birds, squirrels, even raccoons! So much life out there!

Adjusting to a new dog took quite a bit longer than a new kitten, especially since Sofia, being part rat terrier (I think) just wanted to chase the cats all the time! Sofia wrote a blog post about learning to live with cats here. But Rhea was the first to accept Sofia and break the ice. One day she decided she wouldn’t be scared and run away; instead she’d chase Sofia and grab at her leash. The trainer had taught me to let Sofia run around the house with her leash on staying close behind to grab it if she got out of control. Well, Rhea was so excited by that snaky leash, she pounced on it, totally ignoring that it was attached to the big, bad dog 🙂 It took Katusha a bit longer to adjust, but that was the beginning of a very happy, three-way friendship.

I missed New York but wasn’t sure whether I was ready to go back, especially now that I had three animals, and rents had gone up substantially since I’d left while the rate of pay for the legal work I was doing had stayed the same. I was used to Arizona (or so I’d thought; I hadn’t lived there in 23 years so not quite sure what I thought I knew), and knew there was work there, plus cheaper housing. So, I packed up the family and went.

No one liked moves more than Rhea – the traveling, and the packing boxes!

We rented a condo for a few months until I found a house I wanted to buy. The house was a ways out of town, but I loved it the second I saw it, because the main living area reminded me of our old place in New York. It was two floors, but the living room area was open, so there’s a cathedral roof, and a big, two-floor room, with a balcony! Another kitty gymnasium!

And I was right. The first thing Rhea did when I unpacked her and the others, was run up the stairs, and peek out through the bars of the living room balcony. After we set up the furniture, she became fond of using the balcony to get access to the bookcase, where she’d perch for hours.

She loved the house. We had a big back yard with grass and trees, which drew plenty of birds and cottontail rabbits, and two big patio windows to watch it all through.

I felt badly always letting Sofia go out back, so I bought a harness and let Rhea explore the backyard as well.

She loved that window, such a sun kitty she was.

About a year and a half after we moved I discovered a bump on Rhea’s head. Sofia liked to play with her and would wrap her teeth around Rhea’s ear, so I thought it was maybe an infected abscess. But the doctor did tests and found it to be cancer. She referred me to an oncologist, and they both convinced me to opt for stereotactic radiosurgery, a relatively new form of radiation for animals. I’ve written about all of that in other posts, here and here.

Soon after her three-day radiation treatment, she was back to her old self, getting into everything in the house and sitting atop her old perch.

And she still loved her outdoor stroller rides. I bought the stroller after her diagnosis. I’d always wanted to take her out more, since she loved the outdoors so much, and worried she wouldn’t be able to do that much longer. So, we tried to make up for lost time.

Everything went well for about a month, and then her hair started falling out, which I expected. But what I didn’t expect was all the radiation burns. They spread all across her head and ears. I put a cone around her neck so she wouldn’t scratch them and risk infection but she was so depressed wearing that cone, I soon took it off. The burns got infected anyway, and we went through several rounds of antibiotics, painkillers, and steroids. The tumor had initially shrunk but the skin around her radiation burns began to swell. The doctor didn’t know if the tumor had returned or whether there was just swelling from the infection. I was beside myself because the burns looked awful. Initially, she got better after her initial rounds of painkillers, but the infection wouldn’t heel and the swelling increased. It began to seep into her ear and the ear closed up, which soon made her lose her balance.

It was all so awful and I just kept trying to get those burns to heal.

Finally, on the morning of November 29th, Sofia woke me up unusually early, sticking, as she usually does, her big wet nose into my eye lids. I looked at the time – 3:00 a.m. – and yelled at her to use her wee wee pads if she had to go to the bathroom so early. Of course after I got up two hours later I realized what the problem was. Rhea was sitting in a box my mom had set up for her when she visited a couple weeks back. Her head was leaning all the way to the side, and when she got up to walk, one side of her body just wouldn’t work. It was like she’d had a stroke. I realized then her loss of balance wasn’t the infection spreading into her ear; it was neurological. I called the oncologist as soon as he opened and he told me to bring her to emergency room connected with his clinic. When I got her there he said the tumor had grown substantially since the radiation and was now affecting her brain. We’d done all we could, he said.

So, it was about five months from the time I first noticed the tumor until she passed away, and about three months from the time she’d had the radiation. I may have prolonged her life for, at most, a month, with the stereotactic radiosurgery, and, honestly, I’m not sure I would put another animal through it. I feel like she suffered a lot from those burns, and I’m not sure that month was worth it in terms of the pain. I don’t know. I’m not God. So who am I to say what treatment or lifesaving support is worth it and what is not? The vet had told me the therapy had not been performed much on cats, only on dogs, so maybe medicine will improve. I’m sure it will.

The first couple weeks were very hard because I kept expecting her to rub up against my leg in the kitchen in anticipation of food, or sitting down at my feet while I wrote. She never was much of a touchy-feely cat. She didn’t like being held, or even petted much. I think that was because of the hoarding situation she grew up in and her early distrust of humans. But she showed her love in her own way. She’d follow me around the house. Everywhere I was, I’d look up and she’d be curled up somewhere close by. She always sat at my feet when I wrote. She always sat in the rocking chair in the living room when I watched TV.

I’ve had animals die before and I thought this would be easier since I had two others. But it wasn’t. It was just the same. Katusha didn’t eat for a week, and whenever I said I missed Rhea, which I said often, Sofia would run around looking for her. That was always a favorite game for Sofia and me, especially toward the end when I needed to give Rhea her medication and she’d hide from me. I’d say, “Where’s Rhea?” And Sofia would run all around the house, banging open cupboards and looking through closets until we found her. After a while, Sofia would look at me strangely when I said Rhea’s name. Initially she’d start to look around then, realizing Rhea’s scent was gone, would run to the patio window and look out. It makes sense that, since the last time she saw Rhea, Rhea was going outside in her carrier. So she must still be out there. Someday she’ll come back.

I have the urn holding her ashes on top of the bookcase where she used to sit. Someday I’ll get a cool cat urn, but for now the polished wood the crematorium gave me is fine. What I didn’t expect was the pawprint they included. I didn’t order it, so they must have just included it for free. But it’s beautiful, and it really made me cry.

As soon as I’m finished with revisions to my middle-grade mystery, I am going to return to a cat cafe cozy I was writing. The main cat in that novel is based on Najma, who passed away over thirteen years ago from a heart condition. Now, I’m creating a role for a cat based on Rhea as well. My animals never really die 🙂