Sweet Katusha: Thank You For Being So Good to Me

It’s been about a month now that my dear Katusha passed away and I’m still mourning her, as I always will in some form. She had an aggressive form of abdominal cancer and I didn’t even know she was sick until she suddenly stopped eating and drinking. It was too late to do much.

She was a few weeks short of eight years old, so very young for a cat. My other cat, Rhea, passed away only a little over two years earlier, also of cancer. She was only ten, and hers was a sarcoma on her head. I asked the vet if it was something in my house, in Arizona, in the air or water. But she said no; these are two very common forms of cancer in cats. Most likely something in their genetic codes.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago when I lived in West Hollywood, CA. My job at the time had crazy hours and I felt badly because Rhea, whom I’d adopted in New York a couple years earlier before moving to CA, was alone for hours on end. I thought she needed a companion.

I saw a post on Facebook. It was kitten season and a woman fostering a litter found motherless on the street was required to return them to the high-kill LA County shelter she volunteered for since they were now old enough. She was worried and needed adopters. I spotted a cute-looking boy cat in the litter and called the foster. It turned out the boy cat had already been adopted and they only had a girl available. I was dubious about adopting a female because I worried two girl cats wouldn’t get along. But I picked this little one up – her name was Cinderella at the time because of her fondness for making a little bed for herself out of her foster mom’s shoes – and she immediately purred and let me cuddle her as much as I wanted. She was perfect for me. I called my vet and she told me that as long as everyone was spayed gender wouldn’t be an issue. So she was ours!

Katusha continued to love shoes, by the way. I changed her name from Cinderella because there was a Russian ballroom dancer I adored and I loved her name. Katusha seemed perfect for a cat 🙂

At first Rhea was pretty mad at me. Actually I think she kind of remained mad at me. She had the run of our fairly large apartment all to herself and now she had to share space with a little kitten who constantly wanted to play. But she soon learned to tolerate her new sister. And the vet was right – there were no fighting issues.

Katusha’s coat was the most amazing pattern! She was so playful as a small kitten, as I guess most small kittens are.

She and Rhea really loved that WeHo apartment with its big patio door and floor-to-ceiling windows that were perfect for bird-watching!

Unlike Rhea, who wasn’t very cuddly, Katusha loved to snuggle in my lap as I read. This is one of the things I miss most about her.

I volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. In Dogtown. And realized I really missed my dog from childhood, named very imaginatively by my five-year-old self, Fluffy. I lived in a pretty big apartment in LA and everyone in my building seemed to have a dog, and I knew there was room for a small one. One of my friends who volunteered with LA County posted a video on Facebook of a dog for adoption who looked ideal. She described her as shy. I went to West LA Shelter and met her. And we bonded on the spot. Sofia was perfect.

But not to the cats! I brought her home and she immediately chased them. Katusha was the most scared, and she nearly opened the locked window in her attempt to escape. Poor kitty. It took the better part of a year to get her to calm down and accept Sofia. Rhea was easier. You can read Sofia’s take on the whole thing if you like here.

But Katusha was good to me and she loved me. And for my sake, I believe, she eventually managed to get along with Sofia. I made her and Rhea a cat tree and she played in it, even with the crazy dog present down below. She eventually even shared the couch with the dog.

I grew weary of LA traffic and I really wanted to buy a house, which I knew I couldn’t afford in LA, so I decided to move back to Arizona, where I’m from. I thought of moving back to New York but … I’m actually not sure why I didn’t, to be honest. I missed my friends there, I missed the ballet, the culture. I missed my life there. But I think I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to return to all the noise and the lack of space and the ten plus hour work days. I’d done somewhat well self-publishing my novels and I’d remembered how angry people in traditional publishing were about the success of indie authors and Amazon and all and I didn’t really want to return to that negativity. Plus, I wanted to buy a house with a yard, see what that kind of life was like. My aunt was also ill at the time and she had no one to care for her. As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out why I didn’t return to New York…

Anyway, we moved back to Arizona. We rented a condo for a few months until I could get enough local work experience to qualify for a mortgage. Six months later, we moved into our first house.

Rhea loved the house. It had a bi-level living room, which I found so charming and full of character. And a balcony, which she couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of the balcony of the loft in our New York apartment, which she loved to sit on and peer down. She loved to jump off the balcony onto the bookcase, little gymnast!

But I’m not sure how much Katusha liked the new house. She pretty much hung out in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, which of course contained all my footwear. She still loved to cocoon herself in my shoes, or between the shoe boxes in the corner. She liked to hide. Perhaps it was because she had longer hair than Rhea and southern Arizona is warm and dry. She’d come out to the kitchen to eat, and use the guest bathroom, where I kept one of the litter boxes. But, unlike Rhea, who loved to climb the stairs, she never ventured up to the second floor to use the other bathroom’s litter box.

A year and a half after we moved in Rhea was diagnosed with a sarcoma on her head. She went through grueling stereotactic radiosurgery, which left her with large radiation burns that eventually became infected. Poor Rhea. I think it must have been traumatic for Katusha to see her sister so sick. I don’t really know how animals handle those kind of things.

A few months later Rhea passed away. Katusha came out of the closet a little more often but not much. She’d sit at the big patio window and look out back a little, but not much. Sitting at the window had always been more Rhea’s thing than Katusha’s, although Katusha seemed to like looking out the window in West Hollywood.

I began volunteering at my local SPCA. I felt Sofia, who’d become best friends with Rhea, missed her sister. She and Katusha got along but they weren’t besties the way she and Rhea were.

I did a couple of short-term fosters with some small dogs at the shelter and Katusha seemed to get along with them. I was amazed. She seemed to now be a dog-friendly cat.

Six months later, I decided to adopt another dog to befriend Sofia and hopefully Katusha as well. I went to the shelter to adopt a dog about Sofia’s size that I’d walked and read to and liked but that dog had gotten adopted by the time I got to the shelter. The adoption counselors encouraged me to look at other dogs since I was there with Sofia, so I did. I hesitantly brought home a dog for what’s called a slumber party to see if she’d get along with everyone in our household. They tested her with cats and found she wasn’t predatory and she and Sofia got along, so even though she was larger than the other dog I was thinking of, I decided to try it. We now had a big backyard, suitable for a larger dog.

When I introduced her to Katusha, Kat was immediately scared of her. No wonder. Irina was much bigger than Sofia. She was a German shepherd / Belgian malinois mix and kind of resembled a coyote with her coloring. Katusha hissed and swatted at her. Irina cried and ran off. I felt that was a good reaction. Irina was giving Katusha her boundaries and hopefully Katusha would soon come around.

But soon took much, much longer than I’d expected. I hired a total of three private trainers and took three group classes. I worked hard on getting both of them to like each other, for many, many months to no avail. I moved Katusha’s litter box and food into the master bedroom and kept her shut in there and away from Irina, which was fine with, really, her since that’s where she always hung out anyway.

It wasn’t until the pandemic when I began to work from home that they finally became friends. And it was mainly Irina’s doing. I opened the door to “Katusha’s room” and let Irina go in with me. She kept trying and trying to break the ice with Katusha, just by touching noses. With Irina in the room whenever I was, Katusha eventually realized that I wasn’t going to let Irina hurt her. Irina didn’t want to anyway. She was just big and scary-looking.

I was so happy when Katusha finally let Irina get close to her.

Katusha slowly began not to be scared. She’d walk around the house and climb into her cat tree even when Irina tried to climb in after her. I’d originally kept Irina crated at night and spend the night with Katusha alone. But when I was home all the time I began to let Irina sleep with us as well. At first Katusha would sleep in the cupboard in the bathroom. But soon she began to come out and sleep with us at night, cuddling with me, while I read to her, even while Irina slept feet away, at the foot of the bed.

The thing was, I think Katusha was feeling sick for a while and it just wasn’t noticeable to me. I think she wanted and needed my attention and she realized the only way she would be able to get it was to befriend the coyote-looking dog. It was literally only days after the above picture was taken that she stopped eating and drinking and I rushed her to the vet. I was so happy they were all getting along and we were all happy and at peace with each other. I do think it was genuine, I just think I forced the peace-making on Katusha and she may not have been truly comfortable for a large part of that time.

When I found out about her cancer it was already advanced. The vet said we could still try chemotherapy. I was hesitant after Rhea’s horrible experience with radiation, and her cancer wasn’t nearly as advanced as Katusha’s. So we tried palliative care. The steroids initially worked wonders and I began to seriously consider chemo. But those wonders were sadly short-lived. After one week she wasn’t eating and drinking again. The vet told me to increase her steroids and pain-killers but Katusha hated me giving her medication and she fought me every time. She started trying to hide from us. She began hissing at Irina and Sofia again when they tried to play with her, which I understood of course since she was feeling so horribly. But it still totally broke my heart.

I separated her from the dogs again and crated them at night, sleeping alone with her. But she often stayed in the cupboard and I had to reach inside and pull her out at night to put her on the bed with me. She purred a little, but it became less and less. I kept increasing the meds until all she did was sleep. The night I had her euthanized at the ER she was so out of it I honestly thought she was going to die of an overdose anyway. Keeping her alive just so I could feel her soft fur against my skin, so I could hold her and make myself believe the steroids would work again, and try hard as I could to wish the pre-sick Katusha back, just became so obviously wrong.

I still feel badly that I didn’t try the chemo even though the ER vet told me her cancer was advanced and it likely wouldn’t keep her alive for long. Cats don’t know they’re being kept alive for so and so much time; they just know they feel unwell and they’re unhappy. I know I did the right thing but I still wonder what if I’d done the chemo. She’d probably still be here. Even after my experience with Rhea, I’m not sure I’m the kind of person who can’t do everything I possibly can to save an animal.

Looking back, I think Katusha made herself get along with the dogs for my sake. First Sofia in LA then Irina in Arizona. She wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be if only they would all get along. I will forever cherish her for doing that for me.

And I’m not so sure she’s really gone. I feel her spirit around the house the same way I still feel Rhea’s. I know the dogs do as well.

Here she is in her cat tree looking outside at us in the backyard. When we’re out back, I often still feel her inside looking out at us.

A month after her death and Irina still sniffs and looks intently at the cupboard, waiting for her to come out.

I’ve been working on a new cozy mystery series, set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar with animal sleuths and ghosts. Rhea is the basis for the character of the main ghost, and the cat character who heads the cafe is based on my dear Najma, the cat I had back in New York. Katusha passed away after I finished the penultimate draft but I managed to write in a recurring role for her. So my beloved animals never really die. They live on in my writing and in the spirit energy with which they continue to fill our lives.