The Story and Legacy of Mittens...

A little while after the Clay ticket fiasco my parents called to tell me my cat died. (He was put to sleep because of a tumor in his jaw. My mom said she was there with him and gave him a kiss for me.) When they visited last week for the choir concert they told me he was pretty bad and they were gonna take him to the vet. For the past year I've had this weird feeling/overall premonition that he was on the last leg of his 9th life. And when his tongue started lolling out of his mouth all the time... and he started to smell because he stopped cleaning himself... and when my parents told me his jaw was malfunctioning and he drooled and had trouble eating... I knew. It didn't surprise me. So I didn't cry or anything. It probably won't really hit me until I go home later this week. First of all, my dog Haley will have the entire house to herself now. (Which makes me happy. We always had to divide the house in two because the cat and dog didn't get along.) I'm sure when I'm watching random tv at 2am in the living room I'll be very cold and wonder where my warm kitty is. He was my tv buddie. Poor Mittens. It's going to be freaking WEIRD without the little bastard meowing at me 24/7. I still vividly remember when we got Mittens, because it is one of my favorite memories. He was an alleycat for the first year of his life around my dad's office in West Chicago. (Former office, they sold the building! YAY!) He was starving and was begging at the door to the office (it is basically a red house, but an office). My mom sympathized with him, but my dad said "DON'T TOUCH IT!" That was when my parents were really busy with appraisal work so my dad would work all nighters sometimes. One morning he came home around 5 or 6am. My mom was up making coffee, and he walks in and says "Come look what brought me home". She looked in the garage and saw the kitty, all skin and bones. She was confused. My dad said "We'll give him some milk and then take him to the pound later". My mom replied "That's fine. But don't let your daughter see it." I had been asking for a cat for a long time. They brought the cat into the kitchen to give him some milk, and my dad said that when he got the cat in the car, the cat sat on his lap with his paws on the steering wheel the whole way home. "The cat drove me home" joked my father. I remember waking up early for no reason (fate?) that morning. One can see a small portion of the kitchen from my room. I opened the door and saw a cat. I had only known one other cat in my life, which was my cousin's cat named Mittens. Since I was 5 years old, I thought all cats were named Mittens. So I sprinted to the kitchen, screaming "MITTENS! MITTENS! MITTENS!" with utter glee. That cat would have been named Mittens even if he was solid purple... but it just so happened that he was a tabby with four white paws. My parents looked at each other and knew they now owned a cat named Mittens. For the next 15 years, I cuddled and played and talked with Mittens every day. In general I've come to discover I am NOT a cat person. I love doggies much more. However, Mittens was almost human. I swear on my life he understood what we said to him. His meow was very unique, more like a squeaky noise. And sometimes he'd yowl. He also imitated how we said things...almost like a parot. In the early years we'd say "Do you want to go OUUUT?" or "Do you want FOOOD?" putting emphasis on those words. Then he'd have different meows for different things...and eventually they sounded a lot like the actual words. He was the friendliest cat in the world. He'd sit on anyone's lap and enjoy their company. Everybody loved Mittens. Except my dad. Mittens drove my dad CRAZY. One of the greatest feuds in history: Mittens vs. Francis James. My dad didn't go a day without making cat killing jokes. Hilarious. But Mitty was also a badass mother. We got his front pawes declawed, but he remained an indoor/outdoor cat. For 15 years he'd kill birds, mice, chipmunks and bunnies and leave them on the doorstep. The majority of his prey was bunnies. Bunnies are fast. Mittens is faster. He climbed trees in a lightning flash no problem. I'd find scratches on his head and neck from fights with other cats. I remember one morning I was awoken by a yowling duel between Mittens and a calico twice his size. Then I watched Mitty kick the calico's ass. Oh and did I mention the time Mittens was accidentially locked in the garage one night while the ladder to the attic was down and he killed a giant male racoon that had been inhabiting our attic? Yeah, we didn't have a racoon problem after that. Aside from the occasional scratch, Mittens was never hurt. He was a Super Feline. My first dog, Pepper, didn't like Mittens at first. One day we came home and found Pepper bleeding with a nice sized chunk out of his back. He had to wear one of those ridiculous cone things. Pepper had tried shit with Mittens while we were away, and the cat (five times smaller than the dog) won the fight no contest. From then on they were best friends. Mittens would play with Pepper's tail. Pepper would sniff Mittens and Mittens would bat at Pepper's nose. When my dad walked Pepper around the neighborhood, Mittens would follow along. After Pepper died, we got Haley. Haley is hands down the sweetest dog on the face of the earth. But, being a Brittany Spaniel, she's insanely hyper. Mittens, 5 years old and well settled in the house, did not approve of this silly happy constantly moving white and brown thing we called Haley. She wanted to play, he didn't. The past year or so they've been getting along better. They're separated but they took the initiative to get close to one another with the gate between them. Oh, I could write about my kitty forever. I grew up with that kitty. I love you kitty. I'm sorry about the tumor. Goodbye.