Nickie was a cat I inherited from one of the roommates with whom I shared an apartment during my senior year of college (1984-5). At the end of the year, my roommate said she couldn't take Nickie home for some reason or other -- so I said I'd take her. At Kafalas Acres, where I grew up, we already had two cats in the house (one of whom is still living -- if she makes it to next April, she'll be 20), as well as a dog, and I wasn't sure my parents would be too keen on the idea of adding a third cat. So I didn't ask permission -- I just brought Nickie home when I vacated my apartment after graduation.
At first, Nickie wasn't too enthused about her new digs at my ancestral homeland on Oxbow Road -- she climbed into the stereo cabinet and hid there for two or three days, until she apparently realized that no great harm was going to come to her if she emerged. After awhile, she got acquainted with Tony and Cinnabar (the two cats we already had), and with Halo, the beagle.
Several months later, I decided it was time to get out of the nest and get my own address. I ended up with a smallish apartment in Boston's Jamaica Plain section, which is home to a lot of freelance musicians. Nickie didn't take long getting used to the place -- the only problem was that she'd get bored during the day, with nothing to do, and when I came home, she'd demand a full account of what I'd been doing all day.
Nickie was a member of the "most residences in one lifetime" hall of fame, on account of the fact that I moved no fewer than eight times during her life. If you asked her, though, I'm sure she'd say that the best place we lived was at 73 Cottage St. in Hudson, MA. We were there for a couple of years, in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor. It was a small place, but it had one big selling point: a screened-in porch. This became Nickie's personal domain, during the warmer part of the year. I'd leave the porch door open when I went to work, and she'd watch the world go by from the windowsill out there. [Postscript: On a recent visit back east, I scattered her ashes in the backyard behind the apartment building, within view of the windowsill on which she spent so much time. I figured that yard was where she'd have wanted to end up, since she was always looking out at it.] What's more, she'd give lengthy orations to one and all, expounding vocally on every subject of interest to her. (I think she was probably complaining about my cooking, most of the time.)
When I disappeared on a three-month coast-to-coast motorcycle trip back in 1994, I left Nickie in the care of my upstairs neighbor (known variously as Uncle Evan and as this Web site's East Coast bureau chief). For most of that time, she was alone in my apartment, the routine broken only by Uncle Evan's care-and-feeding visits. I don't know if it was the boredom, or maybe that Evan served better food than I did -- but Nickie's weight ballooned by several pounds while I was gone. By the time I got back, she'd "reached maximum density," as our vet put it.
As is the case with a lot of people, Nickie found it much easier to put on weight than to take it off. In 1995, when I moved from Hudson to Highland Park, IL (partly to take advantage of Meg's cooking, which is also much better than mine, not to mention that of Uncle Evan), Nickie retained her ample figure, leading Meg and me to bestow various nicknames upon her, The Rotunda and Fátima Baba Ghannouj (or Fati for short), among others. "Wider is Better" was her motto. She also became known as Nickie the Hammer, owing to her persistent dislike of Chloe, the German Shepherd (who can be seen on our Pets page), whom she'd pound with powerful left jabs and right hooks. For four years, Chloe failed to realize that Nickie was not, and never would be, interested in playing with her, but Chloe insisted on sticking her nose where it didn't belong, and when she did, Nickie'd smack her around. The cat was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the house.
Late last year, though, we became aware that Nickie was starting to lose weight -- alarmingly so, over the past few months. Unfortunately, by the time we realized that it was a serious problem, it was too late to do much of anything about it. Several weeks ago, we took her to the animal hospital for an exam, and the vet had bad news: Nickie was gravely ill, probably being ravaged by cancer. In the weeks that followed, she rapidly became weaker and lost even more weight; finally, at about three a.m. this past Monday (January 4th), she died peacefully at my bedside.
As I say, I've become more attached to pets than I was when I was a kid. I think it started with Tony -- he and Cinnabar were two of a litter of kittens who were born in my parents' bedroom closet in April, 1979. I sort of adopted Tony as my personal project, although he was friendly with just about everyone. Since he lived from my age 16 until I was 31, he was an important fixture in my life. Nickie represented another, similarly important, span of time, from my age 21 to 35. Like Nickie, Tony died (actually, he wandered off one day and never came back) after a long illness, during which he gradually lost a lot of weight -- and which allowed a lot of time for contemplation of his mortality; and, at the risk of sounding overly morose, our own.
Nickie was a cat with a lot of personality -- not always the most agreeable companion, she could be a temperamental beast. But we went through a lot together. And her passing is a milepost in my life, because I'd had her since college. I don't get a lot of sympathy when I whine about the passage of time, because most of my friends are older (see How'd I get here?, April 28). Still, 35 has been a year of reflection and perspective-gathering, more so than any other year of my life. Actuarially speaking, it won't be long before life's halfway mark will begin to loom. It's all relative -- the jazz musicians I used to play with were all at least 20 or 30 years older than I, and they'd undoubtedly guffaw at the very idea of my not being the young guy. Still, a milepost -- such as Nickie's passing -- prompts me to take a look in the rear-view mirror and think about what's happened over the past 14 years or so. In 1985, if you'd told me that in 1999, I'd be married, living in Chicago, and working as a consultant -- and that my two favorite pastimes would be motorcycling and golf -- I'd have said you were nuts. But what did I know back then?
There haven't been many constants in my life, over the past 14 years -- but Nickie was one of them. And now, she's gone. But not forgotten -- how could one forget a cat who climbed trees despite having no front claws, pounded German Shepherds silly, and lived in eight different places without getting lost? If there's a heaven for pets, our loss is its gain -- and it'll have gained a resident who knows her way around, speaks her mind, and packs a mean left jab.
Copyright © 1999 John J. Kafalas