It was our first house together and Friska was the first inhabitant who had never lived anywhere else. Her mom had been killed and our friend Tammy, a vet tech, had taken in the kittens to hand feed until they were old enough to adopt. I was never much of a cat guy but we went to see the kittens. I told Sylvia that "we would see" knowing full well that we were not going to walk away from this un-kittened. Introvert that I am, I fell in love with the little orange, black and white loner who was not terribly impressed with the two people who were holding interviews for the position of 'cat' and sat contently over to the side while all the other kittens fervently vied for the position. Once the decision was made and we made the arrangements to bring her home, much like an introvert does when they get to know someone, she came out of her shell. She was unstoppable! We decided to that she was so frisky we would call her that...and then decided against it since we didn't want to name her after cat chow. Friska it was.
She had energy to spare and she loved tearing around the house in something that I would call "The Rips!" I could toy with her and get her to chase me all over the place and then she would just kick into high gear! She would run and run, at top speed, all over the house. It was wildly entertaining. She would play. She would pounce. She would zoom! She would skid on the linoleum in the kitchen and then fly upstairs like she was a little orange and black blur from a cartoon, only to turn right around and coming flying downstairs again to prance and play with me. I remember once, when she was in full speed mode, she had skidded all around the kitchen and made the upstairs run. She came down at mach two and made another lap around the Sylvia's feet as she was cooking dinner. In my head I could hear the cartoon sound effect of the coyote building up speed to chase the roadrunner as Friska terrorized the house. She decided to have another run at the stairs, rounded the corner around the love seat, and WHAM, misjudged the height of the stair by about four inches. Headfirst, dead stop. Shaken but not deterred she lumbered upstairs in true, "I meant to do that" kitty cat fashion.
As part of our adoption agreement Tammy had said that she would come over to our townhouse to give her all of her newborn kitten shots. The last shot she received was significant. The doorbell rang and when I opened the door to Tammy she saw Friska sitting on the floor in the living room. She walked over, held her still, and unceremoniously (in true vet tech 'I do this all the time' fashion) gave Friska her final shot. There was no, "good kitty" or "this won't hurt a bit sweety." Just grab, poke, release. It was very efficient but we didn't see the kitty for three days after that. Following that, any time the doorbell rang the cat was gone! When Tammy came over Friska would hiss! It was because of that incident, and how she would hide from strangers, that we had large groups of friends and family who would not believe that we even had a cat. We tease Tammy that she had "broken" our cat.
Friska didn't always have it so easy. We had decided that she would be an inside cat but we would let her explore the outside world of our patio when we were there. We would take her outside to walk around and laugh as she would alternately, awkwardly, lift two opposing feet at a time while she discovered grass for the first time. It got so she would wait at the door until we would let her go outside. She would wait at the screen door and meow. We would take her out for a while until she decided to come back in. It was a good system. Then one day I came back from the store. I walked inside and the screen door automatically shut behind me. It was a cold day so I flung our extremely solid and heavy front door shut. "Mmmph" When it closed I thought, "the front door doesn't usually say, Mmmph" and decided to find out what was going on. Unbeknownst to me, Friska had decided to take her position at the screen when I walked in. I had swung the door shut and trapped her in the space between the doors. She decided, after that, that she would be a completely indoor cat.
Waiting for Kristiana to be born, Friska would lie next to Sylvia and knead her pregnant belly with her paws. She seemed completely aware that something big was going on and she wanted to participate. And then we did the unthinkable. We brought home a screaming colicky baby from the hospital. The volume in the house had multiplied by a factor of at least 3 and Friska resigned herself to her new lot in life, to take up residence under our bed. She had clawed a tiny hole in the black fabric that covered the bottom of our box spring and would climb inside. If we didn't see her for a while, we would look under the bed and see her in her personal little hammock. When Jacob was born we had already settled into a routine and, since he wasn't colicky, she decided that he was a little more tolerable than Kristiana. A determination that would last for years.
When we moved into our new house, and adopted Fudge the wonder dog, Friska adopted our bedroom as her haven. There were two walk in closets to hide in. There was new bedroom furniture that had a space that created a cat apartment. Her food and water were in the bathroom along with her litter box. What more did she need! The only time we saw her was when we went to bed. It had become a routine. Sylvia would go to bed a little earlier than me and Friska would hop up and lie next to her. If we burned a little of the midnight oil Friska would come to the doorway and complain, "Meow! Meow!" as if to say, "Hey! It's bedtime you know. Come give me some lovin!" She definitely had her tastes and would sleep only on Sylvia's side of the bed unless Sylvia was away for some reason, and then I would be the tolerable substitute. I cannot even tell you how many times I would roll over and be staring at the 'unattractive' end of the kitty while she said, "Good morning" to Sylvia.
It is amazing how many times that cat annoyed me. When I would put on a jacket from the bottom rod of the closet and wonder why I was sneezing with watery eyes, only to discover that Friska had adopted it as a new rubbing place and there was a thick layer of unseen fur around the waistline. There was the time that we came home from an extended vacation to discover that she and the house sitter didn't get along and had used Jacob's room as her litterbox for a month. I grumbled at her as we determined that I would need to remove the carpet and refinish the hardwood floors! When I would get ready in the dark and step on a wet hairball while wearing socks, "Friska!" We would also tease her and say, "Why can't you keep that dog away from your food!" whenever Fudge would sneak back and clean out her food dish. But it always came back to, there's no use getting mad at a cat for being a cat.
As the kids got older and more and more wedding anniversaries rolled by Sylvia and I would look wistfully at Friska and wonder aloud, "How long are you going to be with us, Good kitty?" We knew that cats are not immortal but we were always happy that she just kept plugging along. Then, a couple of months ago, Friska started having some odd behaviors. She would come out of our bedroom and explore the house. "Dad!" Jacob called one night, "come here." Friska had come to his room and climbed up onto his bed. I attributed it to the fact that Jake had just gotten over pneumonia and she just wanted to check on him. Then she started coming to the kitchen, down our lengthy, long unexplored hallway, and drink out of Fudge's water bowl. With Fudge right there! She was moving a little slower these days and it had been a decade since she had run around just for the heck of it. The doctor had us start to feed her a new food that was good for her kidneys. We started to see the writing on the wall.
We were discussing altering our vacation plans to allow Sylvia to stay home to care for her while I took the kids away. We didn't want someone else to have to take care of her if she needed some special medical attention. And then, a few days ago, Sylvia picked her up and noticed that she had lost weight. We weighed her and found out that she had lost three of her typical eight pounds. She was slowing down and we could feel her bones through her sleek, race car like body. She continued to come all over the house and in typical stoic cat fashion never complained once. She spent more and more time just sleeping on the floor of the shower. We called Tammy and she told us that it was probably the beginning of the end. We called our vet, made an appointment, and yesterday afternoon she had another car ride. This time I was driving and Friska was laying on a blanket on Sylvia's lap. She was weak and didn't try to climb up on Sylvia like she did on me when we brought her home the first time.
In the exam room we all broke down when the doctor informed us that not only had her kidneys stopped working, her liver had failed too. The doctor explained that her frail little body was not able to go on and she was in a lot of pain but was refusing to show it, trying to hang on for us. We were faced with the hardest decision that we have ever made. There, at the doctor's office, at 2:20 P.M. we decided that we would give her the gift of being free from pain. We all said goodbye and she looked at each of us in turn while we stroked her frail, exhausted body. We all wept as the doctor told us that she was gone.
We drove home in silence and, in the house, kept bumping into reminders of this sweet little kitty. I knocked down her favorite stuffed pink panther toy from when she was a kitten. I hadn't seen it in months. Her food and water dish, untouched, still sit on the bathroom floor. We tried to busy ourselves with watching TV and making dinner. We all sat just going through the motions of completing our day when Sylvia decided to go to bed early. She called my name and I walked back to our bedroom to see that Fudge had, for the first time ever, jumped onto our bed and taken residence in Friska's spot. Yeah boy, we really miss her too!
Good Bye Friska, Good Kitty!
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