It has been a year and a half and I still miss her. I am talking about an orange tabby named Ginger who was so much a part of our lives for 15 years.
Originally, Ginger came to our home to help teach our 12 year old son, Andrew, about life, about relationships, and about responsibility. She was to add an element of nature to our orderly house of books and polite people. One cannot maintain a controlled environment with a pet. They require care, attention, and looking after. They add a living dynamic to a sterile environment. Especially cats.
My son eagerly selected her from a window full of playful kittens at a pet store in the Mall in Memphis. There were many rolling, tumbling, mewing kittens in the window, “I want that one. No that one.”
I am not sure how he determined which kitten to choose. It could have been any of them. He did not know her history. Her personality. Her destiny. A different twitch of a tail and we would have grown to know, and perhaps love, another cat. But it would not have been Ginger. She would not have been a part of our lives.
The store staff put her into a small cardboard box with handles, and she mewed apprehensively as we walked across the parking lot to the car.
A few weeks after we brought Ginger home, my company transferred me from Memphis to Central Florida. Ginger traveled with us loose in the car all the way from Memphis to Orlando, and you may know how much cats enjoy racing along the road with trees whizzing past the window. We tried to distract her, but she continued to look our the window and mew with apprehension at the mysterious scenery.
From the beginning, Ginger was a house cat. She was not allowed to go outside even if we were present because she was completely irresponsible. She did not understand cat limits. But careful as we were, she was always ready to take advantage of the most briefly opened door and rush between our legs to freedom.
Then we would have to drop everything and chase after her or she would disappear from sight. We would chase her like hounds after a fox until we exhausted her. Then, exhausted ourselves, but determined, we surround her and closed in for the capture.
On occasion, she ran up a tree. We were never sure whether that was good news or bad news, because although she stopped running, she could not get down. We sometimes had difficulty getting up the tree to her.
Then one cold day, she escaped, and we could not keep up with her. She really did disappear. The day wore on, it began to get dark. We stayed up late that night and periodically cased the yard—but no Ginger. Finally we had to lock the door and go to bed. Would she be killed in the night? Would she be lost? Would she simply decide not to come back?
Early in the morning, I got up and checked outside. There, near the back door, in a narrow crack between the concrete slab and a wooden fence, Ginger was hunkered down to be as invisible and protected as possible. She was cold, hungry, lonely , and frightened. She was happy to come inside, but that did not mean she would not try to escape at the very next opportunity.
It is not as though Ginger wanted to sleep outside. Instead she preferred to sleep in our warm beds with us—mostly with Andrew. He shared a memory which was familiar to us as well:
"I liked it in the night when I’d feel a large object suddenly depress the bed near my feet. Then smaller depressions would work their way alongside my body, matching her gait. Anticipation built when I heard her purr about midriff to me, and my delight built more as the purring grew louder and her soft furry face appeared in the dim light, close to my face, a benevolent cuddly wonder coming closer still, soft sniffing to follow, a cold nose on my lip and cheek, tickling the inside of my ear if she ventured there, a cheekbone nudge on my forehead.
"And so, you see, I had to bring her under the covers with me, and she would get settled under there, curled up just so, provided I allowed enough ventilation for her. And we would be like that until I changed position in my sleep. I always regretted changing my position on Ginger, because then I lost her friendly warmth."
Ginger liked laps and books. As we were all readers, Ginger had plenty of opportunity to sit in our laps while we read, but that did not satisfy her for long. No, she had to get right up to our chests, and the book was a perfect platform for her. But obviously, we could no longer read, so Ginger was set down from the book, only to try again. That is just part of one’s loss of control when there is a cat in the house.
Ginger had no mice to chase, no enemies to flee, but apparently she needed the adrenaline so much that she would fabricate an opponent. She would tear wildly through the house with a wild look in her eye, nothing before her or after her. I often wondered what it was she imagined.
When Ginger grew older, she became more responsible outside, so we allowed her to go in or out as she pleased. In time, she came to live in the garage rather than in the house. Though she was no longer prone to run away, we still had to be alert—and ready to drop everything to run out and save her. It was like a drill.
CAT FIGHT! Ginger was very territorial, and she did not like cats. I never knew her to leave the yard to fight a cat, but our yard was large and there were lots of roaming cats in the neighborhood.
Minding our business inside the house, we would suddenly hear the unmistakable sounds of cat contact, and we would do the drill. Sometimes we would see the cats right away, but sometimes we would see only patches of fur over the ground with tufts of hair still floating around in the air. We could tell somewhat how the battle was going by the color of the fur. Ginger was the only orange tabby in the neighborhood.
We would carefully come between the cats, and chase the alien cat away. Ginger recognized us as allies, but it was not safe to try to touch her because of her adrenaline high. Her tail was fluffy, her back fur was standing up, and for the next five minutes or so she was still ready to pounce—on anyone.
There was a multi-colored female that seemed to be the head of the neighborhood feral gang. I think she was mother to most of them. Ginger and Mother tangled frequently. One day we heard them on the roof and did the drill. We could not get to them, so we could only yell and watch their battle performance on the roof. Ginger was on top.
Mother was on top. Then in a blurry ball of action, they came near the edge of the roof—and fell off to the concrete below. Mother softened Ginger’s fall, then got out from under and ran out of the yard. We were quite concerned and followed Mother and watched her for a period to see if she was okay. She seemed to be. There was not much we could do for she would not let us near her.
In the end, it was probably the willingness to fight that lost Ginger to us. We noticed her limp, and examined her to find a wound on her belly. The vet said it was a bite mark—probably a dog. Because she was old and in generally poor health, there was nothing he could do. If he anesthetized her to operate, she would never recover.
How long? A few days he said.
We brought Ginger home and back into the house. We catered to her as she moved slowly though the old familiar rooms. She would lay quietly here for a few hours. Then lay quietly somewhere else. She moved so little, even in her breathing, that we checked her frequently to see if she was still with us. Sometimes she would sit with us and watch TV—she seemed to enjoy that.
I was working at home one day when Marilyn called from her office. "I have been thinking of Ginger," she said. "Can you check on her?" I did.
I reported what I found, and Marilyn said she would come right home. Ginger had lived almost two weeks since the visit to the vet.
Together Marilyn and I buried her in a special place in the garden. We marked it with a concrete circle and placed a large potted plant upon it. An era in our lives was over.
Andrew sent us an appropriate quote from David Sedaris:
"The cat's death struck me as the end of an era. It was, of course, the end of her era, but with the death of a pet there's always that urge to string black crepe over an entire ten- or twenty-year period. The end of safe college life, the last of my thirty-inch waist, my faltering relationship with my first real [girlfriend]: I cried for it all and wondered why so few songs were written about cats."
It has been a year and a half and I still miss her.
