Spinor Info

We used to have a cat named Tarka. (It’s a Hungarian word for mottled, spotted, etc.) She showed up at our doorstep in 1999. Winter was just around the corner, the cat was obviously not doing well outside, and no-one was looking for her… so one day, we let her in.

Tarka was “not a very polite cat,” as a neighbor described her one day. Her characteristic sounds were hissing and howling, especially at other cats.

One such other cat was Bill, another stray that showed up in the neighborhood. Eventually, Bill was adopted by some people across the street, but in the winter of 1999/2000, Bill was still an outdoor cat who occasionally showed up on the small deck just outside our kitchen glass sliding door.

One morning, Tarka noticed Bill outside and she began howling. My video camera (yes, it was that long ago) was handy, so I started taping. The concert went on for several minutes until Bill got bored and left. But not before our other cat, Marzipan, showed up on the scene, no doubt wondering what this racket was all about.

Sadly, none of these cats are around anymore. The first one to leave us was Marzipan; ten months after this video was made, lymphoma killed him. Tarka stayed with us for another 11 years, until her ailing kidneys took her away. She mellowed as she aged, but she never really became what I would call a “polite” cat. And Bill spent 13 years with the family that adopted him before he, too, died earlier this year.

We have several other cats, who will hopefully stay with us for a long time. But I doubt we’ll ever have another cat as unique as Tarka was.

This beautiful cat belonged to my mother-in-law. I last saw him just a few short weeks ago, when I visited her in the city of Pécs, Hungary.

Sadly, my use of the past tense is justified, as Frici (which was his name) is no more. He passed away today, from what appeared to be a severe urinary tract issue, I was told. He was only about four years old. He was a stray that ended up with my mother-in-law after she lost her previous cat.

Yes, we know that it’s just a cat. Yes, we know that cats who spent some time on the street as strays like Frici are much more likely to acquire an infection, or just suffer the consequences of prolonged malnutrition or dehydration that would eventually shorten their lives. Still… Frici was much too young to pass away, and did not deserve to pass away in pain.

Life, I guess. Cherish every day of it, who knows how many are left.

I am an atheist. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as heaven, not even kitty heaven. That means that when a cat dies, it is truly dead.

That does not stop me from imagining, though, that in a sense, our two cats Marzipan and Tarka are still with us, perhaps watching our house while we sleep, as these cats do in a wonderful New Yorker cartoon titled Vigil:

Tarka is our oldest cat and she is not doing very well. Her kidneys are failing.

The day before yesterday, her appetite suddenly vanished, and she became lethargic, urinating outside the litter box. I became rather worried, so yesterday I took her to the vet, who determined that in addition to the ailing kidneys, she may also be suffering from hyperthyroidism. They took a blood sample (we’re still waiting for the results), gave her some fluids, and some new medication, and sent her home.

What can you do? In an ailing organism, as one subsystem after another begins to fail, they struggle to keep up and compensate for the failures of one another. It’s like the ever narrowing flight envelope of a high altitude airplane; if you’re a little faster, the airplane breaks apart, if you’re a little slower, it falls out of the sky, and the difference between the two velocities becomes more marginal the higher the airplane flies. (This, combined with a faulty airspeed indicator, may have been one of the causes of the Air France tragedy two years ago.) So how do we keep Tarka flying true for at least a while longer?

I don’t know… yesterday, after I got her back home, she was doing better, eating more than the day before. But today, she hasn’t eaten anything yet and she’s even more lethargic. Is it time to get seriously worried yet? Another visit to the vet may accomplish little beyond exposing her to yet more stress.