The Time of Millie

On the 3rd`March 2022 our cat Millie left this world. I insisted on a memorial celebration like we have always done for our pets when my son was little. My son, who will be 30 next week, smiled to me in a way as if to say, mum, I am no longer a child, however he went along with it anyway. Maybe this time the child was I.

Our pet funeral tradition consists of eating fairy cakes and drinking apple juice as well as a burial and a short obituary. In the old times we would have had our celebratory meal at the graveside, at some beautiful place in nature. This time my son had told me he could not face the burial and we had our remembrance party afterwards at home late at night.

We had been introduced to fairy cakes by Freddy Sandercock, who was our neighbour when we lived in one of the old coastguard cottages in Boscastle. Freddy would pop around and ask for help with little things every so often, like using our phone - he and his wife didn’t have one- or he asked me to carry a couple of sacks of coal down the stairs or to pick up prescriptions for them from the surgery. Then he would always come with a little fairy cake sitting in a case of folded paper for my son to say thank you. He bought it at the village shop, however he always told us his wife baked them. 

Remembering Millie we had blueberry muffins instead.

I had been told her pets were returned to the rescue homes they originally came from. 

Joan was an elderly woman who hardly ever left her bungalow during the time we knew her. She loved animals. She wrote lovely Christmas cards, which clearly indicated that her cats and her dog Charley were her family. I saw her only about twice a year, always dressed in a bright red tracksuit and a friendly smile. She had a reputation to feed homeless cats, which I now found proven to be true, as those cats came to my garden to ask for food after she had gone. 

Throughout Spring and Summer 2020 regular meals were served in my back garden. My neighbour Trish told me I was now the resident cat lady of our street.

About two weeks after Joan’s death, Millie appeared at our backdoor, completely emaciated and seemingly desperate, with a very angry look in her face. She had been left behind.  I was later told she was meant to be cared for by the neighbours on the other side of Joan’s former home, however it would seem she preferred us.

She wasn’t asking, she wasn’t begging, she was just clearly indignant about her current fate. 

Only her location, as well as her upset stare,  told us that she expected us to sort this out for her.  

Of course we had to feed her. At first we didn’t let her into the house as Ceba would not tolerate another cat inside. However over time, with Summer coming to an end, Millie’s serious need of a home became even more obvious. 

After careful and lengthly negotiations with Ceba we finally managed to move Millie and Louie, another needy street cat,  fluffy and ginger, into our home. A fourth cat,  the humble black and white Mr Spock, came every night for dinner. He didn’t like it much at his home. I reckon his humans were a little flaky with their attention and they had a dog.

The four cats grudgingly came to tolerate each other, they never became friends. It took constant demonstrations from us towards Ceba that he would always be considered to be top cat.

Only Louie tried his hardest to play with everybody, become everybody’s friend, which was usually misunderstood and rejected by his fellow felines.

Millie’s territory became our living room sofa. She spent her entire life with us on there.   

By now being a very tiny skinny cat she was very good in playing the fragile old lady. She was certainly a Methuselah kitty when she moved in with us, already shrinking and only half the size she once had been. That said, we observed her lashing out fiercely with her paws at Ceba and Louie when she thought nobody was looking. It is fair to say she conquered the sofa with a short, relentless, covert and successful campaign of violence, intimation and terror against the two male kitties,  both double her size, who during the rest of her lifetime never again dared to approach the sofa.

 When my son, his father or I sat down within her territory she would climb on our laps, where she was stroked and brushed. Strangely enough, she only allowed us to stroke her when we were sitting on the sofa with her. We were her stroking cushions. In return for our efforts we sometimes received some love.  

She was so clever. She even found herself a way to open our microchip cat flap from outside without having a microchip.

 After she had been with us for a while she started to smell quite bad. Brushing her became a regularly evening routine. It helped a bit. However at some point I felt inclined to employ a cat shampoo one could apply and just brush out- I wasn’t brave enough to attempt to immerse this fierce creature into water… The first time around that worked well. She even allowed me to lift her up and clean her belly. From that experience I felt quite confident when I tried again. With Millie sitting on my knees I applied a generous portion of shampoo on her neck and back and she jumped startled in the air, completely shocked. We still laugh about her facial expression when we remember it now. Poor Millie!

Despite eating an enormous amount of food she would stay very slim. She liked her Felix, however was also partial to cooked chicken and fish.

The first sign that Millie wasn’t well showed at Christmas 2021. My son’s dad, Irfan, had been visiting to help us through a Covid infection, which he then caught himself too. He was sleeping on Millie’s sofa. She mostly retreated into an amazon box next to it or onto the windowsill above. On Christmas morning, at around 5am, Millie descended from her windowsill to pee all over Irfan’s bedding, soaking everything, including the sofa itself. 

She then continued to pee on the sofa on consecutive early mornings, as well anytime when I just looked the other way for a moment, no matter how much I tried to deter her from it; and no matter how much I tried to clean up the sofa, with baking soda, vinegar, upholstery cleaner, I failed. That sofa now stank. It had to be thrown out. For some time I referred to Millie as the “sofa killer”. She didn’t like that very much.

Then Millie developed a swollen cheek. She didn’t go outside anymore. Thankfully, she agreed to use a cat loo and didn’t poo or pee on anymore soft furnishings. 

 I took her to the vet. Usually, when I had to get up with her sitting on top of me, I could lift her like a small sack of potatoes from my lap and set her down again on a cushion. When I had to take her to the vet I expected the same procedure putting her into the basket, to my surprise she fought back fiercely.

 I emerged badly scratched and bloody from the fight. 

The vet surgery was renovated at the time, Millie in her basket and I spent quite some time waiting outside at a side-door. Eventually she was taken in. I wasn’t allowed to go in with her due to Covid. When the vet came back out, after a while, the news were much worse than I thought. Ceba once had a swollen cheek after a fight, it had been an infection. The fluid was sucked out and he got antibiotics and then it was fine. I thought it was the same thing with Millie. I was told she had a growing tumour in her cheek. It was pressing on her eyes. She had an ulcer and a hole in her mouth where puss came out. Millie had cancer. 

Because of her age, she had been estimated to be around 20, and her low weight they feared she would not survive anaesthetics. Anyhow, there was a good chance the tumour might have grown already into her jaw. Even if surgery would be performed, besides the risks of the anaesthetics, the chances to get her pain free and well were very slim according to the vet. She suggested to put Millie to sleep. I told her I can’t make that decision on my own, I had to speak to my son. She gave me one week, then I was to bring Millie back. She gave her antibiotics and painkillers.

At home we decided to wait. My son had hope the antibiotics would help. He hoped the diagnosis was wrong. That it might be just a cyst and not a tumour. 

After the vet Millie was very cross with me. For about ten days she didn’t allow me to stroke her or come near her. She moved into my son’s bedroom. At first she was hiding under the bed, then she was sitting on top of the duvet starring back at me defiantly and triumphant with her little face with the swollen cheek. 

I used to visit both my son and Millie, sitting on my son’s bed, lifting Millie on my lap and stroked her or brushed her. Sometimes afterwards she would climb off my lap and rub her little head against my leg. That was her way of saying thank you or even brushing me too.

One time she disappeared. We thought she might have gone to a hiding place to die as some cats do. I searched everywhere all day. I asked all my neighbours if they had seen her. In the evening I finally found her,  deeply hidden behind a stack of blankets on a shelf in the boiler room. She seemed to be pleased that I found her, very triumphant, as if we played hide and seek.

 Melvin, my son,  became her main carer. He would look after her and give her her medicine. She would sit on his lap for hours at night-time when he sat at his computer. He could not sleep at night and Millie would bother him a lot. I heard him quietly talking to her in the hallway when I was falling asleep. 

In the morning I would find an arrangement of paper plates where she was fed, with a little half eaten buffet of different kinds of cat food and my son would be mildly complaining about her fussiness and dissatisfaction.

I only got back to the vet to buy more painkillers. We felt as long she was eating this well she certainly wanted to live. Then a time came when eating seemed to have become difficult. Melvin wanted me to get stronger painkillers. He hoped if she was in less pain she might eat more again. For me it was obvious that Millie had reached the end of her life. Every day she seemed a bit smaller. She started to really stink. My son asked me to brush her more- when I did there was hardly any hair coming out …

She only could take very small pieces and fluids. Eventually I made another appointment with the vet in order to get those stronger painkillers. I used a mobile vet who would come to the house someone had recently been recommended to me, as I did not want Millie to experience another traumatic visit to the vet surgery. 

I had a very bad feeling about this as I knew what they would say. However, without seeing the vet I could not get a prescription for stronger medicine for her. 

I  talked to my son that it would be likely they would tell us to put Millie to sleep. He said if I have her put to sleep now, it might be too early for her and we wouldn’t want to have on our consciousness not to have tried everything. Irfan also told me on the phone not to have her put to sleep without Melvin’s consent. 

Two ladies came, a nurse and a vet. They were, frankly, horrible. The nurse lifted Millie up and kept her hostage in her arms in a possessive manner, snarling at me with arrogance demanding to have her euthanised at once, blaming me for not having it done sooner.

They demanded to have Millie put to sleep immediately. They basically had a go at me. Accusing me to be an animal abuser because I asked for palliative care,  for being reluctant to play God and put my beloved kitty to death. I wanted to rip Millie out of the arms off that pompous cow and kick them both out of the door, however made an effort to stay civilised. I told them Millie was a family member and if she were human, she would not made to die. They blew themselves up that they were here for the animal and not the human. They said if I don’t have her put to sleep it would be a welfare case. I told them I can’t do this without my son’s consent and my son was asleep, as he was very unwell. 

The nurse, who had grabbed Millie away from me, even shouted out to my son. I had to tell her she couldn’t speak to him in that tone. Then I tried to wake Melvin with difficulties, him stating, “I am overtired and just woken up, I am not in a fit state to say goodbye now!” Eventually I told them they had to go and come back tomorrow, to give us time to come to terms and say goodbye. 

Later that day I found a note put through my front door from the RSPCA, obviously alerted by those ladies, that they had to speak to me urgently about my cat! I was not amused. That same evening we came around to think that the point in time might have come where we should help Millie to go.  She was hardly able to eat and drink anymore because of her growing tumour, if left she would  starve to death eventually.

However we definitely did not want Millie to leave with these awful mobile vet people around. Next morning I rang my usual vet and found out that they too would come for a house visit on this occasion. 

I bought snowdrops to plant on Millie’s grave, dug a hole on the most beautiful spot under the oak tree in the garden, found a beautiful clean white cloth for her little body. Millie was following me around in the houses , meowing at me, as if she knew what was about to happen and she didn’t want it to. Little drops of blood were falling out of the edge of her mouth now. 

Two guys from the surgery came in the afternoon. They allowed me to hold Millie on my lap. They put a line into her front leg. Eventually they injected the medicine and from one second to another Millie’s body turned floppy, there was no more life in it.  When I stood up to say goodbye to the two vet guys, still clutching my cat’s lifeless body to my chest, I burst, to my own surprise, into uncontrollable wailing and could not stop. The men were kind. They asked if they could do anything for me. I declined and asked them to go. 

I went to the other room, got the cloth and wrapped Millie’s remains in it. I did this without looking at her dead body, which I  just could not bare. I took her outside, buried her under our tree and planted the snowdrops on her grave. The vet sent us a sweet card of condolences.

Outside our door, within the rest of the world, the COVID pandemic seemed to come to an end. A war broke out in Ukraine. 

In our house it was the end of the time of Millie.