Given the fact that she was such a supreme diva, it's rather ironic that my late cat Peelu — who passed away last week at the age of 15 — was fated to spend most of her life in the shadow of even higher-wattage felines. In 1995, my ex Carole and I adopted her and her brother Mentos (they were only 14 weeks old at the time) from the LA SPCA on Jefferson Blvd; Mentos, an outgoing and gorgeous but not particularly brainy orange-and-white tabby, pretty much stole the show from the get-go, and the later addition of the impossibly fluffy Shadow and his equally mush-tastic girlfriend Kyuko caused her to withdraw, grumbling, into a supporting role. But Peelu was a beautiful, awesome and unique cat, just the same, and I can't let her go without giving Queen P her due.
She didn't suffer fools gladly, this one; the night I brought her and her brother home for the first time to our Orange St. apartment, I was cooking in the kitchen when I turned to see Carole standing there, somewhat stunned and bleeding profusely from the side of her eye. She'd been playing with Peelu through the bars of our staircase, and the little brown tabby had suddenly taken a dislike to the proceedings and swiped Carole across the face with her little claws, narrowly missing Carole's eyeball. Any attempt at petting her or conversing with her (at least when it wasn't her idea to begin with) was often as not met with a gutteral growl which we took to mean, "Do it right!" Because if you didn't do it right, she would let you know in no uncertain terms that there was a problem. She had all black paws, except for one pink pad on a back foot that I always refered to as "the magic toe" — of course, I never did figure out what its magical powers were, because every time I'd play with it or call attention to it, she'd respond with narrowed eyes and a grunt of disapproval at my impertinence. I was clearly not doing it right.
She was a star, no question about it. When she was still a kitten, she would have these freakouts where she'd ricochet wildly around the living room, and suddenly shinny all the way up to the top of the drapes; by the time we left that apartment on Orange, the drapes were dotted with hundreds of claw pinpricks that would let the light through like stars in the night sky. When we moved to Sycamore, she got into this nightly routine where — after we went to bed — she'd scamper around the living room by herself for a good 20 minutes, emitting otherworldly roars and yowls. We called it "The Peelu Show," and imagined it to be a sort of one-woman Vegas revue, a la "Liza with a Z". (Peelu with a U?)
Like any self-respecting diva, Peelu had a taste for the finer things in life. During one visit with my family in NYC, my maternal grandmother gave Carole a diamond engagement ring that my late grandfather had made. Though it was an extremely generous gift, it was also a fairly loaded one — the implication being that we should get married, and if I wasn't going to give Carole a ring, my grandmother was going to go ahead and do it for me. The gift of the ring also triggered a freakout on the part of my Uncle, who (being a jeweler himself) felt immensely proprietary towards any jewelry that my grandfather had left behind, and was pissed that my grandmother was giving this valuable piece away without checking with him first. And then, two days after we returned home to LA, the ring went missing...
We couldn't figure it out; Carole had left the ring on a shelf in the bathroom with her other rings, and no one else had been in our apartment. We looked all over the apartment, and with no luck — at least until I went to put on my running shoes: There, in my right shoe, was the diamond ring. I'd often seen Peelu carrying toys around the house in her mouth and dropping them (with great fanfare) into my shoes; I can only figure that she must have done the same thing with the ring. The mental image of her trotting purposefully towards my shoes with a diamond ring glinting against her milky white chin still makes me smile.
Mentos passed away in 2007, and Peelu and I became much closer, partly because her stupid brother wasn't there to hog all my attention. She spent a lot of time on my lap during my writing hours, and could usually be counted on to take up residence between my knees when it was time for bed. So when Carole and I split up in 2008, and I took up full-time residency in our Palm Springs weekend house, it made sense that Peelu would go with me out to the desert. I really think she was happier during her last year and a half out here than she'd ever been; after all, she was now the only cat, and she got to have me (and a three-bedroom house) all to herself. She'd spend her days alternately sunning herself on the bench in the dining room or the scratchy pad in the living room, hiding in a big lump under the covers of my bed, or jumping onto my lap as I was trying to type — usually right as I was trying to file a story on deadline. At night, she would either camp out by my feet on the bed, or hop down and sit on the rug by the sliding glass door, and stare out at the nocturnal doings in the back yard.
My year and a half of "desert exile" was a positive but often lonely experience, and I always appreciated Peelu's companionship, even as she was constantly stealing my desk chair or jumping up onto the dinner table as I was trying to eat. Many were the nights where I'd come home in a foul mood after a long day at work bookended by two 90-minute commutes, only to have her cheer me right up by greeting me at the front door with a new litany of complaints delivered in a hilarious patois of quacks, clucks, chuffs and burbles. She really had an incredibly extensive vocabulary, even if I had no idea what she was on about most of the time. And she could always get a laugh out of me by climbing onto my chest and covering my nose and face with wet kitty kisses, and poking at my lips and sideburns with an insistent right paw. So many cats get crustier with age; Peelu, on the other hand, got sweeter, at least with me.
Early this year, I realized that she was losing weight; there was once a time where we'd had to feed her special diet food to trim down her badger-like physique, but now she was getting too skinny, even though she still had a gigantic appetite. A visit to the vet in February confirmed my fears — she had kidney disease, the same thing that had killed Mentos. Only, whereas Mentos was so in love with me that he would have let me do just about anything to him (including inject him every day for two years), I knew that Peelu wasn't going to cotton to the twice-weekly subcutaneous fluid injections that the vet recommended. She put up with them for awhile, though, and they did seem to help — at least until she took a bad turn and stopped being able to keep her food down. On the night of May 2 (my birthday, and the day I always celebrated her and Mentos's birthdays, as well), she seemed so miserable that it broke my heart; I knew that, in her increasingly fragile condition, she would have a hard time with my upcoming move back to Los Angeles, if she even lasted that long. I felt in my heart that it was better to end her suffering in the desert where she was Queen, rather than to put her through the stress and uncertainty of moving to a new pad.
When our beloved pets die, we obviously grieve because we miss their presence, their personalities and the joy they bring to our lives. But I also think that we subconciously grieve the passage of time that their demise represents. When I first brought Peelu home, I was 29 years old, and completely unaware of the extreme lows and unimaginable highs that the next 15 years would bring. But through it all — romances, breakups, tax audits, surgeries, new gigs, two books, frustrations and jubilations — Peelu was there, always reminding me to "do it right." And now she's gone; and with her, that decade and a half of my life is officially gone forever, as well.
Still, I am profoundly happy I got to share all those years with her, and grateful that I got to be with her when the time came to say goodbye. I am also extremely grateful to the caring and gentle staff at the VCA Desert Animal Hospital in Palm Springs, who were enormously helpful over the course of Queen P's last few months, and equally grateful to Molly Anderson of Happy Tails pet sitting, who gave Miss Lu lots of affection and attention while I was off in LA looking for a new home. And I am also grateful for all my caring friends who asked after her (and me) during this difficult stretch; we were both feeling the love, I can assure you.
And ultimately, while it broke my heart to have to say goodbye, the many years of joy, love and laughs we shared far outweighed the tears I shed at the end. When the time comes, once I get settled in LA and I stop running around promoting my book, I know there will be another shelter cat in my future. And I hope, if you're a cat lover and still reading this, that you'll forego buying a cat from a breeder and consider adopting a cat from a shelter or a rescue organization to share your home and enrich your life, instead. Queen P would want it that way — because that's "doing it right."
Goodbye Peelu, Queen P, Miss Lu, Peelu Pie, Queen Quack, Princess Peelualua, and all the other names I knew you by. You were a sweet, cranky and endlessly amusing companion, and I will never forget you. I love you so much, my little Tabby Bear; thanks so much for loving me like you did.
