Not a good fit

I'm not sure at the time why it wasn't immediately clear to me that I should apply for veterinary school, or zoology or open a florist.
And I can't remember where I saw the advertisement, but I think it was in the local job applications office. If my memory serves me correctly,  in my last year of college I was having doubts about finishing my degree and someone had told me that there was an online quiz you could do in the job office that allowed you to check what kind of career you had an aptitude for.
This was back when the internet was still relatively new. Public computers did not always have GUIs and their black screens made it even easier for me to feel like a failure in my choice of degree. To this day I still find a command prompt daunting.

Anyhow this is how I came across the advertisement taped to the glass door of the office.

Kittens free to good home.

This was evocative of how I operated at the time - I was there about my future and got distracted by a bag of kittens. And this is how I ended up owning, for the best part of 10 years, a mean old white cat called Mau.

It must have been as a result of feeling disconnected, in the wrong place somehow, that I decided to get a cat. Owning a cat - well that was something. It symbolized stability. It meant I knew what I was doing. At least it meant I probably knew what I was doing later. From that day forward, later meant I was going home to feed my cat.

The lady who was giving the kittens away met me in the car park of the same job centre which was on the way to the university. A beautiful stretch of the river Corrib ran behind the building. I got into her car as she pulled the cardboard box out of the car boot and let me take my pick. Some of the kittens were black, some were white and some were black and white. There were 2 all white ones. They were the fluffiest things I had ever seen, pure white and innocent. One in particular seemed strong and intent on climbing up to meet me. The books always said take the brightest eyed of the bunch. I made my choice and the lady drove away with the rest and there we were, suddenly belonging to each other.

Now Mau didn't start off mean. I vividly remember those halcyon early days, when he was barely bigger than my hand, walking across my chest and jutting his little face into my neck, purring like a well oiled motor.
Even today I still see him, in my mind's fish eye lens; he's so close he's distorted as in a christmas bauble; basically just purring into my face.

He was barely 6 weeks old and a joyful kitten. When my friend Sally came to visit he joyfully sank his claws into her leg and climbed. And in those days it was cute because he didn't have any idea that his claws could hurt some.

Somewhere along the line, Mau changed, probably when he was about 3 to 4 years old. It was probably my traveling that did it, I somehow finished my degree (we were never a good fit), worked for a couple of different IT companies and eventually ended up working for my last company.
At one point I was repacking a suitcase every month for work and leaving him with my boyfriend at the time.
Even when that relationship was on the rocks Mau would go to stay in his second home, and hang out with my ex, who kindly looked after him but who couldn't really hide the distance, not just between me and him but between him and the cat. Or maybe I was reverse-anthropomorphizing my relationship into the cat.  Anyway the cat somehow absorbed all of the stale energy from the relationship. Not a good fit. I felt guilty leaving Mau for long periods of time, I even multiplied the weeks by 7 in order to feel worse about it.

Either way, my cat went bad.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge animal lover. When I was a kid I used to hand out antivivisection leaflets and postcards about battery hens. Aged 8, I considered my greatest achievement getting my picture printed in the Blue Cross magazine for kids. I love animals. And I loved Mau. Even though he scratched the bejesus out of me and often let out blood curdling meowls before attacking my arm, using his hind legs to essentially attempt to rip the living flesh away from my bones.
And later when I met my husband and we made arrangement to live together on another continent, I literally said to him 'I come with a cat'. And before moving to the states, Mau was issued an Irish European pet passport - I used to joke with the taxi drivers in Galway that even though I wasn't able to get an irish passport, my cat was.

James tried to befriend Mau for an entire year before finally giving up, after the umpteenth scratch betrayal. He soon learnt that the best way to get on with Mau was to ignore him completely. Mau would come to you if he wanted something - and that part wasn't hard to figure out - Mau just wanted 2 things: food and freedom. Given enough of both he would bring home little presents of appreciation, a squirrel head here, a mouse tail there. Once he even brought back a live hummingbird - which gave me such palpitations my heart almost reached hummingbird speed itself. (Thankfully, we were able to make sure that that one got away thereby solidifying Mau's believe that we are completely incompetent hunters and his bringing us various body parts in a misled attempt to get our bloodthirstiness going was not going to change that).

In Boston our vet announced that Mau may have hyperesthesia. She wasn't sure about it and as the article states 'There is no specific test that can diagnose this problem, so this syndrome requires diagnosis by exclusion'. This is an odd disease and descriptions range from a neurological/nervous system disorder to obsessive compulsive behaviors. Mau only ever ticked some of the boxes - twitchy rippling skin, an aversion to being touched, lashing tail. At times, it was frightening - he was the feline version of Jekyl and Hyde, doing dolphin leaps for a cuddle that ended up with him sinking his teeth into your leg. What made me sad and love him all the more was the dismaying thought that maybe he wanted cuddles - but then when he received they they hurt him. I was tortured by the thought that maybe all he wanted was affection and that he didn't understand why it hurt him so. It was an analogy in the flesh. 

The same vet also prescribed him prozac. As in, for depression. I have to admit, I didn't cash in that prescription but I wish I had kept it now as proof that cats are sometimes prescribed prozac.  

Then, much to James' dismay, one day the cat blocked. His tummy got hard and barrel shaped. Something was awfully, terribly wrong. Mau tried to pee but there was no pee, just sad little drops of rust colored liquid on a tile floor. We brought him to the vet and she deballooned him with a catheter. Later he blocked again and although the catheter treatment was expensive, the surgery which followed was even more so. As James' put it, the cat had outgunned his vet bill quota for life. His treatment ran into the hundreds and later the thousands. The surgery was a success, Mau no longer had the urethra to block, I made sure he stayed hydrated and as so often is the case with chronic conditions, Mau would let us know the pain was back by peeing in the sink. 

When James' Spanish assignment came around, we packed up our little family into crates (Mia and Mau in one big crate, Bizy in the other). In meticulously planning our journey from California to Georgia to Virginia to Spain and Rota and Granada (James planning for us, me planning for the pets) I had overlooked one minor detail. The crates that I had ordered, the biggest size there was so that the pets would travel comfortably, would prove to be a nightmare for us. Torn between not spending a fortune and having a big enough vehicle to transport the gigantic crates James was on a constant merry go round of renting various sized vehicles. Each line of our journey needed a van, and when we stayed somewhere for a few days, we downsized to a car to keep the costs down, then upgraded to a van again once we were on the move again. It was a logistical nightmare. When we finally got to Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, the counter agent told us that we would not be able to fly with our current configuration - 2 cats in one crate and a dog in the other. Turns out its a lot easier to travel with 2 pets in the military.

In the end, with the new baby, James and I decided it was safer to ask my Mom to take Mau back to Belgium with her. I couldn't take the chance of him taking a swipe at our little girl. There would come a day where she would walk and with walking would come the risk of a tail being pulled.

At my Mom's, he would have a garden to roam around in and in my mind I pictured Mau as Black Beauty, happily shaking his forelock in a retirement paddock, with fillies and oats unabounded. I imagined Mau chasing butterflies and chewing dandelions. It would be a better way to end his days rather than here with us in Spain where he has a terrace without grass, a view of the sky without trees and a family without friendship, just belonging to each other because we did, we do and we always have done.
It's true, Me and Mau were no longer friends. I was heavily pregnant when he decided he would take another swipe at me, and I don't know if it was my protectiveness as a mother to my unborn child but it hurt my feelings this time in a way that I was not prepared for. I stopped petting him. He in turn stayed away, perhaps sensing my hormones, the change in me and the change in our relationship. It was no longer 'Me and my mean old white cat' but 'Me and my newborn baby'.

I mentally started preparing for a life without Mau. I called the airline to check what size carry case my Mom could bring on the flight. We went to the vet to confirm the paperwork. At the vets, Mau did his best to appear abused, flattening against the edges of the case where moments before he had been skulking around the house. The vet almost got his fingers chewed off, I could see out of the corner of my eye as Mau's tail was dangerously lashing and I tried to warn the vet in my broken spanish, the vet who was young and cheerful and talking non stop, not listening, his fingers dangerously close to the equivalent of 10, maybe 11 sharks. In the end, I even got him vaccinated again, in order to bring the european paperwork (that darn pet passport) up to date. I thought about how easy it would be next time we travel back to the States. I got positively excited when Mom mentioned she had bought a litter box. Mau was going to live with my Mom!

Today, I puttered around the house while Lily, our newborn, slept. The house was peaceful, my husband was at his desk reading, the dog was asleep in his bed. Mia was a little curl of a snowshoe, asleep on her favorite chair. In the kitchen I realized that it was past 6. I did the usual call 'Mia, Bizy, Mau! - Dinner time!'.

And that's when my tears fell. I'm sorry I couldn't fix you Mau. In the end you didn't finish your journey right here beside me. I've failed as your human Mom. But as I transition into real Motherhood, I know you will be happier there with MY Mom, her garden and that freedom you always wanted.