My apologies for going off topic today, but I've just come back from the veterinarian, and I came back alone. After almost 23 years, Nigel the Cat, a true and faithful companion, has left the stage.
My wife Joy and I purchased Nigel from the Humane Society branch in Bracebridge, Ontario a few months after we'd bought a house there. For those of you who have never visited the Humane Society, I don't recommend it at all if you're even the slightest bit tender of heart, it's heart-rending to have to chose one cat from all the cages and leave the others behind.
We'd narrowed it down to two choices. One of the cats was just a charmer, friendly and outgoing, but afflicted with a stomach problem that would have required a special diet. The other cat had been equally charming and friendly, but surprisingly quiet in a room filled with meowing cats. I turned to the attendant and, pointing at the quiet cat, said, "You know, this one hasn't meowed at all." The cat looked me in the eye and pointedly said, "MEOW."
And so Nigel entered my life.
His nickname at the Society was CB, or Cathy's Boyfriend - he apparently had a thing for one of the staff. During the signout process, he sat on the desk and attempted to play with the pens that we were using to sign the documents, the first indication of an affection for writing implements that would last for almost his entire life. On the way home, my wife decided to name him Nigel - I have no idea why - and somehow it turned out to be the perfect name for him, and a strong element in his notoriety.
He was a big solid cat, at least up until his last couple of years, tall enough to reach a doorknob and smart enough to know that was how to get out - but his lack of thumbs kept him from ever taking advantage of this arcane knowledge (arcane among cats, anyway). He had a little nick out of each ear, as if someone had just snipped into them a bit when he was younger, rather than the scars of feline combat, but that was just part of his mysterious history.
When Joy and I split up, I got custody of the cat - she got custody of the car, and I guarantee that car didn't last as long as Nigel did - and Nigel and I moved to Toronto. (For those of you who have never heard the cat-pissing-on-the-ex-wife-in-the-car story, ask me later.) This was only the first move for Nigel, but the transfer to Vancouver six years ago was much more of an epic journey for the little fellow.
I thought that everything was going well when I got him to the airport without undue incident, but I hadn't realized that I'd have to take him out of his carrier. However, Security wanted to x-ray it without a cat inside, so I took him out and held onto him as he tried not to panic, surrounded by the din and unfamiliarity of Pearson International Airport at its summertime busiest. I could feel his little heart going bangbangbang, and did my best to comfort him until he was able to go back into his carrier.
I don't know what the rest of the trip was like, but when Laurie and I picked Nigel up at the Vancouver Airport he appeared completely calm in his little case. I used to joke that it was his way of saying that it was now impossible to frighten him, that all of his capacity for fear had been used up someplace around Winnipeg.
The first time I took him out on the lawn in front of the building here, he looked around as if to say, "My god, what have you done? This was completely different last week!" But after he got used to things I think that he found the local scenery to be a lot more interesting than the view on Roseheath Avenue in Toronto.
I could write pages of Nigel the Cat anecdotes: the time he apparently vanished from inside the house under curious circumstances, the mole that backed him up across 20 feet of lawn and then escaped, the mouse that didn't escape, the Christmas cards, his unbelievable acrobatic escape to the back yard at 41 Schell in Toronto, the time he attacked my head and bit through my upper lip (ever have a 14 pound cat hang off your face by his teeth and claws?), the fact that he had Facebook friends that I didn't know - the fact that he was on Facebook, for that matter - and on and on.
But Time ticks on, and Nigel wasn't a kitten when I first met him. Over 20 years after that first meeting, the time finally came, and, as always, he was calm and collected during the entire process. I left his body with the vet - I know that a lot of people like to take care of that themselves, but I'm pretty sure that Nigel wouldn't hold it against me given the limitations of apartment and city living.
I'm going to miss Nigel more than words could possibly express, and the apartment seems empty and cold without him here. Farewell, little warrior, best friend. If there is a place that deserving souls go to after death, I'm sure that's where you are - and I hope that the doors are always open.
- Sid
* One last cat joke, Nige - the title is a quote from a poem by Catullus.
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