Spring 2004, and my wife decides she wants a cat.
We had tried having a cat before, adopting a rambunctious young cat from one of Bessie’s bosses three years before. Foley didn’t stay with us long; he was full of energy, and our crazy schedules — coupled with the small apartment we lived in — weren’t enough to keep him occupied.
So I wasn’t all aboard with her idea to try cat ownership again. But she talked me into going to see this litter of kittens one of her co-workers was trying to adopt out. Bessie fell in love with the smallest kitten, with her big eyes and bigger ears. The runt of the litter.
“Fine, whatever,” I said.
Growing up, I didn’t have pets. I mean, we had a basset hound named Duchess when I was very young, but she died when I was two or three years old. At any rate, I was young enough that there was no connection to her; she was just a dog in a picture, a muddy me standing next to her in a winter coat. And we tried having fish once, but that went as well as most pet fish experiments go. They were dead in a week.
So, no, I was never the “I need a pet” type. Or so I thought.
After a few weeks to wean the kitten from her mother, Bessie’s co-worker brought our new addition to work and we picked her up. She was still tiny, but you could already tell she had a big personality.
We had a palm tree in the living room of our tri-level home in Columbus, with a papasan couch next to it. One of the first photos we ever took of our kitten showed her sitting on the back of that papasan, next to the palm tree. A couple nights later, we found she had dug out a bunch of soil and used the palm’s pot as a litter box.
She wasted no time marking her territory.
I had been the one to name Foley, choosing that name in a nod to the professional wrestler Mick Foley because of the cat’s daredevil-like antics.
So it was Bessie’s turn to name the new kitten. She chose Jules, which in French means “lightly bearded.”
A French name picked by my Paris-loving wife? Who would have thunk it?
For the first few weeks in her new home, Jules had a tendency to growl while she ate, placing her paws on either side of the bowl to protect her food. Eventually she learned that she was the only cat in the house and stopped being so protective—of her food, at least.
She never did get over protecting her home, though, as anyone who came to visit us over the next 16 years would find out. Growling. Hissing. In some cases, stalking. If you weren’t one of “her people” — and especially if you had pets of your own — she was extremely … well, let’s go with standoffish.
My dad? He was one of her people, though. Whenever my parents would come to visit, Jules would sniff briefly at my mom before spending most of her time wallowing on my dad’s boots and aggressively licking his hands as he tried to pet her. “No biting,” he would have to remind her when her affection got too obnoxious.
Everyone else? You might get to pet her once if she was asleep, but that was it.
The palm tree I mentioned earlier, we had to throw it away when it started to die. And we quickly learned what was safe to keep out and what we had to do to Jules-proof our house.
There was no preventing her from jumping on the kitchen counter, no matter what we tried. We tried orange peels and peppers; she simply jumped over them, gave them a dismissive look and went about her business, which was usually licking the faucet to prompt a trickle of water.
Big fan of fresh water, Jules was.
She had a talent for taking things apart, too. We bought one of those retro-looking stereos, the one with a turntable and CD player in one. The night we brought it home, after we went to bed, we heard Jules playing with something in the hallway. It was the antenna from the stereo. Never did get very good radio reception after that.
Another time, another noise in the hallway (we had hardwood floors, so there was no sneaking around that house for any of us). We got up to see what Jules had gotten into now and found a bolt. Where the hell did she find a bolt? Turns out she had figured out how to unscrew the bolt out of this metal-and-glass coffee table we had, no doubt when she was scratching her jaw along it.
Too smart for her own good, Jules was.
I don’t remember for sure what the first “people” food Jules had an inkling for. I remember one night eating some generic vanilla crème cookies and Jules sniffing away. I let her lick the cookie, and she enjoyed it—and more importantly, didn’t get sick. So I kept eating those cookies long after I grew sick of them, just so Jules would have a treat.
If we were eating popcorn, we were guaranteed that Jules would be right there in our face, wanting some.
But the “people” food she loved the most was bread, primarily yeasty bread like the rolls from Texas Roadhouse. Bring those in the house and you damn sure better be sharing with me, Jules indicated.
We haven’t been to Texas Roadhouse in quite some time, and not just because of the current pandemic. I wish I would have known time was running short, so she could have had some of that roll one more time.
When I would stay up late after my shift on the copy desk at The Republic, Jules would stay up with me, winding around my feet and jumping onto my desk as I tried to write — or more often than not, surf the Internet.
Years later, when I had a job that often required me to travel for days on end, Jules would snub me when I got home, at least for a few hours. The snubbing never lasted long, just long enough so that I knew she was mad that I had left her but glad that I finally came back home.
Jules wasn’t supposed to be “my” cat. Bessie was the one who wanted her, after all. But Jules figured out that she needed to win me over. And even though I would yell when she tore something up, and even though Bessie handled the worst of the hairball cleanup over the years, it was always me she came to when she wanted petting — assuming I wasn’t gone for work, of course.
So it seemed appropriate that I was the one to hold Jules when we said goodbye.
Over the last year or so, Jules had been losing weight. She had been 10 pounds her entire adult life—we knew that because the little diva had a tendency to sit on the scale in front of a full-length mirror—but she slipped to 9 pounds, then 8. When we petted her, we could feel the bumps of the vertebrae on her spine, her ribs. She was still eating and drinking and going to the litter box just fine, and there were still bursts of activity, so we didn’t overworry. She’s just getting older, we told ourselves.
But she started having trouble keeping food down. We switched, thinking that the food was the only problem. She seemed to take to it. But the next day, after a morning where she had been restless, she vomited blood.
We were able to schedule an appointment at the vet — a new one for her because she had made it quite clear years before that she didn’t want to go to the vet unless absolutely necessary.
I, for one, wasn’t thinking of long-term ramifications. The vet would figure out something, we’d take Jules home. No big deal.
Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t go in with Jules. We sat in the parking lot at Franklin Animal Clinic, waiting for the vet to call. When she did, it was terrible news. Chronic kidney disease.
Our choices: leave her at the clinic for 48 hours to see what the vet could do for her, or take her home and give her medicine ourselves. At best, though, we were buying Jules a few more months, and that was if she took to a regimen of medicine and prescription food.
Like I said, I had never had a pet, and so I had never had to decide if putting an animal to sleep was the best option. It still breaks my heart, not quite a week after we made that decision. But I tell myself that even if it was the wrong decision for us, it was the right decision for Jules.
We were able to go inside to say goodbye, of course. Jules was still sedated, lying in the carrier we bought for her all those years ago. There was a different blanket in with her than the one we had brought; I imagine that blanket paid the price for Jules’ going to the vet. Bessie gently took her out of the carrier; Jules reflexively growled but quieted once she realized who was holding her. I took her next, holding her in my arms and saying goodbye. The vet, Dr. Lee, came into the room. Kudos to her and the vet techs there for their bedside manner through this.
A few minutes later, Jules was gone. I gave her one last hug and handed her to Dr. Lee. We thanked her again and went back to our car.
It’s hard to say goodbye, of course. We left the carrier at the clinic and we’ll be giving away Jules’ food and litter. The next morning, when I came out to the living room and Jules wasn’t sleeping on the couch … the day after, when I emptied her litter box for the last time … sitting on our patio and not seeing her at the patio door, sniffing at the air … all these moments hit me and I try to not feel guilty for our decision.
But I know she’s not suffering anymore. I imagine she’s in a better place, wallowing on my father’s boots as he tells her not to bite him.
Yeah, that’s a good thought. I’ll stick with that.
