Goodbye to Mabel

RIP Mabel Hult

November 2002-January 16, 2019. 

My ex Colin, who is a veterinarian, hooked me up with Mabel in early 2003. He invited me to his vet clinic where she was waiting in an exam room. I didn't really like the looks of her: she was kind of brown and basic, with a mishmash of stripes and patches and swirls; a street kitty. Which I was informed that she actually was -- pulled off the street, around 3-4 months old, probably born in November. She'd survived the winter outside. She had just been given an abortive spay, as in they had taken out a litter of kittens with her uterus. It was unknown if that was her first litter. "She's a mess," I said. 

"She's special," said Colin.

So I hung out alone with her a while in the exam room. She silently meowed at me and I leaned in. Then she bumped my chin with her head, and I thought, Okay, we're going to do this.

Young Mabel was a demonic hellbeast. Pushy, mean, short tempered, fiery, demanding, screechy, easily bored, hungry, and annoying. My other cat, an older marshmallow of a British shorthair named Gladys, didn't know how to handle her, either. We sat together on the futon, staring at Mabel tearing around our tiny apartment, wondering how we were going to survive this furry dervish.

It was years before Mabel chilled out. Gladys got so stressed about their battles that she licked her tail bald. But the secret with Mabel and me is that she was mean but she was deeply loving. She wanted to be near me, lie beside me on the futon and purr with her deep rumble, soothing my aching smoker's heart in those years when I still smoked. When she was done cuddling, she'd bite my wrist and run off, or scratch me severely for daring to hold on a second longer than she wanted.

Still, we all slept together, a cat on either side of me, and nine years passed pretty quietly in that tiny SoHo apartment. There were a few adventures: mice getting in, new boyfriends to dislike, fights between Mabel and Gladys. 

Once Mabel was on the windowsill, kkkkkk-ing at the pigeons on the fire escape in the dark courtyard, partially hidden by the blinds. I touched her furry butt, accidentally surprising her, and she flipped up in a loop through the blinds, screaming. I screamed, too. She landed backward hard on my shoes on the floor, breaking her tail at the base. The vet said there was only one surgical fix for a cat's broken tail -- and we weren't ready for that -- but they often heal on their own. So we got through it with glucosamine and painkillers. Maybe she was a bit more subdued after that? 

Certainly her attitude changed a little when, after surviving years of abuse from Mabel, Gladys suddenly snapped one day, jumped on the bed, and swiped a claw into Mabel's left eye. The claw broke off, sticking out of Mabel's eyeball. It took another trip to the vet to get the claw removed. Her eye survived, but it always had a hole in it after that, and that eye got progressively crustier as the years went on.

We moved from SoHo to a spacious Washington Heights apartment in 2011. Mabel and Gladys loved the space and the streaming sunlight, but Gladys was probably 18 years old at that point and died of a quick heart attack in the first few months in our new home. Mabel was not sad about it. She loved being my only animal, and reveled in finally being the Queen.

But I got a new cat. Again from Colin, I found Bernie at the ASPCA. He was a sweet and dopey kitty, only 8 weeks old.

Mabel hated Bernie on sight. She hated him so much she would shake with loathing. In a three-room apartment, she did everything she could to never be closer than 20 feet to him. She stopped sleeping with me, and was furious for years.

And then when Bernie grew up and started to stand up for himself, she got sad.

It was quite unseemly how happy Mabel was about the death of Bernie. She practically danced, rolling on the floor and stretching out and purring. Such mean bliss.


After I more or less got over Bernie's death -- with no help from her -- I couldn't get behind the idea of getting another cat. Bernie had been wonderful, and any cat was going to suffer in comparison.

Bernie was always a strange and goofy cat, but it turned out that his oddball brain had serious problems. He died of sudden seizures in 2016, when he wasn't yet five years old.

So I got a puppy. Henry. I was so worried that Mabel would never forgive me, that their introduction would be as awful as it had gone with her and Bernie.

But she didn't hate Henry. She didn't like him, to be sure, but she taught him to be polite to her and he was always respectful and she tolerated his existence. Maybe it was because he wasn't a cat. Especially a male cat. Especially a male cat with brain problems.

In 2017, I had to leave NYC. I packed up the Washington Heights apartment. 

With Mabel and Henry in the car, we drove for three days to get to Texas. I thought Mabel might have a hard time with it, but she handled it well enough. I guess she realized it was better than being left behind. And she enjoyed the hotels. On Day 3, she started to cry about the drive, but I was pretty grumbly about it by then, too.

Life in Houston was pretty cushy for Mabel. For the first time in her life, she had a backyard area to explore. My parents' big house had plenty of soft spots to sleep, and a big kitchen to hang out in. Plus now my father fed her, too, and we had to coordinate to make sure we didn't feed her twice. She was good at pretending to be unfed.

  

Then one day Mabel was out in the backyard doing her slow sniffing inspection of the perimeter when the yard workers arrived with their leaf blowers. Terrified, Mabel vaulted the fence and disappeared into the suburbs.

I put up postings and signs and wandered the neighborhood shaking food and calling for her. She had gotten pretty deaf in her later years so I wasn't sure if she could hear me, but still I wandered around, putting out leaflets with her picture on them, checking for glowing eyes in the bushes with flashlights at night, setting up a cage that only caught an opossum. There was a tropical storm while she was gone; I was so worried that she'd hidden in the storm drains and had been washing into the bayou. After eight days of searching for her, I had pretty much given up hope.

But the next evening, a neighbor on the street behind ours spotted her in his garden.

Who knows how she survived nine days out there? Eating lizards and mice? I'll never know. She was certainly skinnier. And no longer allowed out in the yard alone.

In 2018, her teeth started to rot, and she became quite uncomfortable, sleeping and hiding more and more. I brought her to the vet for dental extractions several times, but those were stopgap measures. 

In November, she stopped recognizing any of us for a few weeks, and she'd cower and scream whenever we came near. That cleared up, but the teeth got worse, and she started living under a bed or in a closet, or sleeping in her litter box. She stopped cleaning herself well. The vet said she was declining.

A canine extraction and steroids helped for a few weeks, but eating began to cause her too much pain, and Mabel was ripping at her mouth and face with her claws. I switched her to a liquid diet, which helped for a few days. Then she stopped eating altogether. 

For the first time in years, Mabel consented to sleep in my bed with me and Henry. She was very sweet and cuddly in her last days, letting me know she was ready to depart.

It was time. I asked the vet if I should say goodbye in the clinic or take her home to let her die in comfort, but I was told there would be nothing comfortable about her starving herself to death.

So Mabel was put to sleep. It was quick. She didn't have far to go.

Goodbye, Mabel, you mean old cat. You were always contradictory: soft but sharp; friendly but standoffish, quiet but yowly; fastidious but untidy; low-maintenance but difficult; loving but mean.

You always reminded me of me.