Tybalt Autolycus Taaffe, March 12 2014—January 10 2024
For the first time in almost ten years, a small black cat with sincere green eyes did not run to greet me at the door when I opened it tonight. Autolycus died earlier this evening. He was on my lap at the time, wrapped in a lichen-colored towel; he had gone most of the way himself by the time the traveling vet arrived. He will be buried with the grave goods of the blue mylar balloon which he so proudly towed around the apartment and the red catnip mouse which anchored it so that he could bat and bite at the string. This morning he was standing on the pillow beside my face, gently scratching for attention after spending the last hours of the night curled kitten-fashion against my stomach. He lay on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch's chest as the sun came up.
He was the runt kitten when we met him, two weeks old and being fostered with his mother and littermates by the family ofa_reasonable_man. We were warned that the mother was protective of her littlest kitten; that we could try to pick it up, but it would squeak and she would come and rescue it. When I picked up the tiny handful of black fur, it squeaked once and then it fell asleep on my knee. On our return two weeks later, it ran to meet me, climbed into my arms, summited my shoulder. I knew I had been adopted. As late as this week, he was still clinging to my shoulder with his eight-clawed flower-paws which became so natural to me that I would forget that most cats have small, precise feet, not opposable mitts. He purred like a calliope and sang in a wide range of chirps and mrrps and clarion Siamese protests, especially when he had been shut out of a bedroom in which a person was trying to sleep or a dining room in which a person was trying to eat. He could pick up bottlecaps the better to play with them and open doors like his sister; defying the science of cats and sweets, they had gnawed their way through aluminum foil to get to a honeycake and popped open a plastic container for the macarons inside. He was a connoisseur of human food, or he would have liked to be. He was a great fan of goat's milk and liverwurst, neither of which he was stinted in these last weeks. He was Dr. Autolycus, Elbow Cat, Starboard Cat, Kitten Bombay, Havana Brown, Captain Armwater, the Innocent Mooch, the Unrepentant Recidivist, the Roaring Kitten, Autolycus Cunctator Maximus, and on one dreadful occasion Emperor Poopfoot IV of Commodiana. I called him Toly and Tollet and Tol Tol Tol and sang, "Polecat, how I love you, how I love you," because of Tom Lehrer and the soft mustelid hunch of his back. He was my movie cat, my little love, my salamander, my otter, my seal. Properly he had been named for the prince of cats, the lost heir of the Byzantines, a snapper-up of well-considered trifles. Almost anything that I wrote at home in the last decade, I wrote with him on my lap or close by my computer, sometimes in the nearest window, an ideal silhouette. He never lost his inquisitive ears.
He lived for two and three-quarters years with stage four kidney disease and for twenty days after he had been discharged from hospital with no hope of survival, ten of them after what is believed to have been a stroke. His fur lightened with the illness, we rejoiced when we finally had a four-kilogram kitten, he clung to life as fiercely as he clung to his people with all his twenty-six claws. Even through these last failing days, he insisted on climbing in and out of our bed and chattering at birds to the end. He stayed as long as his body would let him. He died because all of his systems were shutting down. It feels desperately unfair that he should be gone when I still know the exact smell under his ears and the slow blink of his eyes and the weight of his purr on my chest at night. He would find me when I was crying and lick my hands, my face, the solicitous kitten. I miss him so. He should turn into beautiful flowers.
spatch's chest as the sun came up. He was the runt kitten when we met him, two weeks old and being fostered with his mother and littermates by the family of
a_reasonable_man. We were warned that the mother was protective of her littlest kitten; that we could try to pick it up, but it would squeak and she would come and rescue it. When I picked up the tiny handful of black fur, it squeaked once and then it fell asleep on my knee. On our return two weeks later, it ran to meet me, climbed into my arms, summited my shoulder. I knew I had been adopted. As late as this week, he was still clinging to my shoulder with his eight-clawed flower-paws which became so natural to me that I would forget that most cats have small, precise feet, not opposable mitts. He purred like a calliope and sang in a wide range of chirps and mrrps and clarion Siamese protests, especially when he had been shut out of a bedroom in which a person was trying to sleep or a dining room in which a person was trying to eat. He could pick up bottlecaps the better to play with them and open doors like his sister; defying the science of cats and sweets, they had gnawed their way through aluminum foil to get to a honeycake and popped open a plastic container for the macarons inside. He was a connoisseur of human food, or he would have liked to be. He was a great fan of goat's milk and liverwurst, neither of which he was stinted in these last weeks. He was Dr. Autolycus, Elbow Cat, Starboard Cat, Kitten Bombay, Havana Brown, Captain Armwater, the Innocent Mooch, the Unrepentant Recidivist, the Roaring Kitten, Autolycus Cunctator Maximus, and on one dreadful occasion Emperor Poopfoot IV of Commodiana. I called him Toly and Tollet and Tol Tol Tol and sang, "Polecat, how I love you, how I love you," because of Tom Lehrer and the soft mustelid hunch of his back. He was my movie cat, my little love, my salamander, my otter, my seal. Properly he had been named for the prince of cats, the lost heir of the Byzantines, a snapper-up of well-considered trifles. Almost anything that I wrote at home in the last decade, I wrote with him on my lap or close by my computer, sometimes in the nearest window, an ideal silhouette. He never lost his inquisitive ears.He lived for two and three-quarters years with stage four kidney disease and for twenty days after he had been discharged from hospital with no hope of survival, ten of them after what is believed to have been a stroke. His fur lightened with the illness, we rejoiced when we finally had a four-kilogram kitten, he clung to life as fiercely as he clung to his people with all his twenty-six claws. Even through these last failing days, he insisted on climbing in and out of our bed and chattering at birds to the end. He stayed as long as his body would let him. He died because all of his systems were shutting down. It feels desperately unfair that he should be gone when I still know the exact smell under his ears and the slow blink of his eyes and the weight of his purr on my chest at night. He would find me when I was crying and lick my hands, my face, the solicitous kitten. I miss him so. He should turn into beautiful flowers.
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