Some days are tough, and yesterday was one of them. Tip, the alpha male of my cat family and boss cat of the house, had come to the end of his earthly journey, and I was going to take him to the vet to be put to sleep. It all started when Tip developed a rare cancer at the site of a vaccination injection, a grape-sized tumor that was removed 23 months ago. The information I found from the American Veterinary Medical Association suggested the survival rate after surgery was 2 to 24 months, so Tip did very well in that regard. He actually had a long remission where he seemed in normal health. Late in February of this year he developed a cancer in his jaw that at first looked like an infected tooth. He had surgery to remove the cancer on March 17 and seemed to do well with that, too. But I returned from a trip over Memorial Day weekend to find him looking awful. His sides were caved in and his pink nose was very pale. It turned out he was dehydrated and severely anemic. Numerous tests ruled out infectious diseases. The doctor believed he had some sort of bone marrow disease, some sort of myeloma. Tip had the distinction of being the first cat I have ever owned to have a blood transfusion. But none of this helped. I brought him home from the hospital for a few days so he could spend his last days in as normal a setting as possible: days out on the screened porch watching the neighborhood go by, surrounded by the other cats.
But then he started vomiting. He lost everything he had eaten for the last several days. I knew this was the end. So I made plans to bring him to the vet Thursday morning.
I woke early that morning to the sound of thunder. An ominous line of dark gray clouds was rising over my neighbor's house across the street. I hurried to get Tip in off the porch, where he had spent the night, and into a cat carrier inside.
I went into the kitchen to try to catch a weather report on TV. It was 6:45. As I sat at the kitchen table, there was a sudden, tremendous crash and I knew instantly that the house had been hit by lightning. At the same moment, the fire alarm went off upstairs. My greatest fear about this hundred-year-old house I live in is a fire caused by a lightning strike. The beautiful old sturdy cypress timbers with which this house was built are as dry as hundred-year-old wood can be. I've seen a couple of houses in the neighborhood burn, and they will go up in a matter of minutes.
I called the alarm company and they called the fire department. I scrambled to get dressed and catch all the cats and put them in their cat carriers. When there is a fire alarm going off and the cats are terrified of the cat carriers under normal circumstances, this is a little bit like trying to drain the Mississippi River with a teaspoon. I was thinking grimly that if the house burned down, the only cat I might save would be the one already in a carrier, the one I was going to bring to the vet this morning to have put to sleep. But I managed to catch all but one of the cats and get them downstairs before the firemen arrived.
The firemen were great. They went upstairs and went up into the attic to see if it was on fire. (The only time I smelled smoke was when they passed me in the hall. Their yellow slickers were reeking of smoke. These guys had seen a lot of fires.) No fire. They checked twice.
God bless the man whose hat said "Captain." He, the tech support guy from the alarm company (on my cell phone, because the fire alarm had the land line tied up), and I had a heck of a time trying to get the fire alarm to shut up. When we finally did, the silence was truly wonderful.
All the firemen found was a ridge tile on one of the dormers that was out of place. So perhaps the lightning hit the dormer or the nearby chimney. They told me to get a roofer to fix it, which I can do fairly easily. Later in the day, I walked around the block to try to see the roof from all angles, and I can't even find a scorch mark. This is truly one of those "grace of God" moments.
When the firemen left, I looked at the clock. It was 7:17 a.m. The whole episode had lasted about half an hour. It was one of the longest half hours of my life.
A few hours later, I brought Tip to the vet. It was hard, and I cried a lot. I had had Tip for 13 years. He did have a happy life, and I'm glad his days of suffering were few. That, too, was a moment of grace.
The last time I lost a cat was in 1996, during the Atlanta Summer Olympics. A lot has changed in those years. Pet cremations are not uncommon today. So I will be able to bring Tip's remains home in a few days. I have such a sense of peace about this that I have never had before.
This morning the neighborhood is very quiet except for the birds. A cool front has come in and it's about 70 degrees on the porch, which is really rare for this time of year in New Orleans. I am hoping for a better day today.
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