21 years ago today, Pru, our much loved cat died. Like all - I imagine - special family cats she was ‘something else’. Here from my journal is an account of her last days.
Thursday, January 21st, 1999
I took Prudence to the vet, the one whose premises are just below the East Gate at the top of Fore Street. He says her weight loss is a consequence of a cancerous tumour in her stomach. He wanted to put her to sleep there and then. I told him today was my wife’s birthday and she would want to say good bye to Pru. I informed him I would bring her to him tomorrow.
Monday, January 25th
We didn’t take Pru to see the vet on Friday, as he had advised me to do, because she was still purring and does not seem to be in great pain but I took her to him today because she continues to lose weight loss due to her stomach tumour. Again he said we should allow him to put her to sleep there and then. It was an unbearable feeling - Pru has been an integral of our family life for almost 20 years - and I mentioned to him she was still eating a little and sleeping. I agreed to bring her in if we thought her condition had further deteriorated.
Friday, January 29th.
Pru dodders on purring but hardly eating and is now never sleeping. She is an old cat losing all her feline dignity and grace. We wonder whose needs are being met by us keeping her alive.
Saturday, 30th January, 1999
Pru has developed a cough.
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| Prudence, Lady Totnes: always hoping to improve her position |
Monday, February 1st, 1999.
Prudence Cat, also known as Pru, the Empress of Wellbury, Dowager of St.Albans and Lady Totnes was put to sleep this evening. Pru, a British Blue, was a snob, and she was in the main disdainful of other cats and most human beings. She tolerated us but she was ashamed that she was supported by folk who lived in a small end of terrace semi-detached house when she should have been with the well to do in a great country mansion. When any people who visited us looked reasonably wealthy, she, being the British Blue that she was, would moanfully chatter away to them saying that she ought to be better placed than she was.
Notwithstanding this, she was, in spite of her irritable nature, our family cat for over 19 years. She came to us when she was about a year old because we had a friend who knew Pru's first owner who said she had one too many cats and so was keen to divest herself of Pru. Of course it wasn’t put to us as harshly as that when we agreed to take her in but it was something that we very quickly came to came to understand.
When she arrived at our house she had cat flu which she proceeded to pass on to the cat we already had, our beloved Sooty. Sadly cat flu proved too much for Sooty and she died about a week after Prudence crossed our threshold. She was a great hunter with a gigantic final pounce that captured most of her victims. She could catch a squirrel as easily as she could a bird, rat or mouse. In addition to these murderous ways Prudence disgraced herself on many occasions when not so well off strangers visited the house. She often shamed us when dear friends, (though always those who were not by nature sympathetic to felines) visited the house, but she kept her most maliciously violent behaviour for veterinary surgeons.
When she arrived at our house she had cat flu which she proceeded to pass on to the cat we already had, our beloved Sooty. Sadly cat flu proved too much for Sooty and she died about a week after Prudence crossed our threshold. She was a great hunter with a gigantic final pounce that captured most of her victims. She could catch a squirrel as easily as she could a bird, rat or mouse. In addition to these murderous ways Prudence disgraced herself on many occasions when not so well off strangers visited the house. She often shamed us when dear friends, (though always those who were not by nature sympathetic to felines) visited the house, but she kept her most maliciously violent behaviour for veterinary surgeons.
It was sad tonight to see that she had become so weak as not to be able to draw even the smallest drop of the vet’s blood, something she had achieved in a most vicious manner on each of her previous visits to the vet’s surgery. Indeed when first he experienced her volatile nature the vet insisted that if we wished to bring her to the surgery again we must phone up to make an appointment so that he could arrange for an additional person to assist him in handling her. Tonight though she was too weak to maim the clinicians she did have the last miaow : she pee’d all over them. That’s my girl!
She was my cat though my wife might not agree with me but occasionally she would say that I loved Pru more than her. Now, only I know the truth. I loved her and eventually over the years she grew to love me some of the time. Pru, wherever you are, the Daddy loves you.
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| Prudence Cat |
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