ROSCOE 1993-2010

I had to say goodbye to my buddy Roscoe this morning. He was 17 and a half years old--80 something in human years--and his health had been failing for awhile. We shan't see his like again. Why does an affected line like that occur to me? Probably a way to mask emotion...

This picture was taken in our backyard in around 2005, when he was 12. Truly a handsome and noble fellow. Sweet, too. He had a vocabularly unlike any other cat I've ever seen. A variety of ascending and descending open mouthed and closed mouth sounds, the closed mouth sounds kind of warbling gurgles. He would always warble a happy gurgle whenever you petted him, and he would always have something to say when you called his name.

He had the softest, smoothest fur of any cat I've known, the longest, lithest body, which is saying something, for a cat.

When he was young, he would sit on the next to the top step of the stairs leading to the second floor, and put one paw on the landing and cross the other paw over it. We used to say, "Roscoe is in his office," and "The doctor will see you now."

Speaking of doctors, the vet--Montclair's superb septuagenarian, Dr George Cameron--told me this morning that he had had a cat that lived to 20. He took the cat to college with him. He said that near the end of the cat's life, a friend and fellow vet criticized him for dragging out the poor cat's life when the animal was barely alive, "half dead. My friend had a point," Cameron said. "I guess I was in denial."

Roscoe, too, was barely there when I brought him in this morning. Not in pain, but fetally curled, and barely breathing. Kidneys gone. Still warm and soft. Last night he crawled into the litter box, which was clean, and spent the night there, curled tight.

He never did that before. I never heard of a cat doing that before. He was still there this morning and didn't make a sound when I touched him. I have heard that animals, in nature, when they are gravely wounded or sick, slink away to die alone in some safe, dark place. Was that what Roscoe was doing? I scooped him up and brought him to Dr. Cameron.

Dr. Cameron, who has a stooped walk, smooth, pale skin, and a whispery voice, took one look at Roscoe and said, "He should be put down." While he was examining him and getting the sedative and the other injection ready, he said to me, "I watched both my parents die. It was terrible." He shook his head, petting Roscoe. "We can do this for animals, but not for people."

I wonder if that will ever change. I'm not so young myself. I'll be 61 next month. These days that's young, if one is in good health, which I am. But not so young that you don't think about things that used to feel much further away. Especially on a day like today.

Tags: Montclair | photography | pet photography | Cat, Roscoe J. | Cameron, Dr. George | Cameron Animal Hospital