Farewell to a Great Cat, Part 7

My friend and roommate Sinatra, transitioned on Sunday, Nov. 9th, 2014. In memory of this great cat, I am posting an image and a story of his life every day for a week, to honor this great cat! This is the final post of a 7 part memorial series.

After living in NW Portland, Sinatra and I compromised and found a cool place in SE Portland, still close to Downtown which is what I wanted, but a little more room for Sinatra to run around in. He had a private window that was hidden from the world to see, so he could get outside whenever he wanted, and seek shelter when needed. He lived here the longest – almost nine years.

In 2008 things changed for Sinatra. He got in a fight that kind of took the wind out of his sail. He didn’t come home for a long while – all day – these days it was very unusual for him to be gone more than a couple hours. When he did come home he was a little roughed up, plus his left eye was watering unusually heavily. It took a little bit to get him to recognize me, and ultimately come inside. But he did, and we waited a few days to see what would happen. I should have taken him to the vet right away, but I didn’t. Within a couple days his eye had swollen and I finally got him to the Vet. But too late for the Vet to do anything, they couldn’t see the eye so didn’t want to damage it while in surgery. I had to sit with him for a few days, twice a day, with a compress, until the wound cleared up. He hated this, it required him being wrapped up in a towel, so he wouldn’t scratch me to pieces, and being forced to sit still for at least 10 minutes.

A couple days into this his wound opened up and began draining. It happened one night when a friend and I had connected for dinner and a home movie. By draining, I mean, it bled! It bled so much, I started freaking out, I didn’t know at the time that it was normal and ultimately would stop. I took him to the emergency room, where they told me he would be fine, I just needed to keep sitting with him. It did stop, ultimately, and the wound cleared up and our relationship changed. I think we both began trusting each other a little more after this incident. I nursed him back to health, and he made a full recovery. But Sinatra never really went outside again after that. While he still needed to go out at least once a day, he was pretty much an indoor cat from then on. He stuck close to home.

An image of Sinatra with his wound healed and cleaned up can be found in yesterday’s post – Farewell to a Great Cat, Part 6 – look above his left eye.

It seems, he listened to me more after that incident also. Where we live now, my apartment unit is in the basement of a house, and accessible by a back door of the house. I usually have to walk around to the front of the house to get my mail. One day, I had just gotten home, and Sinatra was excitedly running under my feet, back and forth. I went to check my mail and he followed me to the front of the house. The upstairs neighbor had two cats; a black male that Sinatra liked to scruff around with, and a grey female that Sinatra liked to chase. The female didn’t like me very much either, so I was an interruption to her sitting on the front porch this particular day. When I jumped up on the porch, she jumped away, and immediately Sinatra was in chase. I hissed at Sinatra strongly, as I normally did when he was doing something I didn’t want him to do, and he stopped dead in his tracks! I was amazed at the sight! I was able to talk him back in to our place, without further thought of the grey cat.

RIP Sinatra, (1996?-2014)

~V