Spot

Spot was a Siamese who entered my life in 1999. She was our sixth cat and, like all her predecessors, was an adoptee (those that didn't, like her, come from the SPCA, were rescued less formally -- i.e., they were what we call "boat cats").

Spot first distinguished herself, on March 31, 1999, by becoming the only cat I've seen escape from an SPCA handler inside the SPCA building. He had to chase her through the cage room while she tried her best to find a way out, I yelled "Loose cat!" and Norma and I tried to block the exit. She headed for the window over the row of cage tops, but found it closed and fastened. She was trying for the ceiling when finally recaptured. With this episode, plus her liveliness, instant adaptability, and liberal affection for Norma and me when she realized we might adopt her, I had her nailed.

Really fast. Really bright, even for a Siamese. And really loving.

I didn't mention loud, did I? Definitely loud. The loudest cat I've ever lived with. She did have the good taste to be quiet in her humans' sleeping quarters when one or more of them were asleep. And she knew to adjust her volume according to whether she was yelling "In!" at an insect screen or at a double-glazed sliding door. But in general, and with persistence, loud. You got used to it. In fact, you got used to carrying on conversations, sometimes quite extended ones, with her. And it was really sort of funny when she talked to us or to the unresponsive world in general so loudly and so long that she wore her voice out and walked around making hoarse, rusty sounds for a few hours. (Finally, there are the blood-curdling, ear-galvanizing howls she emitted just before or while flying at any other cat foolish enough to enter her territory; but they were not directed at us.)

Back to 1999. After the requisite number of days confined to the basement bathroom while she got used to our house as the place where she ate and had her litter box -- as an ex-professional computer nerd, I call this process "reburning her EPROM" -- we took the usual chance that our new little escape artist now regarded our home as her home, and let her out. She went round the whole place like an animated investigative computer, doing the whole perimeter of each room once. So far as I could tell, she immediately acquired a photographic memory of the layout. Then it was time to make friends with an amenable guest, while getting another wide-eyed look at the view from a greater height.

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The day after she was released from confinement, she demonstrated her intelligence and grasp of the layout of our house. She looked out of an upstairs window, and saw birds in the carport. Right away, she ran downstairs, to a point in the basement immediately below the window she had been at (I followed her), ran up a stepladder against the solid concrete outside wall to get as close as possible to the ceiling, and tried to find a way out between the floor joists where they rested on the foundation (this route involved a total of nine turns and various short or long runs on two stories).

Yes, she hunted. Humans with squeamishness regarding cats' predatory nature should skip to the next paragraph. At one end of our balcony grows a giant (much taller than the house) Christmas tree. In this tree regularly nest members of a particular species of small bird. I call them "snacks," and Spot seemed to agree when she got hungrier or more finicky than usual. The problem, from my point of view, was to get her to consume her occasional prey elsewhere than in the house.

Spot got her name from Norma on the day she was adopted. She had a group of darker spots in the fur on her back near the root of her tail. The vet opined that they might be scars from a fight, but we never found out for sure, and they eventually faded. I was slow enough on the uptake that it took me several weeks to recall that "Spot" was the name of the ship's cat on the Enterprise (the Galaxy-class one) in "Star Trek: the Next Generation," making her name one with an honorable history aside from its temporary literal appropriateness.

Spot was our cat, but in a sense she was Norma's cat. Named by Norma, she gravitated to her and picked her as the person to get really close to at bedtime. Close, closer, closest:

Of course, there were also awake times to spend with Norma. Here she assisted Norma with her leg exercises, by providing some weight for resistance. Or, you could say, Spot "spotted" for her.

Spot combined her affectionateness with her love of heights from which to survey her surroundings, by sometimes hitching up on any conveniently posed human and sitting (or riding, provided they didn't move alarmingly) on their shoulders.

She did the shoulder hitch often enough that Norma and I got in the habit, when the weather wasn't too warm, of wearing fleece vests around the house. This led to fewer prickle holes in the skin from Spot using her built-in crampons to secure her hold as she or the human in question shifted position.

The shoulder ride was also a handy place in which to indulge her habit of washing people's hair. She also did this on occasion if somebody got up during the night and came back to bed. I called this "welcoming back to the nest," and found it a comforting way of going back to sleep. And she sometimes washed people's hands, as one way of returning affection when they stroked her.

She never, though, came close to this degree of gratitude when she had her teeth brushed. Although she would come running on the call "Here, Spot, toothipegs!" (It seems as though you have to come from a particular generation of British origin, as I do, for "toothipegs" to be a synonym for "teeth.") If teeth-cleaning wasn't forthcoming soon after everyone's supper time, she'd start nagging for it. The fact that she got a small treat afterwards may have had something to do with this; but, on the other hand, I did know her to accept her toothbrushing and then take off before her treat could be offered.

In some respects, Spot was normally prudent. Here she investigated the view from the top of the swimming pool slide -- the pool is no longer there, pools have only one life and this one's was worn out -- but then made a wise, and very fast, choice as to how to get back down:

But in one other respect she showed an astonishing boldness and intelligent initiative I've never seen in our other cats. There is no way, given our house's construction and materials, for even the mighty of claw to climb to the roof. However, if one used a handy chair back to get onto the balcony railing (a second-story balcony, a metal railing a few centimetres wide, and one with a curved top at that) -- and then one walked all the way along it and around the corner -- and then one took a giant step across empty space to the half-paw's-width edge of the eavestrough and from there to the plastic roof of the toolshed ...

... then one found oneself with well over a hundred and fifty square metres of flat and sloping roofs, all available for sunning oneself and lying in wait for birds, with no competition for this slice of territory since no neighboring cat has ever shown the nerve or imagination to try to get up there. And the view (ask any cat, to find out how important this is in the feline world) from a height is fantastic. Spot well rated the "Cat Crossing" sign that I put above the railing end.

And so to well-earned rest, pensive or in the "cat in airy curve" position:

I felt a duty, living with Spot. Having a cat with her talents was a bit like having a gifted child. She needed more attention, more communication, more stimulation. Letting her down in these respects could lead to misbehavior, true; but more important was that I had in my custody a life of rare qualities, that should not be neglected, that should be fostered and nourished and loved.

But I also felt an occasional touch of the tragic: she had been spayed, and so would never either bear nor teach any kittens to carry on her specialness; and she would leave no records, except those that humans who know her might make.

On December 7, 2006, as she declined further and further from what turned out to be a whole array of conditions, at least two, maybe three of them due to become fatal, we had her euthanized.

She had one more surprise for us, something the vet said he had never seen before. As death took her, she managed to erect her tail fur into a brush, making herself as big as possible in the face of an enemy she could not defeat.

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