A Tearful Farewell

Pelée (1987 – 2006)

When we bought our house in 1987, one of the first things we wanted to do was get a cat, so Beth went to the Animal Rescue League shelter one Saturday in August and found a brown tabby that she liked. She didn’t bring it home, though, because we needed to take some mail addressed to us to prove that we truly lived at our address. So we got our piece of mail and both went to the Animal Rescue League the next day. They also had a litter mate of Pelée’s but we didn’t get her out of fear that 2 cats would bother my allergies.

Pelée’s paperwork indicated that she was not litter trained. But we set up the litter box and she appeared to not have any problem using it. However, it turned out that although she did use the litter box, she was only partially litter trained. She would dig before using the box but it apparently never occurred to her to “cover it up” afterward.

Since I had cat allergies, it was decided that Pelée would sleep in the garage at night. The only problem with this was that our bedroom was directly over the garage and Pelée began a nonstop barrage of the most piteous meows imaginable. So…I relented and said that Pelée could sleep in the house at night. But NOT in the bedroom! This meant that the bedroom door needed to be kept closed. Well, the meows outside the bedroom door were louder than the ones that came from the garage, so, I once again relented and allowed the bedroom door to be opened. But she was NOT to sleep on the bed! I apparently didn’t know cats – Pelée ended up on the bed that night and most nights thereafter until the last couple years of her life.

You might wonder how Pelée got her name. Actually, we didn’t have a name for her for a while. Then we discovered that she liked to chase this little pink ball. She’d run around and bat it all over the place. So we named her Pelée after Pelé, the Brasilian soccer legend. Every so often we’d rediscover the ball behind the refrigerator or under the dryer or some other inaccessible place. One year we got her some ping-pong balls for Christmas, a present we all very much enjoyed.

Pelée was very much a people-oriented cat. She was not aloof at all and always wanted to be part of the action, to the extent we had anything qualifying as “action” at our house. If we were sitting on the sofa she’d be on one of our laps. If we were in the kitchen she’d be there helping out. And of course she’d be on the bed at night. It’s amazing how much of a bed one cat can occupy.

One of Pelée’s favorite spots was her scratching post. Not only did she actually use it to sharpen her claws, but it seemed to be her home base in the house. When we would take her with us on a trip, the scratching post came along. I built it with a big sturdy bottom, which was a good thing, since not only did she actively use it as a scratching post, but she would also sit at the top and box with us. The boxing sessions usually lasted until one of us (Beth or I, not Pelée) got a nasty deep scratch.

We liked to roughhouse with Pelée, which may have been a bad thing, because when our first child arrived and in curiosity tried to reach for her and play with her, he was often rewarded with “rake marks” on his head! With the arrival of our other three children, Pelée mellowed a bit. She generally tolerated the children, but had her limits and would let them know when they had crossed the line.

Pelée liked to spend a lot of time outside. At times she would wander across the road, but when it was bedtime she would usually come back when we whistled for her. She did do some hunting in her younger years, several times bringing back a half-dead mouse or bird. But this all changed one Sunday afternoon when we returned from church to find Pelée running across the yard bringing us a dead baby bluebird in her mouth. This was one of the baby bluebirds raised in Beth’s bluebird house. Thus Pelée’s proudest moment earned her the scolding of her life and a little bell on her collar. So much for the stealthy hunter. Plus, we could hear her coming when we whistled at night!

As she grew older, she still spent a lot of time outside, but didn’t wander so far. She had her favorite spots lying in front of the house in the sun and under one of the cars when it was rainy. Her fangs began to fall out, and she eventually lost them all. When she was 17, we got her a grey kitten to keep her company. Nebula, as the kitten was named, was definitely NOT Pelée’s favorite gift. Any attempt that Nebula would make to play with Pelée was met with a very nasty hiss, after which Nebula would usually beat a quick retreat.

In the last year of her life Pelée suffered a rather severe attack by a neighbor cat. In the course of having her treated, we discovered that she was suffering from chronic renal failure – her kidneys were not functioning properly. She recovered somewhat after her initial treatment but steadily declined after that. Pelée went to sleep for the last time on January 9, 2006.

We miss Pelée terribly but are grateful for the 18 years that she brightened our lives.