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Love Pats
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Love Pats from the Ulitmate Cat Lover Book
It was the call I'd hoped would never come.
At 5:00 am, the phone rang. Rich, the man I was to marry, was at the
University of Pennsylvania Hospital waiting for a heart transplant,
and I was staying at a nearby hotel. Rich had recently had complications,
so this early-morning phone call could mean only one thing. He was gone.
I'd been divorced almost seven years when I met Rich, a burly policeman.
He'd had one heart attack years before and was not taking care of himself-he
loved beer and could eat a hoagie while waiting for the pizza to bake.
As a nurse I tried to encourage better habits, and for a while it seemed
to be working. But the damage had already been done.
One heart attack followed another. The policeman who once weighed 230
pounds was down to 160. But his eyes still lit up whenever he saw me,
and I hung on to that love.
When he finally became too weak to be at home, he was admitted to the
cardiac care unit and given intravenous medication just to keep his
heart working. There was only one option left: Rich would need a heart
transplant. I papered his hospital room wall with a poster of a tropical
isle-where we would honeymoon. We waited and waited. Then there were
complications, and the doctors said that he wouldn't survive surgery.
We would just have to wait until the complications cleared, and then
he'd have his new heart.
But he didn't get better. There would be no new heart for my Rich.
I don't remember driving home from Philadelphia. I do remember walking
into a house that echoed with emptiness. My daughter had left for college
just a week earlier. A month before, knowing I would need to be with
Rich during his frequent hospitalizations, I'd reluctantly found a good
home for my beloved dog. Four months before that, my elderly cat had
been put to sleep. Now I was completely alone.
For two weeks I was kept busy with the work and details that come with
someone's death. And suddenly that safety net of busyness was all over.
I went back to my job as a geriatric nurse, and every evening I came
home to an empty house.
I missed Rich dreadfully. I missed sitting on the sofa holding hands.
I missed holding him at night. And I especially missed cooking with
him. Most evenings, we'd made supper together, each of us leaning against
the counters of my old-fashioned kitchen, our hips sometimes bumping
while we chopped, diced, simmered, or stirred. Every so often, he would
reach down and pat my bottom and tell me that he loved me.
As time passed, instead of feeling better, I found that I was turning
inward, happier in my memories than in the real world.
'You need a cat,' my sister said
.
'You need a cat,' my daughter said.
'You need a cat,' my friend from work said, 'and there's a new litter
of kittens at my daughter's farm.'
I gave in and visited the farm. There were several yellow tiger-striped
kittens running around the living room. When I came in and sat on the
sofa, they scattered-all but one. That one ran across the room, bounded
onto my lap, and started to nuzzle my cheek.
'I guess I've been chosen,' I laughed. I think it was the first time
I'd laughed since Rich's death.
My daughter, whose favorite rock band at the time was Mötley Crüe,
wanted to name the new family member. That's how I started coming home
to a Mötley greeting every night.
Mötley grew into a long, sleek, purring companion who followed
me everywhere. He was playful and intelligent, letting me know whenever
his food dish was empty and patiently escorting me to the cupboard where
the cat food was stored. He curled up at the foot of my bed at night
and in my lap while I read. He'd sit on the windows and chitter at the
birds nesting under my porch roof. And when Ashley, a long-haired gray
puffball, joined our family, Mötley accepted her as though she
were his littermate.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper-chopping, dicing, simmering,
and stirring-I felt a familiar pat on my bottom. Startled, I automatically
turned, half expecting to see Rich. Instead I looked down and saw Mötley.
He was sitting on a chair near the kitchen counter, one paw still suspended
in the air. He had given me the pat! That yellow tabby stared at me
with such love and devotion . . . and then he jumped up to the windowsill
and started chittering at a bird outside.
I went back to fixing supper and wondered if someone had taught my Mötley
a trick-someone who didn't want me to forget.
That was many years ago. Mötley's gone now. So is his companion,
Ashley. But today my home includes Murray, Husker, and Miss Kitty. It's
Murray who delivers the pats now, to my cheek, my arm, and sometimes
to my bottom. It seems that someone still doesn't want me to forget.
As if I ever will.
Love Pats comes from the book The Ultimate Cat lover Book.
©2008. Mitzi Flyte. Suzanne Thomas Lawlor. All rights reserved.
Reprinted from The Ultimate Cat Lover by Marty Becker, D.V.M., Gina
Spadafori, Carol Kline, and Mikkel Becker. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield
Beach, FL 33442.
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