by Wendy Ledger

Lately I’ve been thinking about my cat and her age. I’m not sure how old she actually is. Back in the early 90’s, right after the Oakland fires, Pumpkin showed up at the doorstep and I took her in. The vet estimated that she was two years old then. He also thought she was pregnant. It turned out that her stomach was just bloated from the poor diet of street living. But if that vet was right about her age, Pumpkin should now be 14.

Most of the time, I don’t think about her aging. I see her every day. How different could she be? But I took her into the vet last week to get her annual check-up. It was a discouraging visit, a lecture filled time where the vet told me to comb her more, put her on a diet, get her nails clipped more often, and bring her in to get her teeth cleaned soon. So, I bought the diet food. The vet gave me a free measuring cup so I could dole out the correct amount each day. And I remembered past struggles with diets—how she would eat the regulated amount by 10 in the morning and then camp out by the dish with an anguished look on her face until I would just surrender and give her more food.

This time though, it was different. For one thing, her food dish isn’t in the same place. I moved it a month ago when I noticed she was hesitating more before she jumped places. She didn’t seem to be experiencing any physical difficulty yet, she just eyed it more and thought about it before making her move. So, now her dish was on the floor, and after a period of adjustment, she had grown accustomed to that change. She still jumps to the old food place while I’m preparing her meal, but she doesn’t sit there any longer and mourn when I place her food on the floor.

So, I measured out her food and prepared to steel myself for the demands to follow. None came. My cat seemed perfectly happy with the amount of food I offered her. In fact, there was often some left the following morning.

It made me think of other changes. Back when my cat was young, she couldn’t sleep in the morning. By 5:30, she would want me up, and she would be aggressive in her approach—meowing in my ear, jumping over my head, butting me with hers, biting a finger in a somewhat playful manner. The only way I could deter her at all was to roll over and face the right wall. My cat has always considered the left side of the bed her territory, but when she was young, she would never venture over to the right top quadrant.

Now, my cat is mildly happy when I wake up at an early hour, but it doesn’t really matter that much to her. She’ll let me sleep as late as I want. And although she still considers the left top quadrant of the bed her territory, she will now venture over the right side of the bed at times.

Back when my cat was young, she had a routine when I sat down to play the piano. She would give me a filthy look, then sashay in a slow and deliberate manner to the front door where she would then proceed to howl. That’s when I discovered cat videos. Before I began to play, I would pop one in the VCR, and she would watch footage of birds and squirrels and rodents. Sometimes they would be recorded with their natural sounds, sometimes there’d be jazzy music behind the images. She would be riveted to the screen. She would jump up and tap the screen with her paws to try to get whatever creature was currently featured.

But I haven’t gotten out those videos in several years now. If I play piano, she doesn’t have a big reaction any more. She still enjoys certain television shows though. She likes anything with horses—westerns and period pieces will capture her attention. She also will watch baseball, most likely because of the action and also because she’s seen so much of it over the years.

And she used to have this gold string that she adored. She would sit by this string and stare at you. It would be hard not to know what she wanted. The problem was that she always wanted to play with that gold string. She would sleep on top of that gold string, so when she woke up, she would be ready to play again.

The gold string is long gone. It finally got too frayed, and I threw it out quickly when she wasn’t looking. But it wouldn’t matter now if it was here. She still likes to play, sometimes once a day, but now it’s a wish more than a demand.

Sometimes I wish I had recorded the changes. I imagine them all to be gradual processes—an inch this way one year, another the next, and then five years pass, and she is vastly different in some way. And now that the change has occurred, I can look at her and think, “How did that happen?”

She’s always been wonderful, now she’s very easy to be around. But some days, I do miss that younger self, the brat, the princess, the small creature with the high demands who would prance around and squawk and know she could get away with it, because she was so loved.