Mourning my Queen Taffy

I still remember what was to be Taffy’s last weekend in the third week of January. They were brutally cold days with the kind of wind chill for which Chicago is famous. I had just arrived home on a late Friday afternoon, feeling happy after meeting up with some old friends. On the way home, I picked up some roast chicken which I enjoyed–and which Taffy did too. So imagine my shock as she sniffed and nibbled a bit without finishing the slivers I had given her. I decided to whip out her favorite Friskies liver pate, but again, she sniffed, nibbled, and walked away. This was very odd behavior since I had never seen her do that, at least not since the time her breast tumors had been discovered.

I also noticed that she was more affectionate than usual, following me about and even sitting beside me at the piano. How could she be ill? Yet, she kept refusing food.

Cancer

On Monday morning, I called the vet which promptly picked her up and whisked her off to their office. Several hours later, the vet called to say that X-rays revealed sizable masses in her breasts. It was then I realized why she had been lying on her back the last month or so even if she acted otherwise normally: the masses had probably become too uncomfortable for her. No, the masses were not operable, the vet stated matter-of-factly. They were too large and had made their way to her lungs. The only solution was euthanization. “You can see her tomorrow as we’re closing now,” she added.

Crushed and shocked, I sat immobile for at least half an hour. This was the third time in my life that I had experienced death: the first was some years ago when my paternal grandfather whom I didn’t know all that well and didn’t care for. (My mother had asked me then why I wasn’t upset and I merely shrugged my shoulders.) The second was a friend who died suddenly last year in a car accident the evening following her graduation from our college.

But this impending loss felt devastating — because Taffy was special in a way that family members are. After all, she had lived with me for the last 12 and a half years. I had seen her blossom from kitten to a mature adult cat. It’s almost as if we grew up together even if I was already 15 when I adopted her. I broke down as I thought she’s way too young to die! She’s only the equivalent of a 60-some-year old person! Everyone else I knew seemed to have cats that lived up to 15, 17, even 20 years. Why meeeee? When I have already suffered so much last year with the loss of that friend and a break-up with someone whom I dated for some 5 years? I called a friend nearby to see if she could stay with me the following night because I knew how lonely I would feel.””

“The Long and Winding Road”

After a sleepless night, I took the bus to the vet’s, trying to restrain my tears. I thought I had made it safely–but as soon as I arrived, the radio started playing “The Long and Winding Road.” I lost it right there, blubbering uncontrollably. When the vet tech led me to the back, I couldn’t help but notice how regal Taffy looked in her cage among all the other cats with her long, shaggy winter coat which still looked lustrous despite her cancer. What a magnificent girl, my little queen. As the tech took her out of the cage, I savored my last ten minutes, holding her in my arms one last time, and stroking her long, silky fur over and over as I apologized. “Taffy, I am so, so sorry. You are my everything. You eased my pressures in high school. And how I loved having you back again when I returned home from college. You were my only source of comfort last year. You were always here for me.”

As I headed home, I was thankful that my friend would arrive in a few hours after work. I sat disconsolate, playing Mozart’s Requiem while staring out the window at the NBC building. (Didn’t the sky look like that when we gave up Suzy? Except it wasn’t as frigid.)

But even my friend’s conversation did not dampen the chill. All I could think was that the last time she was here — only a month ago — Taffy was sitting between us on the sofa.

And yet, to this day, I still cherish my friend for trying her best to comfort me when I broke down late that night in my bedroom after telling the experience to my parents who were in Taiwan: she must have heard my muffled sobs from the bathroom. (Why is it always at night that I feel worse?) I felt like a 5-year-old all over again as she held and hugged me the way my mother did when we lost Suzy.

Aftermath

The first few weeks without Taffy were difficult–perhaps not as wrenching as those first few days, but distinctly melancholy: everything felt a little darker, dimmer, and quieter when I arrived home from classes in the evenings. Overcast days felt especially daunting. There was no Taffy to feed and follow me around the living room. No Taffy settling in her fuzzy camel-colored bed which I placed by my desk. (All I had to do was bend down to pet her during my occasional breaks from the typewriter.) And now her bed was taunting me with its emptiness.

My own bed felt emptier too. How comforting it was to have her climbing onto my bed after my shower, so she could lie by my side, purring away as I turned out the lights. And now there was nothing. In those first few weeks, I felt I had no choice but to sleep on the futon in the living room as the loneliness in my bedroom felt overwhelming.

It was then that I experienced a strange incident. Suddenly, a music canister started to play “Edelweiss” by itself in the middle of the night–one of the saddest songs I know. It was the first and only time I had ever heard it pipe up by itself. Was it Taffy telling me she was still “here?” Was she trying to comfort me? This possibility didn’t frighten me, but rather prompted another stream of tears. How I wish it could be her. Even if I knew she could only exist in spirit form, I would feel happy. (As I write this, my sense of the absurd triggers thoughts of Pet Semetary…)

This grief only began to dissipate some three months later when my mother paid me a visit from Taiwan. But even then, I had an occasional burst of tears–like the time I saw a picture of a cat in a magazine that bore a strong resemblance to Taffy. Or the time the radio played “The Long and Winding Road” — which I hadn’t heard since that fatal afternoon.

As I write this many years and three cats later, I fully understand why it took so long for my grief to subside even if there were times then when I wondered if it was “excessive.” She was the first cat I had truly bonded with. From high school to college — and three presidents — I found myself admiring her beauty, intelligence, and sass while she silently witnessed many of my ups and downs. (Even if she probably didn’t understand them.) Of course, the fact that some even gleaned a character resemblance between us made me feel that she was such a part of my identity too. So how could I not feel that I had lost a part of myself? And not least, I felt responsible for her early death by spaying her so late in her life.

It was as such that I waited over a year before searching for another cat–even when I felt sorely tempted by a friend who told me that spring that one of his acquaintances had a new litter of blue Persians. I thought to myself, I don’t want a Persian. I want another cat just like Taffy: a brown, longhaired torbie or tabby. And a Maine Coon or a Norwegian Forest cat if pedigreed. So I combed the local animal shelter on a weekly basis to find another Taffy.

However, as you will see in my next post, fate had other plans.

© Frances A. Chiu, June 2023. All rights reserved.

For Part 1 of the Taffy saga, see: