intimate worlds. My cat Uma, companion for 16 years of my joys and tears, is dying

Since I found out, I've become a novelty-telling machine. I participate to my relatives, friends, neighbors; I write it on social networks and, now, even in the newspaper. My cat is dying. So simple and brutal.

I take photos of the cat, many photos, and I record it in videos, also many; I am putting together a kind of digital memorabilia in a folder to treasure it, to make it eternal. It is the way – not very original, I know – that I found to assume the inevitable.

My cat is dying, my cat is dying. Perhaps from repeating it so much as if it were a spell, I get used to the dystopia of the imminent because the absence of my cat will turn, I know, my universe into a slightly sad place.

But enough of talking about me, today I want to talk about her, I want to tell her story, her biography. The biography of a cat, why not?

Her name is Uma and she is 16 years old. She came into our lives in September 2002 as a gift.

"I went to a vet, I was in a little cage and I couldn't resist," said my mom as soon as I opened the door of my house. She had the mischievous smile of someone who has just committed a mischief and she was holding a cardboard box with both hands. She walked to the center of the living room and placed the box on the table. Before she opened it, I already knew what was inside: I have the gift of perceiving cats.

The recipient of the present was my daughter who had just turned three. My mother, playing the role of grandmother, never asked me if I wanted to take care of a cat, but, ultimately, it was she who raised me within the framework of devotion to felines; so nothing could go wrong. And it didn't fail.

I still remember my daughter's cries of happiness and nervous jumping around the table. She was dying to get it out of the box, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It dawned on me that she had never had a cat, and I was silently grateful that my mother was there to fix the mistake; I always considered that not having a cat is a mistake that, luckily, can be corrected. And that's what we were on that September 14.

The moment when she finally picked the cat up was magical. At that time, my daughter, she had a custom: she used a plastic headband every day from which two wires came out with a silver star on each end; the sun came through the window and hit the stars, the reflection was projected on the walls and on the wood floor. She twirled and twirled, surrounded by lights, as she hugged a small, chubby ball of fur. The bright welcome that Uma deserved.

In truth, the cat's first name was Rosa. Those were the days when my daughter loved the color pink; everything had to be pink: the clothes, the shoes, the buckles and the cat. I don't remember where the name Uma came from, but I do know that her full name is Uma Rosa.

My daughter was growing up, the passion for pink vanished and with the passion, the second name of the cat. She finally had Uma, Umita or Uma Thurman, in honor of the protagonist of Kill Bill.

Kitten of infinite patience, she let herself be walked in a doll's pram, camouflaged in a basket full of stuffed animals, ate dulce de leche stolen from other people's toast and even, one day, I found her with her entire nose painted with red lipstick, it was in the time when my daughter played makeup artist.

Little by little, she became a beautiful, hypnotic cat. She learned by herself to look for her spaces of peace in a dividing wall to which she reached by jumping from the balcony, more than once she made my heart stop seeing the maneuver.

When we brought Chuki, a kitten as ugly as it is adorable, Uma stopped being an “only child”; after a couple of days of fierce anger, she did not hesitate to assume the role of her mother: she took her for a walk around the house, she taught her to bite with just the right pressure so as not to hurt and she breastfed her with her nipples non-existent milk. And so they grew up together.

The seventh year itch came with bad news. A string of balls on her belly stood out. It was impossible to caress her without touching her lumps.

The veterinary diagnosis was lapidary: Uma had breast cancer. After the bucket of cold water, the options appeared. One of them was to operate on her, remove the tumors, and pray they wouldn't come back. The intervention was bloody and, above all, she had a very painful post-op.

“I don't want him to suffer”, was the first thing I thought and the only thing I said. Maybe it was my face, my wet eyes, or the certainty in my voice, I don't know, but I went home with a second option: chemotherapy.

I was quite impressed by the question, until then I did not know that animals could be subjected to procedures similar to those of humans. I felt a little guilty, I thought about the number of people fighting cancer and me worried about a cat. But it was my cat and sadness was inevitable.

The feline oncologist – yes, feline oncologist – cleared up the contradictions that were stuck in my throat. She told me that her mother had been a cancer patient and that science, doctors and veterinarians were there to save lives. She also told me that people and animals were not comparable, that everything circulated on different lanes and that it was up to us – she said and pointed to Uma – to circulate along the lane of trying everything to save the cat's life.

She didn't actually say anything I didn't already know, but listening to her with such firmness and conviction put me at ease. And right there we started down the road.

Once every two weeks, he would put Uma in her red kennel. Wednesdays at 19 was the appointment. They gave her a tranquilizer and put a cannula in her leg. For an hour they gave him the oncological medication; a red liquid that she bought in a pharmacy in Palermo, in front of a square.

Far from what one imagines from ignorance, the reaction to chemo was excellent. The cat was active again, jumping and eating a lot.

After the sixth session the lumps had disappeared. For several months there were controls, blood tests and plates of all kinds. Uma Thurman, more black mamba than ever, had won the battle.

The afternoons in the sun returned, the walks along the party wall, several moves, the extra pounds after castrating her and the arrival of a third cat that revolutionized the nucleus between Uma and Chuki. The new one met an older Uma with less patience, but no one doubted that “the old one” – that's what we started calling her – was the leader of the pack.

Nobody doubts, either, a question that was always obvious: Uma is my cat. Or rather: I am her human. Those of us who know about cats are very clear about this difference. Cats choose us, never but never the other way around.

She follows me like a puppy, she stands on two legs to ask me to pick her up, she just purrs in my arms and knows better than anyone the exact hole in my chest where her body fits as if it were made to measure. I think so: Uma and I are made to measure.

Pinned to Wiki for Blind on @Pinterest: How To add blocked extensions in google chrome https://t.co/XHUI9zDpJQ

— Wiki for Blind Sun Sep 25 05:20:14 +0000 2016

In 16 years, countless things happen in people's lives, and I'm sure that feline sensitivity goes through them, many times more at the same time as many humans.

In each new house, it was Uma who set the tone for the moves: she arrived, smelled everything and approved as soon as she snuggled up in an armchair. Cats are home and she was always there.

She licked away my salty tears every time she locked me in the bathroom to cry over my dad's death; when I broke her leg, she spent 60 days leaning on the exact place of pain, neither above nor below: at the exact point where my knee had shattered; she lay down for hours glued to my computer while I typed, possessed, my novels; sun lounger summers; winters of armchairs and blankets; hundreds of shared yogurts – from the same spoon, yes – and liters of leftover soup. Uma loves soup because cats know how to be happy and there is nothing happier than a good soup.

A few months ago everything began to change: the old woman is very old and, over the years, her kidneys began to fail.

Her shiny, fluffy fur turned into a dull, parted hair; the curious look, in little eyes with drooping eyelids; Her fluffy body is now a set of bones with a fur coat that is too big for her.

And again a diagnosis of chaos: chronic nephritis grade three –almost four–.

I will never know if my cat understands that she is dying, but I spend hours imagining how she sees death, if she sees it, and I even think that cats do not die.

The other day I read on the internet a letter written by Ernest Montague, a man whose old dog had died. The author explained that dogs do not die, because they do not know how to die. They get tired, they get old, they take longer naps and their bones ache, but they don't die. He says, Montague, that dogs go to live in the hearts of their owners and that when one misses them and cries, in reality, it is the dog that woke up from a nap and wags its tail in the middle of the chest of those who loved them. . He ends the text by saying: “Don't be fooled, they are not dead. There is no such thing. They are sleeping in your heart and usually wake up when you don't expect it. I'm sorry if you don't have dogs sleeping in your heart. You have missed so much.” The letter speaks of dogs, but I choose to believe that the spell also works for people who are "from cats".

It relieves me a little to think that Uma will not only live in my memories, in the memory of the cell phone or in the posts on social networks; her heart is a great place for her abode to be made.

But my cat is dying.

She now it's my turn to accompany you, friend. It's my turn.

I go down the stairs by your side, step by step, slowly; we stay a few seconds at the break, take a breath and return to the last stretch. Well, you did it, we did it.

Your favorite chair is still in the same place, next to the window, the sun continues to cover it every morning; I already know that she was too high for your current possibilities, I see you look at her with desire, but your weak muscles no longer resist the jump. Here I am, calm down, I pick you up so you can snuggle up like always, as if you were still little.

I also throw myself on the floor, with my belly glued to the floor, to give you in your mouth and little pieces of wet food or a cup of water with ice cubes – as you like it – and I hope you drink counting each lick. One two Three. One more, come on, your kidneys need water.

I'm your accomplice when we cheat the vet a bit and she lets you lick a little bit of that cream cheese you like so much off my finger.

And every night she accommodates you on my pillow to sleep head to head: you listen to my breathing, I listen to yours.

My cat is dying, my cat is dying. And meanwhile I play the rituals and decided that I'm going to bury you under the tree in the garden. And I'm going to put those little purple flowers, do you remember? The ones you chewed every summer, but this time I'm not going to get mad. Not anymore.

The end draws near and I find myself thinking of that heaven I don't believe in. The sky that we mortals use as consolation. And I am clear that my heaven will only be a paradise if, when I have to arrive, my cat is waiting for me. Fat, fluffy, like that time, turning among the brightness of the stars.

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Update: hours after the publication of this note, Uma finally died this Saturday. This was confirmed by the journalist on her social networks.

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Florencia Etchevés is a journalist and writer. One day she said enough, she left the host of one of the TN newscasts to dedicate herself to writing. During the time that she stole from the TV cameras, she published three novels edited by Editorial Planeta: "The virgin in your eyes", "The daughter of the champion" and "Cornelia". The latter was adapted to the cinema with the title "Lost" and can currently be seen on Netflix. Her fourth novel will be released in October, the month that the author has as a cabal when it comes to publishing an editorial work. Florencia is working on two fiction projects for television. For her, the perfect places should have a sea to swim in and lots of cats to pet. Her hobby is drawing, she does it poorly, very poorly, but she believes that true freedom lies in her lack of talent with pencils and watercolors.

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