To Francie

As I settled into the chair to update the blog, I had to move our elderly cat, Francis. We believe Francis is about 18 years old. She has taken to sitting on the keyboard late at night -- I am not sure just why. It is my habit to go online late at night, and she is likely looking for some petting. Yet there she remains, on the keyboard, 'til early in the morning. As the keyboard emits no heat, I doubt that she is looking for a warm place to roost. The place she has forsaken in its place -- our bed -- is much warmer. Sometimes when I come back to the pc due to insomnia, say, about 3am, there she is -- hunkered down on the keyboard with all sorts of colorful windows displayed behind her, the result of this or that paw pressing on the various keys. Some nights, I remove the keyboard and stand it vertically on the floor. Other nights, I think, "Why not?" and leave it there to afford her one of the few pleasures she can still enjoy.

DS who is in Iraq (still!) brought her home in the jacket of his little glen plaid suit the year he was in 7th grade. He had visited church with his friend from school, and there was a litter of kittens at the church. It was a cold, gray, rainy Virginia day, raw as could be. As I opened the door to let him in, I exclaimed, "I didn't say you could have a cat!" Returning my glare, he said evenly, "You didn't say I couldn't." She had pneumonia, and could not eat. She was so tiny, and her eyes were still shut. We put her in a shoebox with his T-shirt and suspended a light bulb over it. We fed her baby formula from an eye dropper.

When her eyes opened, they were opaque white, like the Grandfather on the old Kung-fu TV show. Over the ensuing months, our patient vet tried mercuric oxide ointment, mercury drops, silver drops, steroids, sulfur drops, and antibiotics. Finally, her eyes cleared so that the sclera, the usually-clear coating over the eyeball, was a translucent greyish color. Her irises twitch and jiggle behind it, we guess in an eternal struggle to focus -- and yet, on a summer's afternoon, she can sit motionless on the bed and pinpoint a fly as he zooms around the room. She used to sit by the hour and watch the ceiling fan in its slow rotation, her head swiveling in imitation of its course.

When DS was about 14 or so, we were seated in our then-stylish Pit-type sofa, watching yet another episode of PeeWee Herman. Francis (or Francie, as we now call her,) walked tightrope-style along the backs of the adjoining couches. She approached the brass chain of a reading lamp that hung over the couch. Reached up with her paw and pulled the chain! ON came the light.
"Turn it off," DS and I said together. Looking at us in the eye, she reached up and pulled it once more. The light turned off.

DS and I stared at each other in perfect silence.

Now DS has three children of his own and is out of the country protecting us all. He'll be 30 years old next year. Francie, with all her idiosyncrosies, lives on. She eats well every day, weighs about 4.25 pounds. Eschews the company of our other cat as well as that of the dog. (Other cat weighs in at a whopping 14 pounds, dog at 8.5.)

"You know," I will sigh to DH, "Francie can't live forever. It's time for me to brace myself for her to go on."

"You've been saying that for ten years," DH laughs. "Keep bracing."