How do you say goodbye to someone who's shared your life for over 10 years? Who's been with you through good times and bad...through 2 moves, 3 jobs, marriage, accidents, the deaths of a family member and friends, through an earthquake and El Nino, who only offered unconditional love and the pleasure of being able to share her life with yours. In the end, when cancer had ravaged her to just a shadow of what she was, all I could offer her was an endless sleep. If there is a kitty heaven, I hope to see her there again some day.

Goodbye, Mao.

My Mao

Sometime in 1984 - June 28, 2001

In memory of the cat we simply knew as "meow".

Ling Chow Ping, as she was then known, had belonged to some old lady whose name we never knew, who had passed on. Riverside was about a hundred miles away, and both Roz & Tracy still remember the return trip, with the 5 year old cat howling the whole way and shed flying everywhere throughout the car.

For two days afterwards, the as yet unrenamed cat hid in the bathroom of the small decrepit two bedroom apartment called "Starlight Gardens" where three Cal Arts students lived.

Roz and I had only just met, I got to know her and Mao at the same time.

A big cat at 17 pounds, she was a fat cat throughout most of her life. Roz would return from work to find her sitting in the window and would always meow loud and vigorously when when she would return home.

Five months later Roz rescued a black and white kitten from the street. Mao adapted to Charlie faster than she adapted to Starlight Gardens.

This happened as one of the many turbulent times in my life was going on. My job at the Special Forces unit in Los Alamitos was ending and I had to take a job 40 miles away in downtown LA at a hell on earth called 311 COSCOM that I would be condemned to spend the next full decade. My night job, as those of you who knew me then will remember, was working as the Security supervisor at Oakwood Apartments in Huntington Beach. A beautiful 1200 square foot apartment came as part of the deal - Rowrbrazzle 24, 25 and 26 were collated there.

But the commute took it's toll, the new civil service job would not let me modify the hours I worked, and I had to get up at 5 AM to get to it. As soon as I got home I had to change clothes and do the other job, getting off at 1:30 in the morning.

Simple math will tell you I didn't get enough sleep, both jobs suffered and Oakwood let me go a few months later. I lost the apartment as a result. For awhile I tried to live in my office, that didn't last long either. Fortunately at that point Tracy Kazaleh got married, and Roz and the other roommate, Jody Kooistra, moved to a larger much better apartment at Lakeshore, a few miles away. Charlie and Mao came too. Eventually I moved in as well.

We lived there for about eight years. It was far enough off the road that the cats could go out and wander around without supervision, until one night Mao got lost. We didn't have any good pictures, so Roz drew up a flyer to distribute around to try and find Mao. Fortunately she returned the next morning. We never let her out at night again as long as we lived there

This was about the time I started to realize that Mao had become my cat.

She had a number of odd habits, developed during the time before we knew her. This included an odd preoccupation with water. She would rush into the bathroom whenever she heard water running. She would insist on being in the bathroom when Roz took showers, meowing loudly the whole time. She used to dig at the water dish before she drank. We never figured that one out.

Sometimes she would stare at you for several minutes, only to make an "url" sound and run away.

Noah Miller lived near us in those days. He would wave his arms and make noises to make Mao run away. He never actually caused her any harm and eventually she lost her fear of him. He also grew fond of Mao, doing a picture of her that today hangs in the center of the art gallery in our hallway.

Once Terrie Smith came to visit - and we were all surprised when Mao immediately took to her. Terrie did a drawing while she was there in the infamous "Jack Salem" book, the only one in it where jack looks friendly. Entitled "Everybody Loves Mao". She is sitting on his knee with a mutually loving expression.

Everybody DID love Mao.

She was there for me in the aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake. I had received an injury during the quake that caused me great pain whenever I moved, and the hospital was full up with more serious injuries. Roz & Jody slept in their cars that night, but I stayed in the demolished apartment with a sleeping bag pulled over me for warmth.

Mao made a "nest" in it. I was the perfect kitty bed because I couldn't move.

Three times during the night there were aftershocks that frightened her - but within a quarter of an hour she came back to keep me company. From that day on Mao was my cat.

In 1994 Roz & I got married. These two photographs are from the same year.

Less than a year later I was run down on my motorcycle by a 22-year-old security guard late for work. Both my arms were broken, my left pretty much shattered. After a lifetime of military service, skydiving and other things, and never getting a serious injury, I was now incapacitated and had to stay at home for three months while everything healed. Mao was with me through a lot of lonely hours.

A little over a year later I had to go back to the hospital for corrective surgery on that left arm. Laid up again, Mao saw me through that too.

The money I got from that crash (Fortunately the 22 year old was driving daddy's car, and daddy had insurance) bough us our current house on Alicante drive. Finally we had a fenced in yard, and once again Mao could go out whenever she wanted, even at night. She liked to sit by the gate, sniff the patch of catnip that grew in the back yard, and decided a beat up old white plastic bucket that we had used to change the fish tank water was the only source of water she would drink.

We never let her outside the yard unattended for fear she would wander off and be lost - so I would often take her for walks, with her wandering up and down our side of the street sniffing things. Sometimes she would go too far up the street. The way I wouldlet her know she was doing this was to callafter her "Goodbye Mao!" and stop following her. She would turn around and come back.

The years after we moved into the house were turbulent as well, culminating in the loss of my job in February of 2000. By that time Roz had received a big raise, and I decided to go back to school to get a job doing computer networking and administration for a lot more money than the Army had been paying me to do it.

I did so by means of an online university - meaning I was now home ALL the time. Jody had long since moved out, Roz worked long hours, and my only companion for the most part of the day was my cat Mao. She used to sit on my lap as I worked on computer stuff. Not lie down and sleep, but just sit there and be with me. She would want to go out to her drinking bucket and sleep in the yard as well, but would always let me know when she wanted to come in by banging the screen door against the house.

I don't remember how she learned that this would bring people - but the sound was audible both in the hose and in the garage, and let me know it was time to let her in. We used to refer to it as "Mao going bang"

Mao's companionship was more comforting than I knew at the time. She was with me more than anyone else - certainly my own wife who I only saw for about four hours on a given weekday.

I don't remember why, but a few months after I lost my job later I decided that Mao meant enough to me to start taking her to a better veterinarian. She had always gotten regular visits, but I wanted her to have the best care available - certainly better than what I was giving myself. We had a place in town simply called "The Cat Doctor". and I took her there to see Dr. Tracy McFarland, one of three resident doctors who only worked on cats.

Within the first few minutes of the first visit, She found what the other doctor (and I use the term loosely) had not - that Mao had cancer. As fate would have it, it was the same kind of cancer McMurry had - and it was diagnosed at about the same time.

From then until April of this year, Mao went to see Dr. McFarland every month for cortisone shot and her special food. Already too old (16 now) to be operated on, all we could do is try and slow it down.

And we did. She even gained weight at one point - but usually she lost a few ounces from one visit to the next.

Never a very active cat, Mao was yet strong, and had started out heavy at 17 pounds. By April she was down to 9 - but otherwise looked OK, if thin. And still she sat with me when I studied, slept wit me when I fell asleep in front of the TV, and was sleeping on her towel on the kitchen table (which we could never fully use as a result) every morning. She would always get up with a stretch and greet me, and she would get her breakfast while I went to the local Starbucks for my coffee. Then I would take her for a sniffing walk up and down the street, she would during from her plastic bucket and go back inside by the time Roz got up to go to work.

Then she would sit with me for my studies, and sleep with me in the afternoon when it would get too hot to work on the computers, located in the garage because I needed 6 of them to practice networking and there was no room in the house for it all. We live in the desert, and by noon it would be 90 and rising out there. So I would come inside for a siesta and wait for it to cool back down in the evening so I could go back to work.

In April, Mao's appetite suddenly tripled. She was fighting to stay ahead of the cancer, but by now she was a wisp of her former self. Most of her markings, even her basic color, had faded away to a flat pale grey, as you can see in these last two pictures taken earlier this month

Then a little over a week ago her appetite dropped to almost nothing. She lost 15% of what was left of her body weight in that last week, the cancer had progressed to the point where she could not eat enough to stay alive, and she was starving.

On her last visit to Dr. McFarland, she had been so weak and tired that she didn't make a sound the whole way there and back, which had never been the case before. The doctor told me it was time to say goodbye.

Dr. McFarland did what most doctors will not even think about doing these days - and made a house call. Mao needed to be with us - and home.

Tracy Kazaleh, who had been there to bring Mao into our lives, needed to be there at the end - and I needed someone to be there for Roz as well. I didn't want her to be there for the actual event, and I didn't want her to be alone either.

Mao went quietly to sleep in my arms. I cried for the first time in over 20 years.

She left with Dr. McFarland

We will get her ashes back next week.

I'm typing this in the middle of Yosemite National Park. All around me is beauty and I can't appreciate any of it. We are up here to attend the wedding of Brian Reynolds and Tracy Wagner the day after tomorrow - it's the first van camping trip Roz and I have gone on since I lost my job, I should be enjoying myself and I'm miserable. All I can think about is Monday when Roz goes to work and I'll be in that house we picked out specifically because it was good for cats - and for the first time really be alone in it.

Roz's cat Charlie will be there, but we avoid each other. He's like a piece of furniture to me, and he hides during the day. I just have to make absolutely sure to keep the front screen door latched. If I let the wind blow it against the house I'm going to cry again.

Goodbye Mao.....