I had wanted a dog. A big dog. The kind that pull sleds over ice and snow in Alaskan wildernesses. I wanted a husky that could sub as a couch, something monstrous and soft and loving. But we were only in our second year of marriage and living in married student housing in college, and pets were definitely not allowed. Especially not the vision of plush canine wonder I was fantasizing about. As it drew closer to Valentine's Day, I thought what harm could it be if we smuggled in a kitten? A small one that we could hide? So with that wicked, rebellious plan, I decided to visit the local pound, and rescue a kitten. Again, what harm could come of it?
The pound in this particular red-neck college town was pretty bleak, it turned out. Stealthily side-stepping the dog wing of the pound, I found myself in a small room with a wall of cages. Most, thank goodness, were empty. But there was a cage with six mewling kittens, black and white, and adorable, as kittens inevitably are. Then there was a cage with a smallish, greasy gray cat that smelled decidedly of urine, and finally a cage with a mildly obese orange tabby that had a large "adopted" sign hand-scratched on a piece of paper attached to his cage door. As I wandered back towards the coveted cage full of kittens, the greasy gray reached its front leg at me, swiping at my arm as if to get my attention. It worked. I paused in front of its cage, trying to ignore the smell, while it purred and rubbed the bars of its cage with its head and body enticingly as though saying "please pet me." I pushed my fingertips in where this pathetic animal maneuvered to rub itself against them, a vain and desperate effort at getting affection from me. I glanced at the kittens, tumbling and playing, tugging on ears and chasing tails, all their cottonball glory, and then back to this thing that was probably sick and full of worms, but unmistakingly full of something else. Some kind of radiant warmth. And without permission, that creature looked me in the eyes and without any words at all said, "I was wondering when you would show up."
Well. I couldn't take this thing home. It wasn't the short-hair kitten that my husband had reluctantly agreed to. I walked to the desk where the lady in the pine green uniform sat scratching in paperwork.
"How long do you keep animals before they're destroyed?"
"We euthanize after 5 days from being brought in." She didn't look up.
"How long have the kittens been here?"
"They were brought in yesterday. They'll go fast. Kittens always do."
"What about that gray one? How long has it been in here?" Finally she looked up and sighed, as if I was asking her to something extraneous.
"I dunno. Three, maybe four days."
A kind of crunch happened in my heart. If it was on day four, then tomorrow was its last chance to get a home, and with a cage full of kittens next door, who would give that scrawny, smelly friendly one a second look?
I went home empty handed that afternoon, and my husband shrugged.
"It's your choice," he said. "Get the cat you want. As long as it's not a long-hair. And it won't sleep in our bed."
That next morning, the sunlight poured into the bedroom, a bright and chilly day at the end of February. Morgan. The German word for morning danced in my mind, and in the warm sunshine spilling over my blankets. I knew the cat I was meant to get.
The catch was the pound required renters had to provide permission from their landlord to adopt, and since ours most certainly would say no, we called on a friend whose landlords in fact allowed cats, and they feined to adopt in our place. When I returned my friend to point the cat out and pay for it, the animal had dramatically changed. It was in the back of the cage, limp and disconnected. The same cat, but entirely different. It had given up. When it saw me, it laid there watching me unblinking, and I felt a ping of regret. I felt I had lost it's love and affection overnight.
The pound didn't let me carry it home. They sent it to the local vet office and had it fixed, which is where I picked it up a day later, still doped up and dizzy from the procedure. It turned out to be a female, and Morgan seemed to be the perfect name for her.
I had bought the necessary items for being a cat owner, and feeling very pleased to bring it home to a full dish of water and food, and a shiny new litter box, I set out to immediately give her a good wash, as she was even greasier and smellier than I remembered. A bath was priority.
Without warning, and feeling very much as though I had gotten away with my cat-smuggling, scheming crime, something pushed me into the wall. It seemed that the wall was wobbling, and it felt, after it had passed, that something huge had hit our complex. Forgetting my new cat, I ran outside to tell what I imagined would be a campus truck driver backing into the corner of our house that he was in big trouble, and wondering what kind of damage I would see because of the impact when I got there. But there was no one there. No damage to the side of the house. Nothing. But as I looked, the house actually swayed one way, then the other, before slowly settling and stilling. Later I found out it was called the Rattle in Seattle, a 6.8 earthquake that we felt all the way in central Washington, but at the time, I was confused, and returned to find I had left my front door open and in the entry way was the greasy cat, sitting in the sunshine like her namesake, looking at me as if to say "you saved me from the pound only to let me die in an earthquake?" I looked at her apologetically. The door was open and she hadn't even crossed the threshold. She didn't bolt for freedom. For the second time in so many days, she had waited for me to come back.
I filled about 3 inches of warm water in the tub and carefully put her in. She looked at me with wide eyes as I poured water over, but purred loudly and let me lather her up, as if she knew it was for her own good. Smelling fresh and sweet, I wrapped her in a blue towel and snuggled with her on the sofa, her motor roaring against my chest like my grandma's gas stove. I loved that old gas stove. It was God-awful to look at, but it worked powerfully to warm up that drafty old shack, and had a hum that lulled me to sleep like magic. Morgan's purr, it turned out, was like that old gas stove, and with her spooned in the crook of my arm, we drifted off to sleep.
We woke up when my husband came back from school, eager to share his account of the rattle that interrupted his music class that morning, and ready to meet the cat that patted my shoulder in the pound.
Proudly, I unwrapped her, now warm and dry, and purring as ever, and to my horror, she had nearly tripled in size. How could I have missed her long, long hair when I washed it, I'll never know, but with the grease gone it was over four inches long and as thick and dense as wool. She even had long hair growing between her toes and ears. It was a positive shock, and my husband was not too keen on that, even though I adamantly told him it was not a long-hair when I picked it out. But she stepped across my lap and onto his, pushed her head into his hand and, as she had done with me the first time in the pound, demand affection from him.
"She's pretty friendly," my husband admitted after getting over the long hair mishap. "But she can't sleep in our bed," he reminded me. I nodded. Of course, I thought. Animals in bed with us? Yuck. And this cat with all it's hair was sure to be bad news. She followed us everywhere, to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the office, she just needed to be with us. That night, as we crawled in bed, she jumped up on our crisp white comforter from our wedding register, and promptly nestled between us, her low hum of a purr rolling all along, and after circling several times, she flopped down between us and began to make biscuits on my husband's shoulder. He pet her and she responded with a kiss on her knuckles. I gave him a one-shouldered shrug, and he sighed.
"Just for tonight. After this she needs to learn to sleep on the floor."
She slept with us for the ten years after that night, nestled between us. I would sing a silly chant as I carried her to bed with me, and she would spoon against me once we were snuggled under the covers, her gas oven purr lulling me to sleep like no other lullaby.
She slipped away June 1, 2001 on the floor of our living room in front of the doors with Andres and I flanking her, stroking her and whispering loving words to her. She wasn't just a cat. She was a soul in our family and there will never be another like her.
We cremated her and planted a spider plant for her in memory of her. I wrote more on her story at the blog "The Crooked Treehouse," and how we supported our grief from the loss of her. It's been four months and we're still missing her. We'll always miss her. There will always be a Morgan shaped hole in our family, in our hearts.
Morgan wasn't just a cat. She was family. She was love and tender comfort, a friend and grandma, a companion who knew before we did that we were meant to spend her life out together.
Sleep well, old girl. We will always love you.
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