good­bye Lord Peter

It breaks my heart to write those words, because this week we lost a beloved mem­ber of our fam­i­ly, the majes­tic, artis­to­crat­ic Lord Peter Wim­sey of Balliol.

Of course it’s part of hav­ing pets as part of the fam­i­ly.  Once, many years ago when say­ing good­bye to beloved fos­ter kit­tens, I watched lit­tle Avery cry and asked her, “Are you sure it’s worth it, for you to be this sad?”  And she answered, “That’s how you know it’s worth it, when you’re this sad.”

The wis­dom of a small child was need­ed this week when we had to make the awful deci­sion to let our love­ly vet help Wim­sey out of the world.  He had been fail­ing for some days, refus­ing to eat, hiss­ing at his sis­ters, wan­der­ing the house look­ing uncom­fort­able and unhap­py.  We took him into the vet where he then spent four days in hos­pi­tal, while the whole of the staff tried to piece togeth­er what was wrong.  Final­ly he came home for the weekend.

We knew when we brought him home that it was prob­a­bly for the last time.  He was thin, weak, unable to eat.

But the love­ly thing was, he had one last wan­der around his beloved gar­den, sniff­ing for signs of vis­i­tor cats, walk­ing as he often did right through the plant­i­ngs of peren­ni­al bulbs, which had raised their heads ear­li­er this month.  That night, he slept behind a chair, and Avery brought him a sweater to sleep on.  “He looked cold.”

And that was that.  The vet asked us to bring him back on Mon­day for anoth­er scan, and there the cause of his dis­tress became clear; sev­er­al spots of can­cer.  It was the end.

We all said good­bye to him that evening.  He stood next to each of us, on the vet’s table, press­ing his face into our chests one by one.  We mur­mured how much we loved him, feel­ing his bones too promi­nent.  And then I stayed while the vet took the dif­fi­cult action that is the kind­est thing we can do for our beloved pets.  After­ward, the vet said, “It was the right thing to do.  I know that does­n’t make it any eas­i­er.”  “Yes, it does,” I said.  Then I sat in the dark church­yard across the road and cried.  There was one can­dle alight in the win­dow of the ancient, 13th cen­tu­ry chapel, which com­fort­ed me obscurely.

All week we’ve been remem­ber­ing the fun­ny ways he had.  The first month or so that we had him, as a tiny shel­ter kit­ten, when we drove him to vis­it our friends Livia and Jan­ice in New Jer­sey for the Fourth of July.  My, it was hot!  He lay on his back on their cre­tonne-cov­ered sofa, with his pink kit­ten mouth slight­ly open, pant­i­ng in the heat; they had no air-con­di­tion­ing.  Final­ly in des­per­a­tion, John drove him all the way back into the city to deposit him in our cool apart­ment, then drove back to spend the rest of the hol­i­day with us.  It was only in the weeks and months to come that we realised he always breathed with his lit­tle mouth slight­ly open.  This inci­dent gave rise to one of his many nick­names, “Lord Peter Flimsey.”

Every East­er, he con­sent­ed to have the per­fect white tip of his tail dipped in the very bright­est of the egg dyes, and Avery delight­ed in kiss­ing his white fore­head with bright red lip­stick, leav­ing a lin­ger­ing pink kiss for some days.

He was our only boy, ever.  His sis­ters treat­ed him with great respect, love and long­ing, and occa­sion­al­ly he con­de­scend­ed to give a bath to one of them, or share a chair.  The two tab­bies could often be seen together.

He was the absolute apple of Keechie’s eye and she spent most of her life try­ing to get his atten­tion.  How thrilled she was when she had success.

He was the absolute king of the night­ly treat of awful wet food, lead­ing the pack of cats churn­ing into the kitchen every time John moved a mus­cle, in the hour or so lead­ing up to the mag­i­cal 6 o’clock, wail­ing furi­ous­ly all the while.  All that excite­ment every day, for about 90 sec­onds of happiness.

Lit­tle Avery, who was five years old when he came to us, used to stroke his fur in one direc­tion and say, “More stripes,” then stroke in the oth­er direc­tion for “More white.”  He strolled with author­i­ty through our enor­mous New York loft, like a fur­ry land­lord sur­vey­ing his prop­er­ty.  He moved brave­ly with us to Lon­don, and from the first house to four more.

In each house he set about find­ing the cosiest places to sleep, the best win­dow from which to watch leaves or snow fall (which he chased with his eyes).

Even unwell, in his last weeks, he could make us smile.  I had set a plate out on the counter con­tain­ing a left­over pork chop and a few roast­ed beets.  I turned my back (nev­er do that).  The next thing I knew, Wim­sey had abscond­ed with a chunk of beet, desir­able for its prox­im­i­ty to the pork chop.  He dashed about the kitchen with the beet in his mouth, pur­sued by me and Avery.  “Release the beet!  Release the beet!”  we cried, as he ran past us, drop­ping the beet here, then there.  Oh the greed­i­ness of a tabby!

He was only twelve years old, real­ly much too soon to say goodbye.

We are mud­dling through with the oth­er three, who are respond­ing rather bemus­ed­ly, being rather more affec­tion­ate than usu­al.  We all miss him, his affec­tion, his rather bumbly per­son­al­i­ty, his love.  Our fam­i­ly is less with­out him.  Rest in peace, dear Lord Peter.