Chas: a biography

Okay. I haven’t blogged in ages. I have felt my next blog needed to be about Chas and, frankly, I just wasn’t ready to do it until now. Yes, I could have written about anything else but him. But in my mind if I couldn’t write about something so important than I didn’t have a right to write about anything else at all. Yes, I would make a hell of a self-flogging monk. Here goes . . .

Chas was my cat. He and I shared 15 ½ years together – the longest relationship I have had with a man thus far! Chas’ stats:

Full Name: Fulinum Sir Charles
Birthday: February 15, 1992
Breed: Himalayan
Color: Seal-Point
Eyes: Blue
Died: October 18, 2007

Up until Chas I was a self proclaimed “dog person.” My conversion to being a “cat person” began in the winter of 1992. I had, at the age of 25, moved out of my mother’s house into my first apartment on S. Charles Street. One day, about a month after I had moved, I was sitting around the conference table at the place I worked at the time having lunch with some of my co-workers. Someone asked me how I found living on my own to be and I replied it was great but a little lonely. Someone suggested a cat. I immediately hopped on my “I’m a dog person” soapbox and emphatically declared that I didn’t like cats. When I was asked why I said, “Cats only like their owners.” Carol, my sage boss at the time, simply said, “And who would be the cat’s owner?” (Thank you, Carol.)

A week later, as I was getting my necessary fix of cosmetics at my favorite Merle Norman Studio, the subject of my recent move came up (yes, I was in there enough that they knew my life story). I mentioned I was considering a cat and one of the girls started gushing about Himalayan cats being the best, most beautiful cats ever. I said, “a hima-what?”

The next day I was browsing the Sunday paper pet sales and saw an ad for Himalayan kittens. This was pre-Internet days and I had no idea what one of them looked like so I called and went to Hanover to ‘just take a look.’

I was greeted at the door of the Freemans’ house by not cats, but a big ol’ Doberman named Dobie. Once inside I found kittens what seemed like everywhere (there were only five of them). Mrs. Freeman told me to sit in the floor and play for awhile. I think I sat there about an hour. I loved their blue eyes. As their masks don’t come in until they are almost adults she showed me their mom so I would see what they would look like. Okay, now how do I choose? It turned out I didn’t have to; he chose me. After we played the kittens all went off to take a nap. Chas chose my leg to go to sleep on. I said, “I’ll take this one.”

I named him Chas after Charles Street and my new apartment. It fit him. He and I settled in together well. He was definitely the last “accessory” I needed to call my place home.

When he was nine months old he had an accident. He was lying in the dining room window watching the birds in the tree like he did every morning when the old storm window fell and broke his foot! I rushed him to the vet and picked him up after work with a blue cast on his leg. The vet tech said she chose blue for him because it matched his eyes. I think he planned the whole thing since he was scheduled to be neutered that coming Friday!

About a year after I brought him home I lost my job of 8 ½ years. It wasn’t a good time to be job hunting and I ended up working two to three part-time jobs at once to make ends meet for over a year until I found a full-time job with benefits. I was a Kelly Girl, cocktail waitress, catering waitress/bartender/sales, event coordinator for a museum, and executive director of the Amputee Association (no, they did not pay me an arm and a leg). I was working 12 hour a day, often seven days a week. Chas missed me. He would wake me up in the middle of the night pawing my face and meowing for attention. My guy was lonely! It broke my heart to realize the only time he saw me was asleep. I considered finding him a new home but I couldn’t bear the thought of him not being there. I was so depressed at the time (thank god for shrinks with prescription pads or I don’t think I would have made it) that he was my life-line. So I called the breeder I bought him from and explained the situation. They offered me a kitten on a payment plan that was, “send us what you can, when you can.” Chelsea (yes, I have been a fan of the Clintons since day one), a blue-point Himalayan, came home with us two weeks later.

It was a love connection from the start. Chelsea turned out to be a whole new financial problem but I’ll save her story for another time. Chas stopped waking me in the night so I know I did the right thing.

Chas never liked having other people around. When someone visited he went under the bed. I was dating a guy I'll call Mitch for awhile. He was a jerk. A royal A-hole but since I was in a bad place already I really didn’t see it for what it was until it was over. Chas, on the other hand, was very smart and had jerk radar. He peed on Mitch, not once, but twice! Talk about non-verbal communication!

In the fall of 1994 I met John. Chas didn’t like him either but at least he didn’t pee on him. Although he did pee on a tie John left lying around. I think that was because Chelsea got really sick the same time John came into our lives and Chas blamed him for her trips to the vets. When John came over he would go under the bed and when he left and shut the door I’d turn around and there Chas would be with an I-thought-he-would-never-leave look on his face. It really took Chas two years to warm-up to John and we were living together!

John didn’t like it that I had two cats (“cats only like their owner” problem again) so we adopted two more cats, Ali, a “mini-me” of Chas, and Alex a black Persian. Now that self-proclaimed dog person lived with four felines. Whoever said “cats are like potato chips, you can’t just stop at one” was obviously living with a house full!

Chas was there for all the many changes in my life, or I should say our life. . . we moved in with John in Otterbein, I married John and moved to Odenton, #1 Son and #2 Son were born, Chelsea died, Sebastian the cat came to live with us (a Maine Coon wannabe), we moved to Baltimore and #3 Son was born. All through the years he just rolled with the changes and never asked for more than a hug, chin scratch and some turkey which I did often.

Chas was not really fond of moving. He would hide and be out of sorts for a week or so every time. When we moved to this house he was 10. I promised him that he would never have to move again because I thought we had finally landed where we wanted to be. Of course we discovered three years later we needed to sell and move again to find a better school district for #1 Son. I apologized to him when we tried to sell the house two years ago. We didn’t sell the house then so I guess I kept my promise after all.

One night in October last year John picked Chas up and he suddenly couldn’t catch his breath. I took Chas to the vets to find out that his chest cavity was full of fluid and pressing on his lungs. No wonder John hugging him caused him so much distress. The x-rays showed a tumor and the test confirmed it was cancer. My vet said some tumors responded well to chemo and one treatment would tell us. Chas had the one treatment and by the next day he was even worst. There was nothing left to do but put him down. I sat up all night with him, waiting for the vet to open and saying my goodbyes. By morning we were both ready. It was definitely one of the hardest things I ever had to do. He had been with me for most of my adult life. It just didn’t seem possible that he wasn’t going to be there anymore.

He and Ali were very close and I think she misses him as much as I do. I was really worried about her since they had been together her whole life (even though Alex is her litter-mate Chas was her favorite companion and she filled the hole for him that Chelsea left). Ali has amazed us! Our timid, little six pound, now 13 year old girl didn’t go off and mourn for long. She decided the best way to honor his memory was to imitate him! Chas always kneaded my stomach every morning when I woke up (the times that I was pregnant he figured out that he had to temporarily move to my thigh. Like I said, he was a very smart cat). Ali, the cat who never kneaded anyone the first 12 years of her life, now kneads me every morning. She seeks us out to be petted and lies close to me when the kids aren’t around just like Chas (she used to be a bit of a recluse). My vet is convinced that she learned Chas’ behavior and decided that someone had to take his alpha-cat role. I guess Chas is still with me through her.

So here I am nine months later finally writing about him. A day still doesn’t go by that I don’t think about him or expect to see him sleeping in one of his favorite spots. He was the greatest cat ever and there will never be another like him for me. I love the three cats that are left but none will be my first cat or share all the mile-markers in my life that he did.

Rest in peace, my beautiful boy. You will always own a piece of my heart.

(P.S. to see his photos and captions click here)