Goodbye Musaeus, you wonderful tabby

2 weeks ago

Yesterday was, shall we say, a really awful day. Our tabby cat, Musaeus, has not been too well over the past couple of months, losing weight like crazy despite being the one cat in our feline assortment who ate the most every dinner time. He’d also gotten into the habit of suddenly awakening at like four in the morning and then miaowing in the bedroom to make sure everyone was awake and could give him some loving. He’d also decided that having a sleep by the laundry basket was the best thing. Yesterday, he was there, miaowing every now and then until I stroked him and got him to purr. The last time was just after lunch, and I was worried enough to phone our vet to see if I couldn’t bring him in for an emergency checkup. Of course, I’d forgotten that our vet closes on Wednesday afternoons, so I resolved to take him in as soon as I could the next day, snowstorm permitting. But the next time I checked up on him a couple of hours later, he’d passed away and my heart broke.

Musy was part of a litter that one of our neighbors at the time was fostering, and my wife used to go over to help out occasionally and cuddle the litter. One of our first cats, Orpheus, had died a year earlier and we’d already got a ginger kitten (we named him Perseus, who was conceived in a shower of gold) from a previous foster litter. This time? Musy was always the one who would go to her and roll over on his back with his front paws in the air, like he was mimicking Superman. Well, lo and behold, that did the trick and we said we’d take him. That was July 2009, so we’ve had him for over 15 years.

Why the name Musaeus? Well it turns out that in Greek mythology Musaeus was either a son or a disciple of Orpheus. Since both Orpheus and Musy were tabby cats, we just settled on the “is a son of” part and that became his name. Since he was a small kitten compared with the other three, he also became known as Littlest.

Musy was a really friendly cat. He’d purr like crazy when stroked. He quickly became a brother to the other three cats and would cuddle with them, wash them, and play with them. He was also a fan of the elastic hair ties that my wife would use for her long hair, and steal them to flick them around the house. Every time I move the sofa or the armchair to clean underneath, I’d find the hair ties he’d have flicked there.

One vice he did have was to sharpen his claws on the carpet on the stairs. Not on the sofa, since that would be a vertical claw sharpening exercise, but on each step of the stairs since it was horizontal. We quickly had to buy some double-sided sticky tape and put it on the sides of every step on the stairs to discourage this foible. That wasn’t his only bad habit though. The cats have a water fountain to drink filtered water from, it being easier to maintain than the water bowl the puppy has. Well, a few years ago, Musy discovered that he could head-butt the lid of the water fountain off and then a short while afterwards he discovered how to head-butt off the filter container of the fountain with the result of water all over the floor. Every time I’d clean the water fountain and replace the filter, I got into the habit of taping down both parts so that he couldn’t head-butt them off.

He had another bad habit too: he was lithe and powerful enough that he could jump up from the floor onto the island and countertops we have in the kitchen. Once there, he’d lick the butter from the butter dish, knock off stuff onto the floor, and do other naughty things. We got into the habit of making sure we’d put everything away and that the lid was on the butter dish.

Like all our cats he was an indoor cat, but every now and then in the summer we’d let him out with his brother Zephyrus into the back yard so that they could sniff around, roll in the grass, and just explore. Under direct supervision of course, we weren’t going to see if they could jump the fence or something equally dangerous.

It’s only been a day, but already we are missing him. Yesterday evening was weird since I only had to put cat food onto 4 plates instead of the usual 5, and Musy wasn’t the first in the kitchen for dinner time like he used to be. Even this morning, as I turned off the shower, I thought I heard a Musy miaow as he used to do in the past.

Once upon a time there was a wonderful friendly tabby called Musaeus who loved us as much as we loved him. Goodbye Littlest, we miss you a great deal already.