Our Gray Gatsby

I found our Russian Blue-ish looking gray cat a few months after we moved into this house in 2009. He was sitting in the grass in the middle of the back courtyard and he would watch me coming and going on the porch but wouldn't come near me. This went on for a couple of weeks and that gray cat was getting thinner and thinner. When I tried to get close to him he would run underneath the guest cottage or out towards the barn. I didn't want to scare him, so I just let him be.

The more that cat saw me, the longer he would sit in the yard and watch me. I started bringing small dishes of cat food with me every time I went outside. When the gray cat saw me, I would just stop and let him see me putting the food dish down on the courtyard, and then I would go back into the house.  His curiosity got the better of him and he walked up to the cat food and gobbled it down as I watched from the kitchen window. Within a few days, that cat was no longer running away from me. He sat there in the yard waiting for his breakfast. And then lunch. And a few days later, he was out there at dinner-time.

When the gray cat decided to trust us, he would come up on the porch and eat his meals there instead of out in the grass or on the stones of the courtyard. We found him in the summer, and he stayed an outside cat, but I did get him fixed as soon as he trusted me enough to pick him up and get him into a cat-carrier. The vet estimated that he was about four years old, and I had to wonder how many gray kittens that cat had fathered during those first four 'intact' years.

My husband said we needed a name for this cat, other than The Gray Cat. Being that he seemed to be such a 'gentleman' cat, we wanted to give him a flamboyant and important name.  It was my husband who suggested The Gray Gatsby, probably because I had been re-reading The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time. As soon as my husband said that name out loud, we both said "That's it! That's perfect!"   Gatsby quickly learned his name and would come when called, and seemed to just fit the personality of what I thought a Gatsby-esque cat should be.

During that first winter with us, Gatsby continued to stay outside... he wanted no part of the inside of the house even though we had invited him to come in on the colder nights. I had a blanket and cat-bed out on the porch for him, but when the temperature got abnormally cold here (down to the freezing point and below) I just picked him up outside and brought him in here. Gentleman to the core, Gatsby was exceptionally good as he inspected everything but touched nothing... and he wouldn't even use the litter box--- he would just hold everything in until the following morning when I let him outside again.

Gatsby was mostly an outside cat, only coming into the house on the hottest of days and the coldest of days. He seemed to be content wherever he was, as long as he had fresh water and three meals a day. Sometimes four or five, if he stole some from the other two cats. Gatsby was not one to miss a meal or deny himself the opportunity of taking one from another cat. When we adopted our puppy Savannah back in September, I stopped letting Gatsby in the house. On the cold nights, he slept in the garage with Mickey... they had cat tents and a heater and both were quite content.

About a month ago, Gatsby's neck started to twist unnaturally and he lost his balance on the porch steps. We rushed him to the vet and Gatsby was given medication and steroids for feline vestibular disease. His condition cleared up within a few days but two weeks later it returned. I gave him more medication, as suggested by the vet, and once again Gatsby seemed fine. Until this morning... his neck was twisted worse than the first two times, and the look in his eyes was vacant and empty. He couldn't navigate the steps and he couldn't control his bladder.

I called the vet and had Gatsby there first thing this morning. I knew what would happen even before I backed my car out of the garage with Gatsby in the cat-carrier in the front seat. As I drove to the vet's office, I kept telling Gatsby what a good cat he had been, and how much we enjoyed his company. I apologized for keeping him inside the garage and coop with Mickey at night, rather than bringing him inside like I used to do. I explained to Gatsby that having both Savannah and Sweet Pea in the house was enough, and besides, Mickey really needed his company in the garage during the night. I saw Gatsby peeking through the little door of the carrier... I don't know if he was really listening to me as I drove, or if his neck was just permanently tilted and he couldn't do anything but look at me.

During the twenty-minute ride to the vet, I told Gatsby all he needed to know about how much we loved him, and how much we appreciated the way he would sit in the driveway and wait for us to come home. I thanked Gatsby for following me up the road when I walked Savannah, and I remembered to tell him how helpful he was in teaching Mickey how to be a smart outside cat when his behavior prevented me from keeping him inside. I said my good-byes to Gatsby in the car because I knew that I wouldn't be able to do that once I carried him into that office.

I cried a little at the vet's office and I cried again when I got back in my car. I didn't break down into heart-splitting sobs because I knew we gave Gatsby a good life while he was with us, and I also knew that we wouldn't have put him through the trauma of trying to control a disease that had already begun to control him. For as long as we had Gatsby, he lived his cat-life with dignity, and that's how I wanted it to end for him.

Time and again over these past seven years with us, Gatsby proved himself to be an extraordinarily wise and street-smart cat.  F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been proud of him.