Ed and Aine

I think Ed was fond of all animals. They were unjudging and were usually quite attracted to him. One of the “Pros” listed about moving in as his roommate was “A roomie who does not mind living with animals since he is one.” He liked telling stories of puppies (and small children) using him for a jungle gym as he sat on the ground.

So, in 2001, we moved into Ed’s master suite. The cats, of course, promptly made themselves at home in every part of the house with an open door.

My husband and I had adopted Catriona and Aine when they were four months old in 1994. Their mother was feral and a private rescue group (I worked with one of them at TXMHMR) had caught the kittens at the Texas Health Department when they were four weeks old, being afraid that when they were older they would never catch them. They were fostered for the next three months while they tried to find a home that would adopt them together as they were quite inseparable. When we divorced, the girls came with me.

To look at Catriona and Aine, one would not think they were sisters. Different body types, different coloring. Catriona has tortoiseshell coloring, black with flecks of fire, except for one buff-colored back foot and her fur is thick and soft, almost like rabbit fur, with a thick cream undercoat. She’s always been a bit plump since reaching maturity, not fat, just round, with bunchy muscles. Aine has a coat like I’d never seen before. She isn’t a red tabby; her coat is buff colored, very light. She has no stripes, instead her coat appears to be tweeded. I finally ran into a cat enthusiast who let me know that she would be described as a “cream mackerel tabby.” She’s always looked delicately built, with long, lean muscles. Truly, the only way to tell these two are siblings is that Catriona’s back foot exactly matches Aine’s coat in color.

Both cats loved Ed. When Ed was home, he would lie on the floor or sit on the rocker and otherwise be still for hours at a time. They’d come and use him as furniture. I have a cat toy which is a stick connected to a rope that has a leather tassel at the end. I heard something strange and came out of my room to discover Ed lying on the floor watching TV. He had the toy in one hand which was flat on the floor and every 10-20 seconds he would flip his hand from palm up to palm down, swinging the cat toy over and thumping it to the ground. When I asked what he was doing he said, “Exercising the cats.” When I pointed out there were no cats in the room, he said, “There were. They’ll be back.” I so got the giggles.

While my cats were perfectly capable of caring for themselves when I was gone for a day or two, Ed apparently made the effort to spend more time with them, either sleeping on the living room floor, or leaving his bedroom door open so they could sleep with him. It sometimes gave them bad habits as I don’t let them sleep on the pillows and he apparently did. When I came home, they would immediately desert Ed to come greet me and he made a comment about one of them “leaping from my head.” When I asked if they’d been good, he said, “Oh, we had a wonderful weekend. We had catnip beer and chocolate mice and surfed the Internet for ‘kitty porn’.” I had trouble breathing I was laughing so hard. The cats just tried to look innocent. “Who, us?”

Over the years, Ed had many instances where he’d been stitched up and needed to heal. It made him very restful to be around when I had abdominal surgery. He never said a word when I groaned or “ouched,” no fussing at all, but the minute I asked for help, it was there. I saw many more signs of this empathy, tinged with humor, in 2002, when Aine needed surgery.

Ed was on the floor petting Aine. Instead of scratching her, as was my tendency, he was using his long hands, one on each side of her body, to rub her entire body at once. She was pretty ecstatic. He looked up and said, “Do you know that Aine has a lump on her right shoulder?” It was cancer. Because of Ed, we caught it soon enough to save her life. The vet told me that without the surgery Aine would have been dead in six months and I opted to spend the money to save her as she was only 8.5 years old (she and Catriona turn 18 YO this summer!). She lost her right leg and shoulderblade on the day of a freezing ice storm and came home three days later.

Aine immediately adjusted to life with three legs, though there were bobbles as she learned her new balance point and built the strength up. She was kept in a dog crate for a week to keep her from moving much and away from normal cat litter that might get in the scar. She never liked the substitute. She got away from me one day and made a beeline for her own litterbox and did her business. I let her finish, but scooped her up and returned her to the crate before she started digging. As I returned to the living room, Ed said, in that lovely low voice of his, “I understand, Cat. There’s nothing as nice as doing your business in your own bathroom.”

When we were working in the kitchen, Ed didn’t mind if a cat was on the counter, as long as she wasn’t on the counter where the food was being prepared. Not my style, but his house, his rules, and he was home more than I was.

I’d always heard stories about how quickly Ed could move, if necessary. I’d never been witness to more than his fighting prowess on an SCA field, which was never full speed, quick though it was, until the day Aine tried to join Ed in the kitchen. Ed had just finished making his dinner. He had a plate in one hand, a huge glass of milk in the other, and had just turned toward the living room. I’d been talking to him, so I was still looking in the kitchen when Aine tried to jump up on the kitchen counter, lost her balance because of her new center of gravity, and slipped off. Ed emptied one hand and caught her before she hit the ground. EMPTIED ONE HAND. Put one item on the counter and caught her and he made it look like he was moving slowly. I just said, “Thank you, that would have hurt,” and nothing else, but I knew I’d just seen Ed at full speed, something few had seen in a peaceful setting.

Ed’s home had sliding glass doors that faced south. In the winter, it was customary for us to leave the blinds open to let the sun warm the carpet. You’d usually find one or both cats there, and occasionally one of the humans, too. I was lying there with Aine and could tell she was reaching the “itchy” stage of healing and pointed it out to Ed who said, “I can relate to that.” He leaned a hand down and said, “C’mere, Cat, and I’ll scratch your scars for you.” She hopped across the carpet to him immediately and looked in total bliss as he carefully rubbed her shoulder with the side of his finger.

Again, I’m lying on the carpet with the cats. Ed’s in the rocking chair. He looked at Catriona and solemnly said, “It’s your responsibility to reach high things for your sister now, since she’s a foot short compared to you.” Tears, actual tears, were rolling down my face I was laughing so hard. I hate cruelty jokes, but sweet Lord, that one was FUNNY.

Ed and I were watching TV, each in our respective chairs. Ed’s usual position, if both feet weren’t on the floor, was to sit with one ankle crossed on the opposite knee, and that’s how he was sitting that day. Aine walked up to him and started talking to him. He looked down and said, “What?” She spoke again. “Oh, sorry.” He crossed his legs the other way and she jumped into his lap and curled up. Only thing I can figure is that curling up in his lap only worked one way with the missing forelimb, but to have her ask him to change position – and have him understand – was just too sweet. And honestly, I laughed at him. He just sheepishly grinned and held very still for our girl.

I realized one day that Aine could no longer wash the right side of her face. She washed the left side of her face when she was lying down (after a year or so, she could do it by just sitting back on her back legs), but that didn’t reach the other side of her face. Occasionally, when Aine was hip-hopping through the room, he’d say, “Hey, Tripod, come here and I’ll wash your ear for you.” Then he’d lick his finger and stroke her face and ear.

It was May and the first of the June bugs had gotten into the house. It was flying in the living room, not too high. Aine was on it like a shot. She’d always been a mighty huntress, but we held our breaths to see what would happen. Aine was pretty good at jumping up on things by then, but coming down from a height was still a challenge as the remaining front foot still wasn’t taking up all the slack. When she jumped out of my bedroom window onto my bed, for instance, there were still times her face ended up planted in the covers. Well, we got a show that day. It was almost like a dance. She would leap for the June bug, and when she missed it, she would land in a shoulder roll on the floor. As she came out of the roll, before her momentum had even come to rest, she had leapt again into the air. It was beautiful and we watched in fascination until the bug lit up high out of her reach and she gave up. She went and got a drink, then curled up in Ed’s lap for the evening.

In either 2004 or 2005, Austin had a horrible hail storm the evening of Good Friday. I wasn’t home when it happened. I’d been at church, then gone straight from there to the regular game night at Star’s where no hail fell, so I was oblivious to the storm until I went home much later that night. (The storm was so bad in our neighborhood, that on Easter morning, there was still ice in the ditches, and Saturday had been sunny.)

Both cats had been in my bedroom, probably in the window—a favorite hangout. According to Ed, there was a loud crack (later discovered to be a broken cover on the dial of my large thermometer hung just outside my window, probably shattered by a hailstone). Ed said that Catriona “landed in the middle of the living room.” He wasn’t sure she’d touched the ground between the window and the living room, but I figured she got one bounce off the bed. She glanced frantically around, saw Ed in the rocking chair, and leapt onto one leg and buried her face in his belly. Aine came out of the bedroom more sedately, but decided Catriona had a good idea and took up residence on the other leg and also buried her face in Ed. There they sat for a quarter hour or so, until the hail had stopped and the storm had let up. Both cats suddenly looked up, looked at her sister, hissed, and ejected from Ed’s lap in opposing directions. In amusement he told me he was very glad he was wearing jeans and not shorts.

I came home at 10 p.m. one night after being gone all day. When I flipped on the light, there was Ed, sitting crosslegged on the floor of the living room in front of the rocking chair. After greeting him, I asked, “Meditating?” “Yeah.” “How long?” “Since about noon.” “Can you feel your feet?” “Nope.” “Want a coke?” “Yeah.” So I got a coke for him and a drink for myself and lay on the floor as he tried to unwind himself. Once he was reclining, he told me that the cats had checked in at regular intervals, climbing over his shoulder from the rocker, or nesting in his lap. Aine apparently spent quite a lot of time in his lap. Occasionally they would nudge his hands futilely to get attention, then huff off for a while, but they always came back and were either lying on him or next to him, keeping him company.

That was one of the best things about living with Ed. A lot of the time we’d be hanging out together, but we were just being, not doing, not talking. Some might call it boring, but we thought it peaceful.