Tiki

Tiki jumped into my life unexpectedly along with Geesha the weekend before St. Patrick's Day in 1981.  A woman I knew knocked on my door to give me a promised extra litterbox for Circe.  She was on her way to post a notice on the building bulletin board to find someone to take her two cats for six weeks, as she was moving into a no-pets apartment.  Her former roommate, now living in New York, was then supposed to come pick up the cats, Tiki and Geesha.

If you don't want cats for life, don't take them for six weeks!  Of course I told her I would take them.  Six weeks turned into six months, by which point it was obvious they were mine.  Her former roommate kept having difficulties in living situations, and I was more than glad by that point to officially adopt these wonderful two kitties.

Tiki was a short-haired black-and-white cat with a face that resembled a bulldog.  She was one of a kind.  She was one of the ugliest cats I've ever had, with a temper to match.  She despised other cats, but adored human attention and affection.  She taught me more about love than any human ever has.  Not a pretty cat, terrible personality and temper, but the idea of trying to change her was so absurd, I finally understand that you must take humans as they are as well -- or at least try.

She was a cranky old cat, even when she was young (that's Capricorn, for you).  She rarely deigned to play, and her favorite thing in life was being a lap cat and getting petted (one of those rare cats who actually seems to prefer petting to food).  As with all cats I've ever had, her name got bastardized in interesting ways:  Tikmus, Tikmus-burger, Burger, Tikus.  She truly was B. Kliban's meatloaf kitty.

I called her the cat equivalent of George Burns.  My ex-husband used to joke that a perfect picture would be George Burns with his cigar, young lovely women on either side, with Tiki in his lap.  Ironically, she died very close to the time he did, and I think her age was even older (in human terms) than his was.  I knew she had been born in January 1977; I gave her January 19, Janis Joplin's birthday.  I changed it shortly before she died to January 18, George Burns' birthday; it was utterly appropriate.

Geesha, her lifelong partner, died before Tiki did.  When I took Geesha's body over to Tiki so she could say goodbye, Tiki hissed.  That was Tiki; only she would hiss at a dead cat!

Tiki had a temper, as I've said.  She went ballistic on me twice.  The first time, I made the mistake of trying to make her make up with Sonia by holding them in close proximity to each other.  Tiki went completely crazy, and sunk her claw right into one of the main arteries in my wrist.  Blood was spurting everywhere, and, needless to say, I learned *never* to do that again!

The second time was close to her death.  She was hugging the furnace registers, getting cold very easily, so I thought that if we took her upstairs to the heated water bed, she would feel better.  Cosmo followed us upstairs, but was hiding underneath the dresser where Tiki could not see him.  My husband was laying on his chest without a shirt on, and I was trying to calm Tiki, who was upset at the change in venue.  Suddenly, Tiki let out a howl and sunk her claw into me, again into an artery, while she got the claws on her other paw stuck in my shirt.  Blood was spurting, she was stuck and howling, I couldn't move, when suddenly, Cosmo took a flying leap through the air (literally) and landed on my husband's back, sinking his claws deeply into my husband.  Needless to say, it was probably a bizarre sight to behold, had anyone witnessed it.  Later, we realized that Sonia (in non-corporeal form) had been visiting.  She was apparently trying to prepare Tiki for her upcoming journey, but Tiki did not understand, of course, and since Sonia was her mortal enemy, reacted quite badly to her ghostly presence.  Cosmo was just trying to protect Tiki, as is his nature.

As Tiki's kidneys failed, she stopped eating.  Almost on New Year's Eve, I decided to fight with her.  She was a fighter, and I did not see the desire to leave this realm in her eyes.  So I made the decision to fight with her, to get her in touch with her fighting spirit, and to force-feed her.  It was difficult, but it worked (only for a few weeks, but that was a few weeks more we were allowed to share with her).  She started eating on her own again.

A few weeks later, she started to turn her back to us and face the wall.  This was her idea of hiding, I realized.  I knew her time had come, and I had to make the terrible decision to release her from this life.

On her 19th birthday, we took her in.   Everyone at the vet's office was very sad, too; they had come to know and love her over the years they had tended to her.  In that short quiet moment, she was gone.

My husband and I have both seen her come back in non-corporeal form since then.  True to Tiki, though (who unlike the majority of cats didn't quite have a grasp of the metaphysical), she looks like she half-fades in, as though she can't quite grasp how to do this right.  It's more than a little bizarre to see half a cat look fairly real, and the other half look like she's on the transporter thing on "Star Trek" in a little dot pattern.

Then again, that's the Tiki I knew and loved.
 

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