2/2/1999
Tuesday

Camilla

Mom called last night to say she and Jake took Camilla to the vet's to have her put to sleep. A few months ago, they had noticed Camilla wasn't eating well. Eventually the vet diagnosed her with cancerous lesions in her mouth. The growths on her gums and tongue grew quickly, and in the last few weeks eating seemed to become more and more painful for her. The vet gave my mother some kind of medicine to try, but Camilla hated it so much that she began hiding when it was time for her morning and evening doses. In her last few days, she seemed cold all the time, Mom said. She spent her days indoors lying in the patch of sun that shone through the living room windows, following the sunlight hour by hour as it moved across the floor. At night she huddled close to the wood stove for warmth. This weekend she stopped eating almost completely, and Mom knew the time had come.

Camilla was born the month I graduated from college. Our family cat Lily gave birth that June to four female kittens in her first and only litter. Before they were even born, I had decided to take one of the kittens when I found a place to live in Portland. I'd always liked marmalade cats, and I had asked my youngest sister, Susannah, to save me an orange kitten from the litter. There were no orange tabbies among the four, but my sister picked out the only calico one for me because, as Sue explained, she had at least some orange in her coat.

A few weeks after I settled in to an apartment, I brought Camilla down to Portland from my parents' house. I knew it was time to fetch her when I started to hear mice scurrying about the floor each night after I turned out the lights. Camilla quickly dispatched two mice in her first week in the apartment, and then the mice abandoned my apartment forever.

Camilla was my best friend during those Portland years. We lived in a tiny efficiency apartment on the third floor of an old building in the West End. Every day when I returned home from work, she'd hear me walking up the two flights of stairs and would invariably be waiting for me by the door. It was lovely to have someone there to greet me.

Her favorite toy was a length of string. I would pull the string slowly along the floor, and she would stalk it, head down and tail up, rump quivering with excitement, eyes fixed on her quarry until she pounced. I'd let her chew on it for a bit, then pull it away, and she'd chase it again. Sometimes I'd pull it quickly, spinning in a circle, and she'd dash round and round at full speed. Sometimes I'd raise it up in the air and she'd leap for it. I would tire of the game long before she did. Eventually, I'd let her have the string and go back to my book. She would gnaw on the string for awhile, but soon I'd feel the gentle tap of a velvet paw on my knee and look down to see Camilla with the string in her mouth, begging me to play again.

She slept every night on my bed. Actually, she slept on me. If I lay on my stomach, she would curl up on my back. When I turned over to my side, she would hop off, wait for me to settle, then jump back on, stretching herself lengthwise along my side, lulling me to sleep with her steady purr.

When I moved in with Tab, his two cats persecuted Camilla relentlessly. She fled to the top of the refrigerator, where she lived for a year and a half. We finally realized she would never be happy here, so we brought her back up to Maine to my mother's house. Camilla lived happily with my mother and Jake the last 10 of her nearly 16 years, but to me she will always be my cat, my Portland roommate and companion.

I have heard people say animals don't have souls. I don't believe it. I believe when I die and cross over to the other side, Camilla will be there waiting for me, string in her mouth, and ready to play.

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