Soul Of A Lion Misha, A Fine Orange Cat, Was A Teacher Of Life, Opening E And Defining Priorities

There is an old saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It doesn’t say what form the teacher will take, but my guess is that many of them have whiskers.

Misha, my fine orange cat, came into life the way he would live it: at the top of his lungs. His mother, a young tabby with more sweetness than sense, gave birth to her firstborn on the back porch of an old farmhouse I was renting. Misha’s grandmother, blessed with life smarts and hours away from delivery herself, knew the kitten would never survive the cold of that old porch. So, after he was clean and dry, his grandmother scooped him up by the scruff of his neck, forced open the kitchen door, and carried him into my bedroom closet. She deposited him in an old slipper, then patted my face persistently with her paw until I opened my eyes.

I heard Misha before I saw him: a tiny, insistent, brave mewing that demanded and expected attention. It said, with the certainty of a lion, “I am here.” This is the voice I would hear all of his life, the voice I hear still.

I spent the next few hours moving Misha’s brothers and sisters, seven altogether, into my closet. If it was good enough for his grandmother, it was good enough for me. She spent the day teaching her daughter the fine art of feeding and nuzzling young. Later that evening Misha’s grandmother gave birth to seven more kittens. The following morning, returning back to the house from a quick potty break, Misha’s mother was hit by a car and killed.

It was left to Misha’s grandmother and me to feed both litters. Armed with a tiny bottle and milk supplement, I rotated the kittens’ feeding times. Misha took to the bottle as enthusiastically as he took to his grandmother’s milk. He intended to live and determined early on that the best way to ensure his survival was to never miss a meal. Throughout his long life, he never did.

In our years together we moved from apartment to small house to big house, ending up where we started, in the country. We acquired two German Shepherds and one amazing husband. Getting along and making adjustments was simple once it was understood that Misha was the master. He could wrap a hundred-pound dog around one paw and use the other to bat at sunbeams. He could wrestle a 30-pound Thanksgiving turkey off a kitchen counter and still get the dinner guests to give him extra Fancy Feast. He was infinitely patient with children, intolerant of squirrels, enchanted by deer, and afraid of absolutely nothing.

Misha divided his time in the country between hunting and looking for the best place to sleep after the hunt. Like a great cat, he would stalk his prey for hours, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike. He had an economy of movement, the precise and ancient memory of a predator. Hunting was Misha’s passion, as essential as breathing or stretching in the sun, or charming non-believers. His passion would ultimately contribute to his demise.

The first sign of trouble was weight loss. Misha’s girth was a legendary part of our family’s storytelling. He had an insatiable appetite for whatever anyone else was having and stalked pizza with the same zeal as he stalked mice. On his regimen, weight loss was impossible. And yet, week by week, his weight dropped. We took him to the vet. It was the first of many appointments. Problems were ruled out, treatments were prescribed. Misha would rally, that was a given. No matter how sick he got, how much weight he lost, or how awful he looked, Misha would always rally. He intended to live.

The odds were not in his favor. His gut was filled with scar tissue, the result of years of hunting animals who served as hosts for every possible internal parasite. His kidneys were weakened, his red blood cells low and his marrow refusing to cooperate. And he was 16 years old. He didn’t know any of this, of course, but my guess is, if he had, he would still have raised his old body up to seek the sun. It is the way of animals. They move toward life with neither the capacity nor the willingness to feel self-pity or regret.

All the long winter Misha moved in and out of illness. I thought if he could only make it to spring that he might live another five years. One day the sun mercifully broke through the gloom. Its warmth bathed the living room in light. Misha curled up under my arm, batting my face with his paw. I looked into his eyes and found him looking back with an intensity I was to see only once more. I knew in that moment what he knew; we loved each other, always would.

He was strong that day, healthy. But it was a false spring. I was told that Misha was dying. It was not the first time that I had been told this, but it was the first time I believed it was true. He was rail-thin now and the tiny bones of his body jutted out like a new sparrow under his old orange coat. His will was strong but his body would not cooperate. He would set out to walk across the room but stumble after the first few steps. We carried him to and from his water bowl and held him up as he drank. He would die at home, I thought. Just wear down and go to sleep. I wouldn’t have to make any difficult decisions. It was Thursday. By Sunday I was sure it would be over.

The forecast called for snow. The cloudless sky gave no sign of it, but we knew the storm was coming. The temperatures were predicted to drop into the teens and the ground, now softened under the sun, would freeze again. We decided to dig Misha’s grave.

We walked out into the sunlight and chose a spot beside the dogwood tree. The birds and squirrels were busy with their afternoon arguments. Dogs barked and children rode their bikes instead of sleds. I looked up from the digging and there was Misha standing on the porch watching us. He glanced casually at the hole in the earth and then walked purposefully in the opposite direction. There were squirrels that needed a scolding and spring earth that waited for his scent. Misha spent five wonderful minutes as the oldest lion on the savannah. Then, he went inside and slept by the fire. By evening, the snow had begun to fall.

Misha was too weak to eat or drink so every three hours I fed him eyedroppers of water and gruel. Just as I had fed him as a kitten. The circle had closed around us. At dawn on Monday morning I fed Misha for the last time. I held him in my arms and told him he was the best cat that had ever lived. His old, weary eyes looked into mine and asked me, with all the strength he had left, to let go.

We arrived at the vet’s office only minutes after the staff. Misha was given an anesthetic to prepare him for the second injection. The vet and I talked of the mystery of life and the greater mystery of death. He told me that he believed there was a good place for all creatures and that Misha would certainly find his way there. Misha’s physical transition from life to death was almost imperceptible. He was that close. His tiny body went limp in my arms before the needle entered his skin. The vet, holding Misha’s paw, said, “God bless you, Misha,” and my fine orange cat’s head bowed gracefully down. A few seconds later he was gone.

We buried him that morning in the middle of a snowstorm. Like an old pharaoh, Misha was sent to the future with many provisions. His coffin, a pine box that had once held four bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, was lined with his favorite blanket. To this we added two roses, a silver heart from Charleston, the ashes of his old friend, Grover, the first dog he ever loved, and two cans of Fancy Feast.

I am left with a physical longing. For 16 years I knew the sound, and smell and feel of a creature who demanded I know and love him through my senses. Now, I hear a gentle thud and think it is Misha jumping down from the bed, or I smell coffee brewing and think he is standing in the kitchen waiting for a saucer of cream. I hear the birds or the fussy squirrel chirping at the wind and I think: Beware, a great cat lives here. Misha taught me to see tall grass, mounds of earth, songbirds and dogs through a cat’s eye. And now, the cat is gone and I search the landscape for his shadow.

It isn’t anthropomorphizing or wishful thinking. Animals, like people, have varying degrees of awareness. I have known both to have the souls of lions or the personalities of pest strips. Misha was exquisitely aware of himself and his life. He felt things, whether I was there to assign meaning. He had a sense of place about him, a sense that wherever he was he had a right to be there. And he loved me with that pure, elemental affection of animals.

To earn the trust of children and animals is perhaps a small thing, but it is telling. How we treat the smallest, most dependent creatures is a reflection of how we treat life itself. Soup kitchens and sweat shops both mirror the degree to which we embrace or abandon those weaker than ourselves. To earn the trust of any small creature then, is a kind of cosmic nod that at least in one corner of your life you are doing something right.

My teacher came in the form of an orange cat. What he taught me, among many things, was to live at the top of my lungs.

Kathleen Corkery Spencer is a free-lance writer based in Spokane.