This is Zelda.
She doesn't get featured around these parts much. She's not a goofy clown like our pug, Truman, and she's not the dynamic powerhouse of human growth and developmental milestones that M is. She's just… Zelda. Steady, even, stable. And the best fucking cat in the whole goddamn world.
I got Zelda back in 1996, when I was working on my Master's degree in English at Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan. I found her, as a kitten, galloping around a nearby farm with about a half-dozen other equally adorable furballs, but Zelda stood out to me immediately. She wasn't afraid, or timid, or skittish. She ran right up to me when I called and clicked my tongue to get her attention, batted playfully at my fingers when I held them out for her to sniff, and then joyfully flopped down on her back directly atop a nearby ant hill, squirming her body back and forth and side to side on the unsuspecting (and now thoroughly squished) colony like a kitten-shaped rolling pin OF APOCALYPTIC ANT DOOOOM!!11!!!! She had the same sweet, guileless spunk that she still has now, thirteen years later. I fell in love with her immediately, took her home, and named her after my favorite Fitzgerald (the crazier one, natch).
And though I of course love all of our pets, I can't deny that Zelda is special to me. I've known her longer than most human beings in my life — longer than Jamie, longer than most of my friends, far longer than all of you lovely folks from the internet. She's witnessed almost every important and significant day of my post-college, adult life. She's snuggled under the covers with me over the course of more consecutive years than any man has. And now, as an elderly, old lady of a kitty, she's adopted my daughter. M calls for Zelda and she comes running like an eager and well-trained puppy, and the two of them now sleep cuddled up together every night. M adores her, just as I do. Zeldito Burrito. Or, sometimes, just Burrito.
If you were on Twitter yesterday evening you know that last night I had to rush Zelda to the animal ER when, after a day of her being unable to keep any solid food down, I began to notice nickel-sized droplets of blood trailing behind her wherever she went. Yeah, that's never a good sign. But in all honesty what scared me the most was the thousand yard stare she'd get on her face now and again — something I'd never seen before, and found utterly terrifying. I knew, just from that look, that something was horribly wrong. And, after consenting to $400 worth of tests and xrays at the animal hospital, it turned out that she had what amounted to the worst UTI ever — so bad it had inflamed and thickened the walls of her bladder to 4 times their normal size. It cost another couple of hundred dollars for intravenous fluids to combat dehydration and the medication to cure the infection and ensure that she was free of pain in the meantime. All told, about $700. This, for a thirteen year old barn cat from Michigan.
Best $700 I'll ever spend.
