When my first adopted cat, Ishqa, died at age 2 from FIP some 14 years ago, I “licked my wounds” and after a little while, thought I would try again.

I went to the pound that I had gotten Ishqa from, and, not holding the facility responsible for his death because its head vet was a kind man and an exceptional caretaker and a family friend, I searched for a second cat to bring home.

I found her, a small long-haired black little gal with big spotty yellow eyes on her tiny kitten head, and she came home with me and I named her Chayya (“shadow” in Hindi, from my Bollywood movie watching in those days).

I lived in apartment then and was out quite a bit evenings and weekends, and though we got along well, I felt a little sad about her being alone a fair amount, and I assumed that she would be happier if she had another cat to hang with.

On a Saturday morning several months later, I returned to the animal shelter and wandered in a room of stacked pens, peering into cages, until I heard crying from one somewhere in the back. When I got to it, within it was another tiny black kitten that seemed downright sad and uncomfortable. And, being the kind sensitive soul that I am, I figured that this cat was the one I had come for.

I brought him home and he was soon named Shukriya, following my Bollywood scheme to name him in Hindi, and his name meant “gratitude”.

At first, Chayya wasn’t at all keen on having a competitor for my attention in the house, and I made the mistake of just plopping the new kitten down in front of her. He, being slightly younger than her and half her size, received a good cat-whooping from her until I realized my mistake and got him separated from her.

Within a week or so, he then developed some uncomfortable cries and some mounds on his skins. I took him to visit my friend the vet, and behold- he had developed ringworm. Soon, he and Chayya were being medicinally shampooed daily for a week in my apartment bathroom to get rid of the stuff.

Shukriya cried a lot as a kitten.

When he grew out of his kitten phase, he became a decently healthy cat, and he was a quiet cat, content to just lay around wherever- until food was in the area. And when he ate, he like it was his last meal.

As he grew up, he soon matched Chayya in size, and then doubled her mass in time.

And as an adult, he kept growing.

The last couple of years, I have not been as kind to that cat as I was to him as a kitten.

At one point, a friend attached the name “El Gorodo” to him, and we laughed about that, and I let that nickname stick to him, and began to use it talking to others, and even talking to him because, after all, what does a cat know about what I am saying?

And although I am pretty much to blame for him becoming large, not regulating his food intake (mostly because I have been a pretty stand-off pet parent), I considered most cats to be pretty good self-regulaters, and when he wasn’t, I began to blame him for his fatness. And I also began to hold it against him.

His fur is oily, and despite being a short-hair cat, his fur mats very easily, and is at times challenging to untangle.

His meow is a high pitched whimper, not a throaty roar.

With his added weight, he began to limp in time, most assuredly from arthritis, when waddling across a room, and I would over look that. “Just another thing”, I would think.

He then began to snore loudly when dozing.

In recent years, probably in part because of his extra weight, he began to throw up more frequently as his bile duct didn’t manage the hair he consumed grooming. He would eat a full meal and then go throw it all up somewhere on the carpet in the living room, and then eat another large meal again afterwards to replace it. And I grew frustrated at him about that.

And then, in recent years, for whatever reason, he decided that if a litter box was not immaculate, and he needed to crap, he would just go on the carpet somewhere near it in that room.

And his feces often smell horrific.

This last behavior of his pushed me over the edge after I realized he was going to keep doing it. I had bought larger litter boxes for him, and then more of them, to try and curtail that behavior- and those adjustments helped nothing.

Which then led me to explode on a number of occasions, in and out of his presence, at my absolute disgust at the situation and this living arrangement.

Why did I end up with this absolutely difficult and worthless animal, I groaned.

Recently, I have been thinking about my life, and also thinking about these animals I have now had for 13 years.

One morning a week or so ago, looking at the big one, the one I have burned with anger against on many occasions, and who has usually met me in those moments with uncomprehending eyes that then flick about looking for a place to hide, I remembered him as a very young cat, crying and sickly and uncomfortable, and I remembered that he was so vulnerable then- and that I largely got him because I empathized with his fragility.

And I got him because I wanted to give him a life.

And, in time, when he quit being what I wanted him to be, I began to release my affections for him in a steady way.

Looking at him, laying asleep as a big black blob on the carpet, I reflected that he is obese and obtuse and unpleasant and gross and oily, and so dang difficult, because he is still vulnerable. And I also recalled that he always responds hungrily when I pet him.

He still just wants and needs to be loved.

Standing in my bathroom observing him, my concentration slipped and I rotated and then peered at the mirror in front of me. Before me, I gazed at the balding pate and aging face and rounded middle-aged belly and splotch-stained shirt and the ringless left-hand and the unzipped fly on the pants of the man looking back at me.

I broke and quietly sobbed for a few moments.

I get it, God. I get it.

I will care for him better.

That’s how You are with difficult people.

And that’s how You ask me to be.

“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. ”
– Proverbs 12:10