Bruiser

A few posts back I mentioned our first cat, Bruiser. I think that since we have so many cats, I will dedicate a post to each one of them, past and present. They won't be all in a row, I will get to each of them eventually.

We got married and moved into our first apartment together in June 1994. I think by July, Bruiser had adopted us. He showed up on our doorstep (we have cat magnets hidden inside our bodies, I guess) with a smaller black cat. We called him Bruiser because he looked like he could kick the smaller cat's butt. But he was a very sweet cat, and when you picked him up, he would give you a hug.

We fed him outside for awhile, but of course, he wormed his way inside at some point. We bought a disposable litter box, which I think he used only one time, if that. He would hold it until we let him outside, but he never wanted to go back out, we almost always had to force him to go out so there wouldn't be any accidents. We used to call him in at night; we lived at the bottom of a slope, the top of which was the parking lot. He used to take naps up by the parking lot, and when we called his name, he would perk up and start running down the hill, just like the Ingalls kids at the beginning of Little House on the Prairie.

Bruiser stayed with us for the entire 4 years we were in that apartment. Along the way, we found out from a lady in the building next to us that he was born in the complex, and they all called him Gizmo, after the Gremlin. She had been taking him to the vet, which we then took over, since he was pretty much an indoor cat at that point. When we began planning to move to DE, we asked the woman if we could take him with us, and she said that was fine. It was NOT fine with Bruiser.

We got another cat to take with us to DE, Sunny, from a set of strays that my parents had in their basement. We introduced the two of them in our NJ apartment, and Bruiser hated Sunny on sight. We thought that if we brought Sunny to DE first, Bruiser wouldn't be able to be so mad at him. Wrong! They fought constantly, and sometimes you didn't want to stick your hand in that writhing mass of feline bodies. It was scary!

I think that the combination of Sunny and the move to DE (which included becoming a permanent indoor cat, we were afraid that he would take off if we let him out) took its toll on his health. He would just mope a lot and wouldn't play or fight with Sunny that much. We started to let him out on the balcony, hoping that would make him feel better, but he couldn't really go anywhere, and he could still see Sunny. He developed heart problems and had to be put in an oxygen tank a few times (which the vet said cats don't usually come out of). Then we moved again, but we were still afraid to let him out for fear that he would run away. At least he had more room to get away from Sunny, because we now lived in our own home. But then Bruiser started marking his territory, so to speak. We took him to the vet and found out that he had developed diabetes. Twice after that, I came home from work and found him sprawled on the floor, not able to move. He had gone into diabetic shock because his insulin wasn't quite figured out yet. It was very scary, because I thought he was dead both times.

He got a little better after he got the correct amount of insulin. Bu he started peeing out of the litter box again, and we had to isolate him in our upstairs walk-in closet. He had pills he had to take in addition to his insulin, but he was very bad about taking them. He was constantly spitting them out. When I though he had taken the pill, I would come back later and find it on the floor. We started mashing it up and putting it in wet food, then tuna, then canned salmon. He eventually stopped wanting to eat any of that, and we had to face the fact that it was time for him to go. We had to put a cat to sleep the year before, a stray named Hilary, and she was the first. It was very hard for both of us. They asked us if we wanted to stay with her while it was done, but we couldn't do it. I regret that with every fiber of my being.

So we stayed with Bruiser while the vet put him to sleep. Again, it was very hard on both of us. Sarah was very attached to him, and I hated that we had to let him go. But he was miserable and not eating, it was the best thing for him. We had him cremated and we took some of his ashes back to NJ. There was a recessed, walled in area in front of our apartment that had a large tree in it. Bruiser used to nap in there, and he would scratch on the railroad ties on the top. We put some of his ashes near the tree so he could be with us and in one of his old favorite spots.

I know this is kind of sad, but it seems like the sad stuff is all that I remember, except for one thing. In our first apartment, we had two bookcases that were a few feet from the wall. Sarah's collection of Barbies and salt and pepper shakers were on these bookcases, and we kept our comic book boxes behind them. One time, Bruiser was in a very, very weird mood. I heard him rustling behind the bookcases and came over to see what he was doing. (I am already laughing, but I don't know if I will be able to make you see this.) I approached the bookcases just as Bruiser came up to the top from the back. He had a wild look in his eyes, and he flailed his front paws for purchase, which knocked all of the Barbies off the top shelf. Then he fell back down with a thump, and eventually ran into the bedroom. I swear, I was laughing for ten minutes, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I only wished that Sarah could have seen it.

We both still miss him.

ADDENDUM: Sarah let me know that the vet told us that it was time to let Bruiser go, I had forgotten about that (or I blocked it out). We didn't drag his life out just to save our feelings, which is how it sounds.