The Onyx Glossary: Amber

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Amber: Death Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of my beloved and much-missed cat Amber. I don’t plan on talking about this at great length every year, but as this is the first year anniversary, I feel like I should at least say a few things that have been on my mind for awhile now and would like to get off my chest, and I’ll try not to rehash too many details I covered last year.

I suppose it’s human nature to second guess one’s choices, when looking back at things in retrospect. In hindsight, I will say now that I wish I hadn’t gone to work that day, that I had spent more of the last day by Amber’s side (of course, at the time, I had no way of knowing it would be the last day). It’s something that I know is silly to feel guilty about, as when she was alive no one spent more time with her than I did, but sometimes guilt transcends logic. And it wasn’t even as if I was gone all that long: I left at 4 PM, got to work around 5, got the call to come back home sometime after 6:30, made it back home by 7:10, was with her the last ten minutes before she died (really, it almost seemed as if she were holding off her own death while waiting for me to arrive). In the days afterwards, I would sometimes get panic attacks thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong that night... what if I had been stopped by a cop, or I had hit traffic, or my car had broken down? I know it’s silly to freak out about bad things that DIDN’T happen, but no one said the human mind is always rational.

One thing about that night that I remember is that when I got home my mom asked me if I wanted to have Amber put in my lap (at the time, she was in my mom’s lap). I said no, partly because she looked so fragile that I was afraid to move her, and also because I wasn’t sure if I were comfortable with the idea of her dying in my own lap. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice, and I’ve gone back and forth over this quite a bit. Amber spent so much of her life in my lap, that perhaps it would have been fitting for her to die on it. But after awhile I came to look at it from a different angle. It was my mother who made the choice to adopt Amber all those years ago. She was ultimately the person who brought Amber into our lives. So was it not proper symmetry that Amber died on her lap, at the end? What matters to me at least was that I WAS there for it, and though in all honesty Amber may have been too out of it to even be aware of that fact, perhaps on some level my very presence there and the sound of my voice registered with her and gave her some solace: or that after her death, when perhaps her soul exited her body, she saw me there, and knew that I hadn’t abandoned her in her last moments.

But maybe it’s pointless to self-torture the mind with questions that can’t be answered (in the mortal realm, that is). As I wrote last year, “So at least I got to say I was by her side when she died, that I got to see her breathe her last breath, that I was the first to notice she had died, and that she died at home, surrounded by her loved ones, in a warm place. So yes, my prayers were answered: it was indeed a good death, or as good as such a sad thing can possibly be.” And I still feel that way.

I won’t lie: she could often be ill-tempered, quick to anger, needy, a witch, a diva, and at times totally lived up to one of her nicknames (that I forgot to mention in my list of nicknames last year): Crabapple. She was also a beautiful cat with a complicated personality and a lot of attitude and I loved her with all my heart... and as demanding she could be at times, whenever she would curl up onto my lap and gaze up at me with a look of adoration and contentment in her face, all her foibles were forgotten. Even though she remains a part of me, and even though every now and then I’ll see her fleetingly in my dreams, I still miss her terribly. When she died, a little piece of me died as well.

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

—Queen Elizabeth II

Saturday, December 10, 2022

RIP Amber (2007-2022)

It saddens me to report the death of one of our longtime pets, our beloved cat Amber, who some of you who have known me awhile knew well, and also knew was so very close to my heart and soul. At the time of her death she was 16+ years old. She’d been on the decline since March of this year (which was when she began throwing up her food more often, along with losing much weight), but things escalated very quickly over the last few days.

My mother adopted Amber from a shelter on April 19^th, 2007 (prior to that, Amber had been living homeless on the streets of Providence): I think she was around a year or younger at the time. I can still remember the first day she was brought home, and I saw that pointy little face staring out at me from between the bars of the cat carrier: my gut told me then that here was a unique animal. She was a female tortoiseshell/calico, a breed of cats known for being VERY demanding, high maintenance and possessing a diva-like attitude (though we didn’t know this when we adopted her). And boy, did she live up to the stereotype: when she wanted anything (be it food, water, attention, and so on), she was sure to aggressively let you know it in a vocal or physical way, and while she didn’t mind being petted, it was only on HER terms: pet her one time too often and watch out! She had a most curious face: when she was annoyed, it would often narrow to a point, but when she was happy, it would assume a very round and friendly shape (hence why we would oft refer to her “pointy face” and “round face”). More so than anyone else in our house, she attached to me very quickly, and tended to be way more patient with me than she was with almost anyone else at our home. It probably helped that I let her stay on my lap very often, almost every day we had her in fact (with the exception of when we were on vacation or things like that). A lot of my published books were typed with her napping on my lap, actually. Of all the pets we’ve ever had, she was probably the one I was closest to, and vice-versa, so needless to say, these last few months (and the last few days in particular) have been gut-wrenching, even though I’ve been bracing myself for it for awhile now.

As befitting a cat of her melodramatic nature, her death had, to me, an equally dramatic nature. We knew she was on her way out today when she stopped drinking water and was barely able to walk (she had quit eating food a few days ago), but I still wasn’t 100% sure that today, December 10^th, would be the day she died. For the last few months, every day, I’ve been touching the statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast that I keep atop my computer desk and asking her to keep Amber alive for another day (along with my prayers to other entities, because when it comes to praying it never hurts to cover as many bases as you can). Today, breaking protocol, I said, “Bast, if it truly is her time to go, please take her, but give her a good death.” I also wished that if she would die it would be at home and not at the vet: because she had been a hardy cat all her life, she had only ever been to the vet a few times (only like 4 times really) in her 16+ years of life, and the last time she went (in July of this year), it had really traumatized her for a few days afterwards. About an hour before I left for work tonight, I spent some time in the family den with her on my lap (the family den being pretty much the place where she’s spent most of her time these last few months, when she wasn’t upstairs that is, upstairs being a place she would go almost every day because that’s where my room is: the last day she went upstairs was Thursday, after that the stairs were too much for her). As I stroked her fur I told her that I loved her, but that if it was her time to go, I understood, and that we would always be together in spirit. Then I went to work. I figured that was safe to do because I was working a shorter shift. But about halfway through my shift I got a call from home from my dad, saying that her condition had taken a turn for the worse and that I should consider coming home quickly. Explaining to my supervisor I had a family emergency, I promptly left work and headed straight home, though I had to stop for gas on the way as my tank was nearly empty. I got home at 7:10 or so and found Amber in the den on my mother’s lap, still barely breathing but very out of it. Not 10 minutes later, around 7:19-7:20 PM, my mom and I saw her take a big breath. We were talking about something or other after that, then looking down at Amber and noticing something amiss I asked my mom, “Has Amber stopped breathing?” Sure enough, she had. A few bodily spasms followed, but she had died. So at least I got to say I was by her side when she died, that I got to see her breathe her last breath, that I was the first to notice she had died, and that she died at home, surrounded by her loved ones, in a warm place. So yes, my prayers were answered: it was indeed a good death, or as good as such a sad thing can possibly be. I know she was in a stupor her last few hours and was probably not totally aware of her surroundings and what was going on, but in some ways it really did seem like she waited to die until I was there, that on some deeper level that transcends the merely physical she was aware that I had come back to see her off, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.

What more can I say? Amber enjoyed playing with her catnip toys, looking at the birds outside and clacking her jaws at them (her prior circumstances notwithstanding, she was a lifelong indoor cat), drinking water from the sink or tub faucet, climbing into boxes and bags (no matter how big or small), sunning herself in sunbeams/patches of sun, scratching at the old basketball jerseys on the doorknob of my bedroom door, burrowing under blankets in the winter months (or sprawling out on a heater), climbing onto high surfaces, getting stroked underneath her neck with a ruler or pen, playing with her fellow pet “siblings,” and, more than almost anything else, curling up into a ball on my lap and gazing up into my eyes with a look of content fondness on her face before drifting off to sleep... ah, that is a look that I will never forget and which I already deeply miss. As with many of our other pets, Amber had a variety of nicknames over the course of her life (some of which fell out of fashion as the years went by) including: Paris, the Diva, Amberlina, Amberlina Jolie, Ambient, Tortie, Khaleesi, Peanut Butter Cup, Checkerboard Face (due to her distinctive facial markings around her nose/mouth), Pointy Face, the Old Lady, the Bag Lady, the Crone, the Buzzard, the Gargoyle, the Old Catfish, the Loudmouth Bass, the Little Bit, the Little Bitch, the Queen of Sheba, Lap Cat, Jersey Cat, Cranky, Pippy, and Pippy Longstocking. A bit of trivia I’ve never shared: my mother wanted to name her Penny. Amber leaves behind two siblings, Spencer the cat, and Sydney the dog. She joins in Heaven her “brother” cat Cooper and “brother” dogs Griffin and Joey. She was loved and will be greatly missed.

I’m reminded of a popular Sunday School hymn that I recently came across, reprinted as it was in the book CURIOUS MYTHS OF THE MIDDLE AGES:

“Shall we meet beyond the river,

Where the surges cease to roll,

Where in all the bright For-ever

Sorrow ne’er shall press the soul?

Shall we meet in that blest harbour

When our stormy voyage is o’er?

Shall we meet and cast the anchor

By the fair celestial shore?

Shall we meet with many loved ones

Who were torn from our embrace?

Shall we listen to their voices