Chesterfield - A Tribute and Sad, Heart Broken Goodbye

This is a hard post to write, but one that it very important. My very beloved Chesterfield passed away on Thursday and we are heartbroken. She was my little "Kitten" angel baby.

Before we had kids I volunteered at an animal rescue agency. On March 27, 1988 we received a call from a frantic woman who only spoke Spanish. I could recognize enough of what she said to send my husband to her house with a box. We had no idea what was in store for us.

Larr arrived home with not an animal, per say. What he came home with was a placenta (yeah - you read that right!) with three kittens inside. The vet told me that some animals instinctively know when they will not survive the birthing process so they push out the reproductive organs in a safe place, hopeful that their young will make it. It was a dicey process. Each of the three kittens were only about 3" long. They were wriggling around and were tangled up in their umbilical cords. I delivered the first two easily. The third was smaller and more tangled. It took me more than an hour to get her undone. By that time she had her cord around her neck and her rear left ankle. (We would later figure out that she had suffered slight brain damage from this event.) Being the animal lover that I am I already had kitten formula and a kitten bottle on hand. I also had a picnic basket with a heating pad, fuzzy cloth and tick-tock clock at the ready. The first two kittens only lasted a few hours. I buried them with love and cloud covered cloth. I then poured all of my hope in to the remaining runt. That night I would wake about every 40 minutes to check on her, feed her and tell her how special she was. Much to everyone's amazement, she survived - not only that - she thrived! She was my constant companion for the first few months of her life. I worked at a treatment facility and the kids loved her. She needed to be fed every 20-30 minutes so my kids tried to be the best so that they could feed her. She grew until she was the size of a regular 4 month old cat and then she got no larger. I believe that is why her mother could not survive her birth - she must have been simply too tiny to do it. As Chesterfield grew we found that she was lovey to me and feisty to others. Once when our friend Greg came over she was so taken aback that Chesterfield climbed up his leg, hissing all the way. Our then one year old Winston was taken by her and helped raise Chesterfield. They became the very best buddies. But I digress. When Chesterfield was about 2 weeks old we found that her back paw had dried up, becoming shriveled and the thigh above it was infected. The vet cautioned me not to fall in love. Chesterfield only had a 1 in 1, 000 chance to make it. The vet lanced the infected leg and the dried up foot shoot off like it had been fired from a rifle. She, of course, healed nicely. She adored me. She only had to look at me and she would begin to pur. Winston and I were her world. She was soft and funny and insistent. If she wanted to be held she would do whatever it took to make sure that it happened. For much of her life I was the only one who could touch her. Others would get a sure and heavy hissing. As she aged she became more tolerant, allowing a few others to touch her. Sometimes we would have to trick her so that the kids could pet her. Being a cat, she could not count and did not realize that I had only two hands. If I was holding her with her looking over my shoulder the kids could get in a few lovely pats. When she discovered our trick we got a firm hiss every time. You had to be extra careful of her power leg. Since she was a three legged kitty she developed a very unique style to getting around, which included a lot of pivoting. When she needed to scratch on that side of her body she would come to me and pump her stump as if she had a leg. I would then supply to nails and help her satisfy the itch. Sometimes she would get the stump going so fast that it would cause her to fall over. If I wanted her all I had to do was call "Kitten, Kitten!" and she would come running. I think she saw herself as a kitten her entire life. One of her favorite things to do was to groom me. She tried to clean my "fur" but with such long hair I had to stop her before she gaged herself. She also loved to clean my ears. She would purr loudly while she cleaned my ears. I would have to place my finger over parts to prevent her from licking off my skins.

On Wednesday evening I was going to work in my craft room, but decided to read with the kitten instead. She must have purred for 6 hours straight. The next day we could see that she was slipping away. Our beloved Winston had been her constant companion. He died of old age last spring. Since then she had become more friendly, allowing, even asking the kids to hold her. We had expected that she would have passed away after Winston was gone. Each day that she was still with us was a blessing. I secretly worried that I would come home and find her dead. Thursday we found that she was slipping away. She had stopped eating and drinking. She had not used her cat box in quite a while. In the morning I heard a soft chirpy meow when I passed by the chair she snuggled under. I picked her up and held her for most of the day. Sometimes I agreed to share her with the kids. By late afternoon she was mostly limp, with sudden fits of enough strength to pick up her head, look into my eyes and meow. I could hardly stand it. I kissed her, petted her and told her how lucky we were to have her. She knew she was very loved. I knew her time was short so Ethan and I decided to hold her until she passed away. She passed away at about 12:30 a.m. She made a few furtive noises then I could feel the electrical pulses in her body fade. Earlier in the evening her breathing would become shallow, then it would get stronger, more like she was asleep. In my heart I had hoped that she was only ill. In my mind I knew she was leaving us. In March she would have been 20 human years old. After she died I continued holding and petting her. I wanted to try and remember everything about her. I wanted to imprint how she felt to hold. I rubbed her sweet little feet that she crossed in such a dainty way. I tried to memorize the feeling of her extra soft fur right behind her ears. My heart was breaking. Like Winston, Chesterfield had been part of my entire adult life. She had been one of my very first, very loved pets. Eventually I had to put her down. Ethan and I cried for a long time. All of us are very sad. We will miss our little, lovely kitten.