Sweet Yet Sour

So Sorry Gink

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

Mike’s right, Gink didn’t like people very much.  Okay, she hated people, dogs, other cats and probably Mother Teresa.  But I feel the need, since it was I who made the decision to have her put down yesterday, to make the case that I tried to give her a good life despite her nasty temperment.

I adopted Gink 10 years ago from the humane society because I lived alone, didn’t date much or have many friends and I wanted someone to talk to at home.  Having had Siamese cats all my life, I figured that I could find one that needed a home that would talk back.  She looked sweet (in the cage), she was definitely conversational, and she was 8, so I thought she might have difficulty finding a home at her age.  Her original name was Mickey, but I tossed that and named her after the cat in the “Dorrie the Little Witch” children’s books that I was read as a child.

Gink and I would sit on the couch and watch t.v. together, she would eat potato chips and the remains of my bowl of Tin Roof Sundae, and she would tell me about her day.  She was like that, it was all about her; she never asked about my day.

A few months after I got her I discovered that she had a surface ulcer on her right eye.   I spent loads of money taking her to a special eye vet every two weeks and putting eye drops into her eye.  This was the beginning of Gink’s real hatred of people – she hated that vet and the appointments became increasingly violent on Gink’s part.  When it came time to spend $900 on Gink’s eye surgery, I happily drove the 70 miles to Denver with the cat in the middle of winter.  I unhappily drove home in a blizzard with a cat that hissed and spat green stuff at me for the six hours that it took to get home in the blinding snow.

Gink and I still got along pretty well, except for a little biting, until I started to date more and got more friends.  Then she turned on me and everyone else.  I have to admit though, I did use her once to get rid of an allergic boyfriend that I wanted to break up with anyway.  He left crying, but I think it was mostly because I put Gink on the couch behind him…

When I moved in with my sister, who had two cats already, Gink’s attitude problem became even more clear.  She really didn’t like not being the only one in the house with paws, and since her previous owner had declawed her, she used her teeth to express her displeasure, biting everyone and every thing in her path.

Still, I continued to have, at least every once in a while, a cat who would nicely sit on my lap or sleep on my bed (although always directly in the middle of the bed).  But once Mike and I got married it was clear that she didn’t like Mike and wasn’t happy about the other person getting my attention.

So when Anna arrived it was not a surprise that the first thing that Gink did was pee in the bag that I brought home from the hospital. (There went the copy of “Eat, Pray, Love” that Rena had loaned me and that I thought I would have the time and concentration to read during and/or after labor – silly girl!)  Gink then proceeded to pee on all of the bathroom rugs, until we closed all the doors to the bedrooms.  When I talked to the vet about the problem he said, “Well, Gink has always been a ‘difficult’ cat, and this is typical of cats with behavior problems.”  But he offered no real solution, except to keep her out of the bedrooms.

Gink also increased her screaming after Anna arrived.  Generally she would stand right outside Anna’s room and scream for a long time until we told her to be quiet, which usually only lasted a few minutes.  She would start right back up again and was able several times to wake the sleeping baby.

The other day, when I left the door to Anna’s room open for only a minute while I was washing Anna’s face, Gink got in the room and peed on a baby blanket on the floor (the blanket that we won) and of course on the carpet beneath.

Fearing that eventually she would pee everywhere that smelled like baby and knowing that this would soon be the whole house, I made a plea to all of my local cat loving friends to see if anyone would take the cat.  After two weeks of waiting to see if anyone would volunteer and getting no response, I made the appointment to have Gink put down.

I’m sorry to Mike, who had to take her to the vets, since I know it wasn’t easy, which is why I made him go instead of going myself.  Before he left, I held her tightly, cried, told her how sorry I was and then put her in the carrier with some potato chips.  I hope that in cat heaven Gink gets someone to love her all to herself and that she forgives me for this, because unfortunately, Anna comes first.