Wine for Remembering Kitten

This week marks three years since I put my wonderful kitten to sleep. She was seriously the sweetest cat I have ever met. She was the cat who made even cat-haters fall in love with her. Case in point was my husband, who really didn't like cats at all, but once she came to live with us, he was smitten.


Here they are in one of their cuddly moments. As you might be able to tell from this photo, kitty was a little on the plumptious side, with one of those terrific swinging kitty bellies. She loved to play fetch and to be chased, and she would run run run, belly swinging in the breeze, and then flop down on her side, so someone could pat the belly in all its glory.

Part of what made her so sweet was how un-cat-like she was. She was not aloof and independent, and she wasn't schizoid, the way some cats are. She never suddenly lashed out and scratched you for no apparent reason the way most cats will, which was a good thing, since she was also diabetic and had to be stabbed twice a day with needles.

Pretty much all she wanted to do was curl up on your lap and sleep. She did like to play and fetch, like I said. She liked to hide behind doors and play peek-a-boo; if you didn't play fetch with her when she wanted, she would meow until you did; or else, as she did one night with me and Steve, she would go get her little mouse and bring it in to where we were watching tv and then meow. And brushing, my god she loved being brushed. The second anyone picked up that brush she would start squeaking and run after you. That was how Steve first won her over, with the power of the brush. She would purr like mad, and then jab her face into it. It was hard to imagine that it didn't hurt, she rammed her face into it with quite a bit of force, but it seemed to delight her. Eventually, she would work herself into such a brush-loving frenzy she would start biting the brush, like she was just so excited she didn't know what to do with herself.

She bonded with my parents, who, of course, wound up taking care of her for a time (it must just fill parents with dread when their kids say they are getting a pet, since they must just know it means that at some point that pet will become theirs). She and my dad had a whole ritual of television watching and cuddling. My dad is obsessed with watching financial programs, and he was convinced that the kitty would lift up her head whenever she heard a particularly good stock tip.

There are so many funny kitten stories, but I won't bore you with them. I will just share one final thing she used to do that always made me laugh: the post-poop dash. She would do her business, spend 10 minutes loudly stirring up the cat litter to cover it (yet still somehow only managing to cover about half of it), and then she would hop out of the litter box and sprint from one end of the apartment to the other, belly swinging wildly. That poop must have really been weighing her down, because she certainly seemed happy to get rid of it. You could practically hear her shouting "I'm free! I'm free!!"


One final picture. This was taken in the last few months of her life. She's a bit cranky at this moment, because we just had to clean her ears. I believe she was plotting how to poop in my pillowcase. She didn't do it, thankfully, but I think you'll agree she was definitely thinking about it.

Because of how sweet she was, I told Steve I thought she was a marshmallow in a kitty's body. Steve accurately pointed out that she was more like a kitty in a marshmallow body. How right he was...

So let's drink a toast to my sweet kitten with a sweet dessert wine. This Calera Dessert Viognier Mount Harlan 2006 from California is wonderfully sweet without being cloying, full of rich, warm peach, nectarine, honeysuckle and jasmine notes. It would be wonderful with dark chocolate, or a light strawberry shortcake (maybe one where the shortcake has a little lemon or orange zest in it) or peach cobbler.

To kitten...may I pat the swinging belly again one day...