Grenzy – A Feline Obituary

When I was four years old, a stray cat came into our home, and she never left. I remember Mum said we had to wait till Dad came home before we decided whether we could keep her or not. When we did indeed decide that she would stay, we found her a little basket, and put into it a pair of my trousers that had a hole in, so that she would have somewhere comfortable to sleep. This cat was called Bella (which I believe foreshadowed my sister’s Twilight obsession.)

Bella died a year later, but not before she had left us with five beautiful kittens: Athena, Maria, Gretel, Elvis, and Demeter. Gretel was “mine”, and she was named after Gretel from The Sound of Music (which I was obsessed with when I was five). Gretel went through a series of names, including Gwaup (pronounced Gwoop) and Grempseed (as in hempseed), and eventually became Grenzy, which she was known as for the rest of her life. Grenzy lived for 11 years, 4 months, 6 days, and 4 hours.

Recently, Grenzy hadn’t been well. She had lost so much weight and she had a permanent cold. She was emaciated, and she sneezed all the time, and she peed everywhere, and she was incredibly ill. She was put down yesterday, and we found out that she’d had a really bad case of cat flu.

I didn’t come to the vets with Mum and Dad. I could have, it wasn’t till after school was finished. But I didn’t want to. I’m a coward, and I didn’t want to see my cat die. I didn’t come outside when Mum and Dad buried her. I didn’t give her a cuddle before they took her to the vet. I’m a coward, and I hate myself for it. Yes, she was in a horrible condition when I last saw her, but that’s no excuse for my cowardice. Grenzy was my best friend when I was a child. I was the first human she saw when she was born, and I should have been there at the end, but I wasn’t, because I’m selfish.

Grenzy was the most diverse playmate I could have hoped for, but in retrospect, I think it was probably cat abuse. I carried Grenzy for the first sixth months of her life, and by “carried” I mean I held her upside down, carried her around in a bag, draped her around my shoulders, let her sit on my head. I once put her in a sandal so that she could “drive a car” up my sister’s back. She fell off Bethany’s (my sister’s) head. My grandmother once broke a shelf up into individual cradles for the kittens, and I dressed Grenzy and Demeter up in dolls’ dresses, and put them to bed in there. Grenzy was my baby, my best friend, my cat, and the first thing I loved completely whom I wasn’t related to.

Grenzy would feature heavily in the games I played. She was obviously romantically linked with the knitted Tom Kitten toy that my Dad’s auntie made me for my seventh birthday, and she was obviously a rival to Ty, my toy cat (who was also in a relationship with Tom Kitten). (My childhood games were scarily similar to some of the books I write), and she was the “mother” of half the china dolls I used to collect. The games involving the china dolls were very…disturbing (not just because they had a cat for a mother). Grenzy used to come into my room during the night, and I’d wake up to her sleeping on my head. Grenzy was my everything for so long.

But things changed. I grew up, and decided I didn’t want to be covered in cat fur all the time, and so I stopped cuddling her, stopped loving her quite as much as I used to. And on top of that, there were other cats. We gave most of the kittens away (except Elvis, who probably got sick of being pushed in and out the cat door whilst Dad said “Elvis has left the building”, and decided to leave). Bella died. We got a new cat, Henry, but he ran away after only two months. Henry was a complete legend; he had so much personality. He would lie, spread out, in the middle of my bed, so I would have to sleep half on the bed and half on the windowsill, and he’d stick his head in people’s armpits.

After Henry came William, and, later, Charlie. William is the most adorable, massive ball of fluffiness to ever exist. He’s a short-haired Persian who had to leave his previous home because he wasn’t very nice to the thirteen-year-old cat that he lived with. And so he became ours. I put my fingers into his cat-cage on the way home, and he licked them, and that’s when I fell in love with him. He’s cute and cuddly, and unbelievably grumpy, and he’s the squishiest, cutest thing ever. William took up some of the love that had been designated for Grenzy, and I don’t know how to forgive myself for that.

Then came Charlie, “The Ginger Whinger”, who never stopped meowing, and had a tendency to pee everywhere. Charlie didn’t get on with William, and after two years, we decided it was best for Charlie to go back to the animal rescue centre (“we” being Mum and Dad).

William and Grenzy lived in peace together for the rest of her life – some of their most adorable moments were when they would curl up on the same armchair, looking so incredibly cute. But Grenzy became more and more unwell, and yesterday, she was dead. Put down. Killed.

Grenzy was manipulative, possessive, controlling, and she wanted to be as close to people as they would allow; closer, even. But she was loving, also. She would curl up on people's laps, and purr, and dig her claws into them. She was so friendly, so lovely, and she's gone.

I don’t know how to deal with her being gone. I feel guilty – I wasn’t very kind towards her recently; I didn’t cuddle her, I didn’t stroke her, I got irritated when she tried to come in my room and sleep/sneeze on my bed. But I did love her; I still do, and that will last forever.

 Grenzy, the ultimate photo-bomber.

 William, my only remaining cat.

 Me and Grenzy, when we were young: