Mecca, aka Mie-Jie-jie is in the cat hospital right now. I noticed that she’s been real skinny lately, and I attributed it at first to finicky eating. Not so.

Mecca has hyperthyroidism and is in the initial stages of liver failure. It is fixable through surgery, but my oldest daughter, now ten, was going to die if we didn’t take care of it. It’s going to cost a lot, but I can always make more money.

I can’t make another Mecca.

Things About Mecca:

• She has greeny brown eyes just like me. And a brown fleck in her right eye. Just like me.
• She is petite and feminine, and crosses her front feet sometimes when she sleeps on her stomach.
• When she sleeps on her back, one back foot hangs in the air, and when it starts to slowly fall, she raises it back up again.
• If I cry, she climbs up to comfort me.
• She will clean any kitty who holds still long enough.
• After the doctor took a syringe full of blood out of her little shaved neck, she stood up, shook her head, licked her lips, and climbed off the table into my lap, purring.
• If you wake her up from a nap, she makes a purry chirping noise to greet you. Even if you just walked back into the room.
• When I come home she follows me from room to room until I sit down and climbs up in my lap, purring, drooling, rolling around over and over in a mini-ecstasy of happiness.
• When you get out of the shower, she will lick the shower water off your leg. She waits on the toilet seat for just this purpose.
• She tries to protect the other kitties. If you pretend to mew, she will come trotting into the room to see what’s wrong.
• She cannot resist moving string, canned cat food, lunchmeat, or music. If you sing, or listen to music on the radio, she will come over to share it.
• When she’s hungry, she will pickpickpick at the corner of a piece of paper until you go feed her. At 3 AM, 6PM, whatever time she’s hungry. She knows it works.
• Somewhere in her skills inventory there was once light-swtiching and door opening. She doesn’t do that anymore.
• She massages stuffed animals and drools, drawn back into kittenhood by the feeling of soft fuzziness under her paws. She will stepstep stepstep and purr like a chainsaw, until she’s satisfied some primal urge. Then she wanders off to do her kitty business.
• She can also open cabinets with her little paw, but she’s been in our cabinets lately, and doesn’t want to bother tripping over stuff.
• One of her paws has an extra toe flap, where the vet who declawed her ten years ago messed up in stitching the foot back together. It’s soft and cute, and I love it.
• She has this soft downy fur on the insides of her paws, and I love to pet it with just my fingertip. I marvel every time at the delicacy of those bones, so light and airy, and she always lets me pet them, though some cats hate having their feet touched.
• Under her chin there’s a soft, beautiful apricot patch of fur that’s fuzzy and wuzzy and light. It was shaved this afternoon so the doctor could take blood from her. Her little neck looked so frail and thin under that papery skin. As if she were starving to death. I wanted to save a little patch of that fur, just in case (oh God), but it was swept off the table into the trash. I hope they save my little girl.

She always has this wise look on her face. She forgives immediately, provided there’s ample room for her to jump up on the bed, and I know she will forgive me for this operation I have to give her.

I am going to miss her tonight, and her sweet purring presence on the bed, our nightly ritual of jumping and petting and purring and settling into sleep. No one will massage the sheepy tonight. God help us.