My wife's cat has gone to the litter box in the sky.  Those of you who are faithful readers of my blog know of the long tortured relationship I had with my wife's cat.  For those of you, who do not know, I'll give you a little background.  When I first met Mrs. Commissioner 7 years ago she had three cats.  All three of them were given as gifts to the engineer who designed the Great Wall of China.  Talk about winning a booby prize? 

The first cat, Chelsea, actually liked me.  Mrs. Commissioner said she knew I was 'the one', when Chelsea liked me, because Chelsea didn't like anyone.  Chelsea was an old grey cat, who lived under the bed, and only came out to hiss at people.  Chelsea went to visit the litter box in the sky, the day after Thanksgiving, approximately 6 years ago.  I had no issues with Chelsea.  She used the litter box, she rarely left the underside of the bed, and I think she would have tried to claw someone's eyes out had someone tried to attack  us.

The second cat, Fooshie, didn't like me, but he was mostly an outside cat.  Fooshie was an independent sort of soul, would run off for days at a time, and come home to eat.  Fooshie was voted most likely to have fleas forever by his high school class , and a little known Fooshie fact, is that he taught Andrew Zimmern how to eat all those weird foods.  Fooshie too, was kind enough not to wear out his welcome.  One day, I'm outside grilling steaks, drinking an ice-cold beer, and Fooshie walked up the driveway after one of his 3 day vacations from the family with a golf ball sized tumor right behind his eye.  I immediately took poor Fooshie to the vet.  That was 4 years ago.  Keep in mind, of the three cats my wife had, both Fooshie and Chelsea were younger than Dacquiri A. Cat.

Perhaps Dacquiri hated me because I took the other 2 cats to the vet.  Perhaps he hated me because I didn't like him, and didn't hide it very well.  Dacquiri was approximately 6,000 years old.  He hadn't used a litter box in years.  He was stone deaf, and blind in his right eye.  He didn't have most of his teeth.  He vomitted approximately 400 times a day.  He ruined all of our outside furniture. We had to replace the carpet because of him.  I'm going to miss pressure washing the pool deck every Saturday.  Dacquiri caused my beloved Crimson Tide to lose their final two games last year by hexing my blanket (see prior blog).  I have been rooting for Dacquiri's death for quite some time.

Mrs. Commissioner was out of town for a few days, and I was left to tend to her beast.  I noticed the cat was leaving strange things in his food dish, and was otherwise not seeming like his evil self.  He didn't seem like he wanted to eat me. I took him to the vet on Thursday, and the vet checked him over.  She deemed him senile and dizzy, but that he 'had a good 6-8 months left'.  The next day, Mrs. Commissioner and I get the kids in bed, and we decide to get in the hot tub.  We pour some adult beverages, and open up the door to go to the hot tub.  Mrs. Commissioner lets out a blood-curtling scream, I sincerely hope NOBODY on earth ever has to hear, ever.  Right there in our swimming pool was Dacquiri A. Cat doing the dead-cat float in the swimming pool.  Mrs. Commissioner jumps into the pool and pulls the cat out.  She hands me the cat, who weighed three times his normal size, because he was filled with water.  I put the cat down on the ground, and Mrs. Commissioner is screaming, FIX HIM, FIX HIM!!! 

I do not do well with women screaming at me.  I do not do well with women crying either.  When I hear screaming and crying, my instincts are to make it stop, immediately.  So, Mrs. Commissioner is screaming FIX HIM, so, like the good lifeguard that I used to be, I started performing CPR on the cat.  After about a minute or so of this, I declare to Mrs. Commissioner, "Sweetie, he's gone."  She screams, HE CAN'T BE, FIX HIM!!!  So, back to the CPR.  I perform CPR on the cat for 10 minutes or so, to the background of hysterical crying, and I'll be damned if that cat didn't pick his head up and meow.  I'm not kidding.  This cat came back to life.  Needless to say, we never did make it into the hottub.

We stayed up with the cat for a better part of the night.  I'm not sure if he had a stroke, which caused hiim to fall into the pool, or if he suffered brain damage from being in the pool.  In any event, poor Dacquiri never really could walk again.  On Saturday morning, we fed him breakfast, and Mrs. Commissioner brushed him real good and said her goodbyes, and I took him to the vet. R.I.P Dacquiri A. Cat.