I desperately want a cat.

This isn’t anything new, per se, but the desire has increased to an unprecedented level in the past while. I realize that this is the longest I have ever gone without a cat. When my sister and I were born, my parents already had a cat, Satan. Then, when he had to be euthanized at the ripe old age of 18, we all vowed to wait a few months before getting another cat. We lasted 2 weeks before my parents went to the SPCA to get Sargie and he lived to be 19. In fact, I moved out while Sargie was still kicking around.

I moved to Halifax in August of 2005, and in January of 2006, I got Milo from my friend Nancy. Now, long-time readers will remember some of the stories about Milo and will know that he was one hell of an aggressive cat.

I never wrote about what happened with him here. It’s not that I didn’t want to; I couldn’t, at first, because it was too painful. And then there was just one thing or another, and well, we all know that I haven’t exactly been an updating guru of late.

In a nutshell: The thing with Milo is that he could be extremely loveable a good part of the time. The problem was that every so often, with little or no provocation, he would just turn on… well, usually me. If he started chewing away on the artificial Xmas tree and I dragged him out for the upteenth time, he would suddenly lunge at me again and again until Neal could grab him, put him in a room and close the door for a bit until he could calm down. I had long given up on brushing him after he bit me extremely hard on my arm one time. It just wasn’t worth it. If he was that dead-set against being brushed, then he could just deal with fur-balls, y’know?

But then, like I said, he could be just absolutely adorable. He come looking for me or Neal if we were in a different room. If I was home alone (and therefore no one would see), he would often get up on my lap for a bit to cuddle while watching TV. He waited outside our bedroom door for us to get up; even after I’d get up on the weekends to feed him and go back to bed, he would often run after me to try to get into the bedroom rather than eat because he just wanted to hang out (and MAN, that boy liked his food!). He liked to play hide-and-seek. Neal taught him “tricks”, such as to sit, give paw, or play dead to get treats.

But, y’know, we had to warn new people who came over: “Be careful - he can be really aggressive”. Whenever we’d have people over and Milo came into the living room, I would tense because although he didn’t want to miss out on anything, and although he would rub up against people’s legs, he was also likely to bite our guests.

I used to think about whenever Neal and I have a baby. I would imagine the baby being in the playpen in the living room while I went into the kitchen for something, and coming back to see Milo in the pen with the baby, and the thought scared me so much I felt sick. I knew the day would come when we would face a very difficult decision, but I figured we would give him the best home we could for as long as we could.

Then, last August, Neal was sailing and I had a busy day away from the house. I was at work all day, went for groceries, ate a quick supper at home, and then ended up going to the neighbours’ to hang out around their outdoor fire. I came home around 11, and I guess Milo was none too pleased to see me doing my usual routine for going to bed. I passed him in the hall, and out of nowhere, he lunged at my upper thigh and bit me hard enough to draw blood.

It didn’t get infected, but it was a bad bite. I knew this was it. We couldn’t keep going on like this.

This has already gone on longer than I intended, and I don’t really want to go into a huge amount of detail. Suffice it to say that I looked around for places he could go, a local vet tried to find him a place on a farm, but nothing worked. I eventually had to accept that I was probably going to have to euthanize him.

It tore me apart. I have NEVER cried so much for so many days in my life. It wasn’t fair; Milo had had a shitty start to his life, being taken away from his mother too early and then shifted from one home to another to another, having spent a lot of his early life before me locked in rooms. No fucking wonder he had problems.

I had talked to a coworker of mine, Karen, about Milo. She has volunteered at shelters and she is a Cat Lady (though she is married). She had… I think 9 cats and one dog in her house! Anyway, she asked around, but it was a no-go. She passed me in the hall one day and saw that I had been crying; I had just found out that my last farm possibility had said ‘no’. Seeing her made the tears well up in my eyes again, and I ended up going into the bathroom to lock myself in a stall and let myself have a good ol’ cry.

A minute later, Karen came into the bathroom.

“Listen, Amanda,” she said from the other side of the stall door, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take Milo for a couple of weeks and see how things go. If he gets along with my cats, then great, but if not, I’ll have to figure something out. But the deal is that you can’t be upset with me about any decision I have to make.” In other words, if it really didn’t work out, he would have to be euthanized. I would pay for it, but if I wanted her to, she would take him. I told her that I’d want to go with her.

It was the last chance I could give him, and god knows I gave that cat more chances than a lot of people would have. The next night, Neal (as he was home from sailing) and I brought Milo over to Karen’s. That was hard too; Milo was confused about his surroundings, especially the presence of so many cats, and he was growling and unhappy. We hung out with him for a bit, but then we had to leave. That, too, tore me apart.

But it’s all been for the best. He is able to have “cat fights” with the other cats, and they put each other in their place. Karen and her husband absolutely adore Milo, and Karen often regales me with stories about Milo. It’s not so bad now, but it did make me feel a little sad at first to hear these things, but only because I missed him.

A couple of Christmases ago, a girlfriend bought me a Xmas tree ornament of a cat holding a banner that said “Milo” on it. Last year, even though he wasn’t here, I put that ornament on my tree. And it will go on there again this year. Because no matter what, Milo will always have a special place in my heart.

And so, it has been over a year since I had a cat. I’ve been going on the Bide Awhile shelter website a few times a week to look at the cats there. I dropped a few “hints” to Neal about how I’m going to need a cat soon, and then recently I told him outright that after our honeymoon in January or February, we are getting a cat. Tonight I confessed that I’ve been going on the shelter website a lot lately.

I’d love to go out tomorrow and get one, but I feel like it might be a little selfish of me. After all, we’re going away for a week to Cuba in Jan-Feb, so I don’t know how fair that would be to a cat only starting to get used to us; suddenly he would be home alone a lot more and would have strangers coming to feed him.

Sigh.