The Life of Pi

The last thing that Pi did was crawl, in seeming surrender, out of his cat carrier about 6 feet to the front hall in front of the closet, next to the trash can. He became comatose and remained so till he died about 9:00PM. That was Thursday, November 20, 2003. The vet put in an appearance about 2 hours before that. There was nothing he could do. I guess Pi died while I was talking about him to Rene who called. When I checked on him at 9:20PM, his heart had stopped. I took a cardboard box of books, emptied out the books, and placed Pi in the box, covering him with a clean, white, terrycloth towel. Pi had always been afraid of black, plastic trash bags. I could not put him in one of those. The next day, with the help of friends, I transported Pi to those who could cremate his body. Now I have his ashes in a small wooden box on my bed.

In the beginning, Pi was not my favorite. Num-Num was my first cat, a female, domestic shorthair of the tuxedo type with a pink nose, whom I loved deeply, who passed away in August 1985. I tried to get over my loss but after three months I was lonely and miserable. My mother noted this and while I visited her in Harrisburg, PA, she insisted we visit the Humane Society to pick out a cat around the Thanksgiving holiday.

There were only two cats being offered for adoption and they were in adjacent cages on a front table. In the left cage was a beautiful, gray cat about 8 weeks old, who was very calm, dainty, and perhaps sleepy. In the right cage was a male cat about the same age who had the markings of Num-Num except the nose was black at the tip. He was very active and attentive to my mother and me. I thought she, the gray, was very beautiful, but my mother said that he, the tuxedo, looked just like Num-Num, but I had already decided that I did not want a cat that looked like my beloved one - so, there was a deadlock.

Finally, I seemed to become resolute about taking the gray, but wait - the tuxedo was crawling up the side of his cage in a last-ditch effort to be noticed. That determined it. I took both. I didn't have the heart to say no to a being so stubborn to live. Now we were a new family - the gray cat, the tuxedo cat, my mother, and I. But the gray cat, whom I later named Gwen, was my favorite - my first choice.

The name, Gwen, just came to me. It was thus an easy choice. But I had trouble naming the second-choice cat. Nothing seemed to come to me. But the tuxedo's behavior was distinctive-he kept moving around in circles to a degree that I had never noticed in my other two cats. When I was brooding on the name problem it suddenly dawned on me. Pi! The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter! So, that settled that. He would be called Pi.

Unlike my other two cats, Pi was a talking cat. I called him the Big Talker, or Big Talking Cat. I gave Pi many names. If you asked him a question, he meowed. When I talked to my mother on the phone, I would ask him questions and he would meow into the phone. My mother delighted in that. And of course when he wanted something, he meowed.

During the first few years Pi resented being a second-class cat. He used the wall-to-wall carpeting as his scratching post; in fact he did many things that labeled him as a nuisance. When he became aggressive and bullying to Gwen that was the straw that for me broke the "camel's back." I raged after him, picked him up by the neck and was about to strangle him when he went limp and let out the most pitiable cry I had ever heard an animal make. I stopped. "My baby. My baby..." And from that moment, which I was never able to forget, he was my favorite.

Pi and I had a new relationship - I gave him copious amounts of affection - and he became a model pet. He learned to come to the sound of his name without fear because now being called meant only good things for him. I learned that Pi enjoyed athletic things. He liked to catch rubber bands, or rubbly bands as the two of us called them. I would go to the end of the long hall and he would crouch low at the other end. The object of the game was to shoot rubber bands past him without his catching them. Of course, I had to give him a fair shot. It was rare that he did not catch one. When I had shot my entire load of rubbly bands, we would exchange ends of the hall and do it all over again.

Pi was quite intrigued by the properties of rubbly bands. One day when I didn't notice him I crept through the apartment hoping to surprise him at what he was doing. I peered into the kitchen and there he was fumbling with a thin rubber band on the floor. He would stretch it, loosen it, stretch it again, and finally - it flew! About 2 to 3 feet! He could shoot rubber bands! Now I knew I had an exceptionally smart cat.

Another example of using tools that Pi did was playing the jouster. I used to get packages in the mail that were secured with these plastic straps that were tough and somewhat inflexible. They were great for cat toys. One day I caught Pi playing the medieval jouster on his horse using his lance. Pi had the strap in his mouth so that it extended straight out before him like a lance. He would charge at things and stab them with the 'lance.' He would run the tip of the 'lance' along the baseboard and delight when the tip would catch in a crack. Then he would try to ram the 'lance' in farther.

Pi was also the music connoisseur. I played a classical music station all day at first, and then, in the closing years, day and night. Pi was used to it. When I left the house, I left the lights on with the stereo and the radio playing. Pi never complained. The only time I shut off the music was to watch TV in the evening. Once I learned from my mother that Pi cried when I left the apartment. I could never let my baby cry.

The years breezed by for the Gelatt family - years of play for Gwen and Pi. My mother used to drive down often from Middletown, PA to spend the weekend. Pi loved Mom but was very respectful. It was a nearly idyllic existence. But eventually things went wrong. I lost my secure job and had to spend a lot of energy finding work. Near the end of 1997, mother was hospitalized and this was the beginning of a number of hospitalizations. She was never able to visit us again and Gwen and Pi never saw her again. Then in a sad parting, Gwen passed away from cancer on St. Patrick's Day, Friday, March 17, 2000. Now Pi was alone except for me. I felt so sorry for him. Mom and I still talked long distance on the phone every day and I would let Pi talk. But in February 2001, Mom suffered a stroke while she was undergoing a minor operation in Texas. This was the end of our contact. Mom passed away in a hospital in Texas on Wednesday, June 13, 2001. Pi must have suffered even more because then his only remaining contact was grieving for his mother and for Gwen.

Pi seems, in 2001, to have entered his old age that is the last eighth of a cat's life. He lost a lot of weight and was no longer a 10-lb cat but an 8-lb cat. He also started to have thyroid trouble. He became a very picky eater and I struggled to find food that he would eat. I used to call him 'Bacon Baby' because often bacon was the only food he would eat reliably. He refused his thyroid medication strenuously and reluctantly I ended its use. Later when he refused bacon I found that baby food was something that he would eat readily so I gave him generous portions. In the end, his kidneys failed and he stopped eating, stopped drinking water, and, soon, he lost the ability to walk. This final phase started in the middle of the night of November 18, 2003. He could hardly walk across the bed. The rest you have already read.

I knew Pi for eighteen years. He fills a good portion of my heart. I know Pi is waiting for me with my friends in the next world. This is what I believe - my credo. Amen.

In Loving Memory of Pi

Copyright © Gerald S. Gelatt
January 29, 2001