A tribute to Mitzi
Mitzi Tigerlily
July 12ish, 1991 - December 26, 2007
As many of you know, Mitzi died the day after Christmas. I've been waiting to write about it here since I wanted to include a photo of her as a kitten. All of those photos, of course, exist only as prints in Georgia. But here I am in Georgia now, on my summer vacation, with photo albums and scanner at the ready!
The first picture is of Mitzi and I shortly after we got her, in September 1991. I was 11. The last picture was taken of her on the morning of the day that she died. As you can see, we've grown up together! It was so heartbreaking to see her for the last week. Of course, she had been very sick for months because of the seizures, but she had precipitously declined just before Christmas and was no longer herself. Her phenobarbital must have stopped working because she was obviously in some unnatural neurological state which forced her to compulsively pace around my room. She could no longer see, so she often got herself stuck in corners. Her pacing was so obsessive that it wouldn't let her sleep. The only way I could get her to settle down and get even a brief nap was to hold her like a baby and stroke her head until she was finally soothed. The photo is of one of those naps.
Mitzi was one of the most important beings in my life, for various reasons: She's the first real pet we ever had. We'd had fish and lizards and rodenty things before, but never anything charismatic and cuddly (cuddle-able, even). Mitzi also helped me through a lot of momentous events in my life. For instance, we got Mitzi just days after we moved to Athens, after my parents separated, and she was there to comfort me, and moved to California with me, after my mom's accident.
Mitzi's death was and is very hard on me. She was such a great cat. Sure, she was a little unhinged, but I'm sure you would be too if you'd spent your formative years with my sister and I at middle school age. She always loved me the best, even in her moodier years. After I went away to college, she became extremely affectionate. It was very difficult to keep her off of my
lap after she moved to California with me! I had a hard time studying for my quals since it was impossible to read my books when there was a cat face affixed to mine! She was changed, of course, by her illness, but she was just starting to get some of the old Mitzi back towards the end. We'd finally worked out a system for her medicine that was easy on both of us and she was able to move past some of the trauma of being in the hospital and getting pilled twice a day. For the last month, she was back to sitting on my lap and even purring! I always expected Mitzi to live for 20 years. That isn't outside the range of possibility for indoor cats. And she was in perfect health, before the seizures came out of nowhere. 16.5 years isn't bad, but it's always too soon...
I have so many memories of Mitzi. I'll share a few of them with you here:
Mitzi's original name was Muffie. It was short for her mother's name, Muffin, since there was a close resemblance between the two. We detested the name Muffie, so we quickly changed it to Mitzi, because of her white mittens. We decided on Tigerlily as her middle name since we'd just seen Peter Pan performed in Atlanta. Our whole family was instantly enchanted by Mitzi. She was such a cutie. We especially loved the stripe that divided her nose, half orange and half black. My mom liked to point out that Mitzi was the perfect cat for us since she was a tortoiseshell. My mom was a geneticist, and tortoiseshell cats are a textbook example of heterozygosity and X-inactivation. Many people over the years have remarked what a beautiful cat Mitzi was and how unusual her coloration was. And it's true, she was stunning. Most of the torties I've seen have much more black fur, with occasional, scattered orange patches. I've always thought them funny looking. But Mitzi really had orange as her base. She had such rich coloration, with some agouti patterning like tabbies, and, of course, black and white both as solid patches and interspersed throughout the orange.
The first time we took Mitzi to the vet, we didn't yet have a carrier for her. On the way we crammed her into a little cardboard box. For the way back, we'd gotten a temporary cardboard carrier from the vet. It had a handle on the top and large-ish circular air holes around the sides. Mitzi did not like it, so she kept reaching her paw out through an air hole and swiping at our legs as we walked her to the car!
My mom always took tons of pictures. Jenny and I were not very patient with it. When we were younger, we always wanted Mitzi to be in the pictures with us. I guess we figured that would make it more interesting, and, after all, Mitzi was a part of the family too! Of course, this turned photo ops from something we never enjoyed into an out-and-out ordeal. It was always difficult to capture Mitzi and get her to hold still for the picture. And we'd fight over who'd get to hold her. So there are a lot of pictures of us in front of the Christmas tree or with Easter baskets or what have you, with Jenny and I side by side awkwardly holding a very disgruntled Mitzi between us.
When Mitzi was young, she always tried to sneak out of the house so she could explore outside. This was very entertaining on those occasions when it snowed in Georgia. I played a version of cat yoyo with Mitzi and some snowballs one year. Mitzi would lurk underneath the back deck. I lured her out by throwing a snowball at the house, which she'd dash out and pounce on. Then I'd throw a snowball at her, which would drive her back under the deck. It was a fun game for both of us.
I discovered another fun version of cat yoyo in high school when our new computer came with a cd-rom encyclopedia, which included a lot of animal calls. If I played a birdsong, Mitzi would race in to try to find the bird; a tiger roar, and she would stampede back out.
As many of you know, Mitzi died the day after Christmas. I've been waiting to write about it here since I wanted to include a photo of her as a kitten. All of those photos, of course, exist only as prints in Georgia. But here I am in Georgia now, on my summer vacation, with photo albums and scanner at the ready!
The first picture is of Mitzi and I shortly after we got her, in September 1991. I was 11. The last picture was taken of her on the morning of the day that she died. As you can see, we've grown up together! It was so heartbreaking to see her for the last week. Of course, she had been very sick for months because of the seizures, but she had precipitously declined just before Christmas and was no longer herself. Her phenobarbital must have stopped working because she was obviously in some unnatural neurological state which forced her to compulsively pace around my room. She could no longer see, so she often got herself stuck in corners. Her pacing was so obsessive that it wouldn't let her sleep. The only way I could get her to settle down and get even a brief nap was to hold her like a baby and stroke her head until she was finally soothed. The photo is of one of those naps.
Mitzi was one of the most important beings in my life, for various reasons: She's the first real pet we ever had. We'd had fish and lizards and rodenty things before, but never anything charismatic and cuddly (cuddle-able, even). Mitzi also helped me through a lot of momentous events in my life. For instance, we got Mitzi just days after we moved to Athens, after my parents separated, and she was there to comfort me, and moved to California with me, after my mom's accident.
Mitzi's death was and is very hard on me. She was such a great cat. Sure, she was a little unhinged, but I'm sure you would be too if you'd spent your formative years with my sister and I at middle school age. She always loved me the best, even in her moodier years. After I went away to college, she became extremely affectionate. It was very difficult to keep her off of my
lap after she moved to California with me! I had a hard time studying for my quals since it was impossible to read my books when there was a cat face affixed to mine! She was changed, of course, by her illness, but she was just starting to get some of the old Mitzi back towards the end. We'd finally worked out a system for her medicine that was easy on both of us and she was able to move past some of the trauma of being in the hospital and getting pilled twice a day. For the last month, she was back to sitting on my lap and even purring! I always expected Mitzi to live for 20 years. That isn't outside the range of possibility for indoor cats. And she was in perfect health, before the seizures came out of nowhere. 16.5 years isn't bad, but it's always too soon...I have so many memories of Mitzi. I'll share a few of them with you here:
Mitzi's original name was Muffie. It was short for her mother's name, Muffin, since there was a close resemblance between the two. We detested the name Muffie, so we quickly changed it to Mitzi, because of her white mittens. We decided on Tigerlily as her middle name since we'd just seen Peter Pan performed in Atlanta. Our whole family was instantly enchanted by Mitzi. She was such a cutie. We especially loved the stripe that divided her nose, half orange and half black. My mom liked to point out that Mitzi was the perfect cat for us since she was a tortoiseshell. My mom was a geneticist, and tortoiseshell cats are a textbook example of heterozygosity and X-inactivation. Many people over the years have remarked what a beautiful cat Mitzi was and how unusual her coloration was. And it's true, she was stunning. Most of the torties I've seen have much more black fur, with occasional, scattered orange patches. I've always thought them funny looking. But Mitzi really had orange as her base. She had such rich coloration, with some agouti patterning like tabbies, and, of course, black and white both as solid patches and interspersed throughout the orange.
The first time we took Mitzi to the vet, we didn't yet have a carrier for her. On the way we crammed her into a little cardboard box. For the way back, we'd gotten a temporary cardboard carrier from the vet. It had a handle on the top and large-ish circular air holes around the sides. Mitzi did not like it, so she kept reaching her paw out through an air hole and swiping at our legs as we walked her to the car!
My mom always took tons of pictures. Jenny and I were not very patient with it. When we were younger, we always wanted Mitzi to be in the pictures with us. I guess we figured that would make it more interesting, and, after all, Mitzi was a part of the family too! Of course, this turned photo ops from something we never enjoyed into an out-and-out ordeal. It was always difficult to capture Mitzi and get her to hold still for the picture. And we'd fight over who'd get to hold her. So there are a lot of pictures of us in front of the Christmas tree or with Easter baskets or what have you, with Jenny and I side by side awkwardly holding a very disgruntled Mitzi between us.
When Mitzi was young, she always tried to sneak out of the house so she could explore outside. This was very entertaining on those occasions when it snowed in Georgia. I played a version of cat yoyo with Mitzi and some snowballs one year. Mitzi would lurk underneath the back deck. I lured her out by throwing a snowball at the house, which she'd dash out and pounce on. Then I'd throw a snowball at her, which would drive her back under the deck. It was a fun game for both of us.
I discovered another fun version of cat yoyo in high school when our new computer came with a cd-rom encyclopedia, which included a lot of animal calls. If I played a birdsong, Mitzi would race in to try to find the bird; a tiger roar, and she would stampede back out.
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