The Cat Who
Loved Chemo
Sue Buchanan
I have been owned by many cats in my lifetime, some whose names I’ve forgotten. Some I named childish names like Baddie and Goodie because they were bad or good; and in fact I was a child.
At a very young age, I strolled the block with my cat, Smokey the Pirate Don Derk of Don Day, both of us dressed to the nines—me in high-heeled shoes with holes that let my toes poke out, Mother’s old lace blouse that came to my ankles, a wide-brimmed felt hat with a veil to the chin, black gloves with rhinestone cuffs, and an animal around my neck that bit its own tail. I was known as Mrs. Vandertweezers at the time, and for days at a time I wouldn’t answer to Sue, only to Mrs. Vandertweezers. Elegant lady that she was, I felt her wardrobe rivaled that of any Hollywood star or even that of the Queen of England.
Her regal companion, Smokey the Pirate Don Derk of Don Day, rode on his back in the doll buggy dressed in a doll dress and bonnet as Mrs. V strolled the block. Past Mrs. Eubanks’s house, past the Liebles’, past the convent, and past the Catholic school to Sacred Heart Catholic Church (which was as far as she was allowed to go) and back again.
“Hello, dahling!” she said to everyone.
“Everyone” was mostly the sisters walking back and forth between church, school, and convent. Sometimes Mrs. Vandertweezers and Smokey the Pirate were invited into the convent for a visit and some ice cream. Once they actually made a little turn through the foyer of the church, but they left hurriedly when Father Cuthbert came toward them—his robes flying—with his eye on Smokey the Pirate Don Derk of Don Day.
Going to that magnificent church and having a string of those nice tiny black beads, doing the little curtsy, and being slightly mysterious was more than a little appealing to Mrs. Vandertweezers. She gave Catholicism strong consideration. Naturally, she couldn’t possibly become a nun because then she couldn’t be Mrs. Vandertweezers or enjoy her lavish wardrobe!
After Smokey there was Agamemnon, the smartest cat ever to own me. He got his name from The Four Little Kittens, a book I still have after all these years. The book begins: “Once upon a time, there were four little kittens. Their names were Buzz, Fuzz, Suzz, and Agamemnon.” It ends: “... when their mother tucked Agamemnon into bed, she remembered he was the youngest and had tried the hardest. So she gave him an extra kiss on the tip of his nose.” My mother never let me kiss Agamemnon or my other cats on the nose or anywhere else. She said I would get a horrible disease. (Today I kiss my cat and wonder what Mother would think if she knew.)
Among other manifestations of intelligence, Agamemnon could turn the piano light on and off. He would use his claws to grip the pull-chain. On and off it would go—a wonderful distraction when I was supposed to be practicing.
I still have the newspaper clipping that tells of Agamemnon’s disappearance and my letter to the Great Scott, our local radio personality, telling him my “best friend” was lost and would he please help find him. I didn’t mention that my best friend was a cat until the very last line.
Great Scott read my letter over the air, and sure enough, a listener heard my plea and discovered the “guest” in his home was not just an ordinary stray. He should have known! Strays don’t stretch out over half the length of the buffet without touching a single piece of crystal. Strays don’t sit by the refrigerator, looking at it through half-closed eyes, then look at you in the same manner, back and forth until you say, “Okay, okay, I’ll feed you!” And strays do not turn lights on and off. The man brought Agamemnon back, and he lived happily with us for many more years.
I went on to have more cats, and twenty years ago, there was Ya. When I think about chemotherapy, I remember Ya, my friend and companion during my dreary months of treatment for breast cancer. It’s hard to believe it was so long ago. But first, more about Ya.
We think of our beloved cat Ya every year at Christmas when I pull the Christmas tree skirt out of the box and admire its beauty. It wasn’t easy, gluing on all those pieces of felt and tiny little sequins—ladies dancing, calling birds, French hens. Right over there by the swans a’swimming is a faded brown spot. We look at it each year and say, “Oh, that’s where Ya threw up, God rest his soul!” A tear comes to the eye.
We got Ya when the girls were little. Grandma had just been to Greece and heard the ladies there calling their cats: “Yata... yata.” So the girls named this cat Ya. He made the move with us to Nashville and grew old and bored (not bored because of Nashville... just bored).
One of Ya’s claims to fame was that he was true to a comment of Theophile Gautier: “He loved books, and when he found one open on the table, he would lie down on it, turn over the edges of the leaves with his paw; and after a while, fall asleep, for all the world as if he had been reading a fashionable novel.” Each week, my husband, Wayne, and I read the Sunday newspaper, and as we finished with the various parts, we tossed them to the floor and waited.
Sure enough Ya would walk around on each section, sometimes stopping on the funnies or the want ads to take a bath, then curl up on the Sunday Showcase for a long afternoon nap. Always the Sunday Showcase—that is until I was executive of the week in the Business Perspective. That day he skipped the funnies and the want ads, didn’t even glance at sports, fashions, or showcase. He went straight to the Business Perspective, looked at my picture, read the article, then chose that exact place to take his nap. We even snapped pictures to prove it.
I hate to say this out loud, but Ya loved chemotherapy. He seemed happiest during my year of bad health, and he made my life more bearable.
Treatment began five days after my mastectomy while I was still in the hospital. I’ve come to believe that beginning so quickly was an incredibly wise decision on the part of my oncologist. “Begin now!” he said. “Remember those cells are reproducing themselves at a staggering rate. We need to catch them before they get a head start on us.” It must have worked, as I’m alive these many years later. The program he set up for me was pretty standard at the time. It called for bombarding my body with chemicals for two weeks and then allowing it to revitalize for two weeks.
Because of everything I’d heard about chemotherapy, I had a mind-set against it from the beginning. I expected it to make me sick. The doctor’s office smelled like a chemical factory, and the aftertaste in my mouth was how I imagined dry cleaning fluid would taste. Right from the beginning, I fussed and stewed about this yucky stuff. In my mind, I called it every bad name I could think of. I regarded the visits to the doctor’s office a nuisance. “A ridiculous waste” was my label for the time I had to reserve for recuperation after treatment. It was ridiculous that I had to put up with this interference in my busy schedule.
God made the cat in order to give man the pleasure of petting the tiger.
Unknown
After a couple of months of fighting against everything chemo represented, I forced myself to change my attitude. One day as I waited at the doctor’s office, it came to me: I shouldn’t be fighting this. Chemo is good and could be my cure. I must accept this medicine into my body with thanksgiving, trusting it will work for me and make me well.
From that day forward, I didn’t mullygrub about chemo. I waltzed into that little room, pulled off my clothes, put on the sticky little bolero, raised my hands to God, and thanked him. “Dear God, take the medicine and put it where it will do the most good,” I’d say, “... and thank you, God. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Later, at home, I began to spend more time thanking God, not only for the medicine and the health professionals but for my husband who enjoyed making my life easy, my daughters who loved me dearly, and my friends who supported me in every way.
One of those friends gave me a colorful book called The Human Body—a children’s book; I began incorporating its illustrations into my prayers. “This is a picture of a healthy brain, Lord. Help mine to be healthy and free from cancer.” I did the same with the pictures of liver, lungs, and bones, the likely places breast cancer would metastasize. The pictures certainly didn’t help God. He knew what my insides looked like. They helped me.
The first two or three months chemo only made me tired, and I went home and slept the afternoon away after treatment. I felt progressively worse each month, eventually throwing up at the very thought of the procedure. Each time I went for chemo, Wayne took me and picked me up. He offered to go in with me, but I knew he needed to be at the office; I also knew sometimes a doctor tends to “talk around” a patient when a spouse is present. Instead, I wanted a strong partnership between my doctor and me.
My appointment was at one o’clock in the afternoon, allowing me a productive morning in the office. Afterward Wayne would take me home and turn me over to Ya for the afternoon. Ya would curl into the curve of my body, and we would both sleep the afternoon away. The nausea continued to become worse. It hit late in the afternoon and I was sick—so sick—through the evening and into the night. Ya was tolerant. When I was in the bathroom, he took the opportunity to have his evening meal and his bath; but each time I returned to bed, he was waiting to cuddle and comfort.
On the day of my treatment, I must have looked and felt worse than my childhood cat Agamemnon did after he’d been out for two or three days and nights at a time, doing whatever it is tomcats do! He used to drag his big, old, yellow body through the door, turn his ears back at the food we offered, flop down, and with all the energy he could muster, lick his wounds—sometimes bloody; once with part of an ear missing—and give us a look that said, “Do not disturb!” Then he’d sleep the day away.
On the day after my treatment, I’d drag myself out of bed, turn my nose up at food (the people version of cats turning their ears back), and lick my wounds. The nausea came now and then but lessened as the day progressed. Eventually, I’d try a piece of toast with a tiny bit of peanut butter.
My yellow cat stuck with me through it all. For a while even after my treatment was over, he would meet us at the door, lead us to the bedroom, leap on the bed, and look at us expectantly. He seemed to be saying, “Come on, let’s be sick some more!”
One day Ya didn’t come when we called. We searched the woods—he never went far. Every day after that, we hoped as we came up the drive. Finally I knew he was gone.
I still miss Ya and hope his end was peaceful. I would have liked to comfort him as he comforted me so many times.