[Click on the smaller images for bigger views.] This entry is not really an art related post. March 2 was what would have been my cat Solomon's birthday. He would have been 15 years old. I had to have him put to sleep during the early morning hours of this past November 14 at the emergency veterinary clinic. I've been wanting to write his story here since then, but have only become ready to do so now.
First, I want to say I feel great sadness for people who don't find connection with our animal friends. Our relationship with one another is ancient--one that is documented by artists thousands of years ago on the walls of caves. Dogs were beside man on those early hunts. Cats were in temples and even counted among the gods. Our relationship with animals has grown more distant in many ways, reduced to a few house pets for the majority of us and some team mascots or captive in zoos where they are "exhibited." I have always found great friendship and companionship with animals having had cats, lizards, turtles, fish, rabbits, and a hamster. Mostly, I have adored cats. I have found their spirits mesmerizing and their individual differences boundless, their curiosity and intelligence limitless, and most of all, I've identified with their independence and great disinterest in being controlled. Pets are one of the few creatures who grant us unconditional love in our lives. Solomon was that kind of cat. Unfortunately, unlike "real" parents of real children, we commit to only a brief time with our "children." We know that it is quite likely we will outlive them, but embark on the relationship anyway, knowing full well that we will be there for the sad goodbye.
Solomon was meant to be in my life. I had just had an encounter with a Mississippi river rat in my basement apartment after the flood of 1993 (another story for another time). I was living in the river town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. About a week after the rat encounter, I went to a church picnic about a block away from my apartment. We were having hot dogs and hamburgers. Near the beginning of the picnic my cousin's girlfriend came walking toward me with this dingy grey cat and said, "Hey Steph. Look what I found!" He looked less than a year old. She continued, "You should keep this guy. He could help you with your rat problem." The cat had apparently wandered across her path when she was on her way to the picnic. I held the cat and told him, "You're coming home with me, buddy." I fed him some hot dog from the picnic which he ate gladly. He seemed to have not eaten in awhile. When I took him home, I washed him in some of my hair shampoo and made a bed for him out of a cardboard box with some sheets in it. He seemed happy to be inside and comfortable.
That's me with the toothbrush in my mouth.
Solomon is just a little over 1 year old in this picture.That was the way I met Solomon. I combed the papers for a week to see if anyone was missing a grey cat about his age. I even called someone, but their cat was younger. After checking around for awhile, I gave up checking, and he became mine. That year was an interesting year for me. I could tell you about my upstairs neighbors--one of whom had his girlfriend shave his back for him which would cause plumbing problems for the upstairs and would force some of the guys (who we were friends with) to come use our shower. I could also tell you about my criminal landlord and the incredibly unsafe apartment with smoking wiring. Solomon was my calming presence that year.
Solomon liked being inside that first year, but didn't like being without me. I was going to school full time and was gone most of the day. I'd get reports from upstairs on a regular basis about his caterwauling because I was gone. He had some strong pipes to be sure. When I'd get home, I also discovered that he liked to grab the roll of toilet paper, run a stream all the way into the living room
and chew up the end of it into tiny little spit wads left neatly in a pile at the end of the stream. It looked like a pile of paper gun powder streaming to the back of the house. He had four favorite pasttimes: 1) sitting in the basement windows watching feet pass by, 2) watching my two lizards in my terrarium, and 3) sleeping with me every night. During the day, he would sleep in my laundry basket which I kept in my closet with a shower curtain for a door. 4) He loved riding in my 1971 Dodge Dart even if it was
just a short trip to the store. He was a roadtripper like me.
He also liked one of my neighbors upstairs. His name was Chris and he'd never had a cat because he was a dog person. He loved Solomon because he was so large. Solomon loved him because Chris would manhandle him like he would his dogs. Every time Chris would come downstairs, he'd fling the door open and say, "Where's my buddy?!!" Solomon would come running for his manhandling session wide-eyed and excited. He could do it all day if Chris had the time. Solomon converted Chris to cat personhood.
At the end of that year, I took him home to live with me and my mom's three cats, my sister's cat Libby, and my other cat Alice. My mom's cats were named Bonnie, Chrissy, and Skeeter. Solomon stayed in my room for awhile and then we slowly introduced him to the other five cats. He was respectful of the matriarch, Bonnie and of Libby and Skeeter, but he discovered that Chrissy was the weakest link and tried to establish dominance over her, much to my mother's chagrin as Chrissy was her "baby." Curiously enough, he formed an attachment to my rather crazy cat Alice who I had adopted a year prior but couldn't have her live with me at the time. They got along amazingly even though they were opposites. He was sensitive and affectionate, but tough when he needed to be -- territorial over all he surveyed and especially protective of me. Alice was and is a high strung and neurotic tiny cat with a strangely commanding attitude despite her diminutive size. Her six pound body actually pushed his 16 pound body around and he willingly complied even though he could kill her a million times over. This was their first of many summers together.
I went back to school in the fall for my last semester. I lived in another basement apartment th
at was actually across the driveway from my previous apartment. I had made friends that previous year with the minister of the Wesley House. He invited me to room for free with another girl if I agreed to be a caretaker of the place. Free rent is hard to pass up. This basement apartment was much nicer. Solomon was very comfortable in this apartment and he had his basement window to sit in, and my laundry basket, and my bed. I had freed my lizards so he was my only pet. He was always a man of simple needs -- very stoic and never asking too much. That semester had an adventure involving a ghost (another story for another time) and a roommate who turned out to be not what she seemed. It was the semester of two of my regrets regarding Solomon. One was that I had him declawed that semester. Before I could take him back home to my parents' house after graduating, one of my mother's requirements was to have him declawed like her cats so he wouldn't have an advantage (or tear up her furniture). It was a very difficult surgery for him and he ended up being in a lot of pain. I always wished I had never had him or Alice declawed. The second regret was that I had had this falling out with my roommate and she moved out suddenly. Her friends told me right after she left that she had been mad at me a long time and was abusing Solomon. They had seen her kick him in the stomach across the kitchen floor and against the wall. I asked why they didn't tell me when it happened. They said, "Because you would have killed her." They were correct. I hadn't seen the signs of his increasing skitteriness.
After graduating, I took him home to live with me at my parents' house until I would go to graduate school. I worked full time for about 8 months until the fall of 1995. This period was his bonding period with Alice. They had become the best of friends -- probably because they were closer in age and because opposites do seem to attract.
One of my favorite pictures ofSolomon and Alice during this period.
While living with my parents during this period, I had some wisdom teeth extracted. I had to recover home alone after the surgery. Solomon intuited the pain I was in and wrapped his body over the top of my head like he was a pair of giant earmuffs and laid with me all day. He was also disturbed anytime I would cry and would run to comfort me.
In May of 1995, I took an impromptu road trip to Alaska with a friend (yet another story for another time). I also had just purchased my first newer vehicle -- a 1993 Nissan Truck. Alaska gave me my first epiphany about life. Solomon was there before the epiphany and he was there afterward. I worked two jobs that summer and then went off to graduate school.
Solomon and Alice were 2 and 3 years old respectively when I moved to Arkansas. Alice rode in my parents' Suburban on the way down. Solomon rode with me in my truck. She was quiet the whole way. Solomon cried all of the six hours except the first twenty minutes and the last twenty minutes. He preferred to be able to walk around the car, but since I only had a truck cab and the Dodge Dart was passed on to my sister, he had to stay in his cat carrier. He didn't much care for confinement.
I lived in my first apartment in Arkansas throughout graduate school for about 3 and a half years. Three stories come to mind about Solomon during this period of my life: the time he got out of the apartment; the time Buddy, my neighbor's cat got into the apartment; and, the first time he met a kitten close up. When I first moved into the apartment I began attending a Friday night drawing group at the University. I think I'd only gone to two of these sessions when the following event occurred. For about a week, Alice had been playing with a leaf touching the outside of my screen in the window of my bedroom. I hadn't thought anything about it at the time. I came home one Friday night and Alice came running, but not Solomon, which was unusual. As I entered the living room, there was a line of leaves leading from the living room into the bedroom and when I turned on the light in my bedroom I saw that the screen had been ripped open. I frantically ran outside, tears streaming down my face, calling his name and God's alternatively. It was a sight to see. I worried about him because he'd been an indoor cat for 2 years and hadn't been outside in Arkansas so was unfamiliar with his environment. I feared I would never find him. I walked counter-clockwise around the apartment complex until I heard two cats caterwauling at each other, one of which was Solomon. He was puffed off and facing off with another tom cat. He wouldn't let me approach him and was very disoriented. I shined my flashlight in his face so he wouldn't see me attempt to grab him. It worked and I grabbed him by the scruff and quickly supported his backside and pulled him to my torso. He immediately began purring at a level I never heard since. It was loud and thunderous and desperate. He was so relieved to be back in my arms. I took him back inside, and everything went back to the way it was.
Another time, I had brought two kittens into my apartment because I was planning on transporting them to someone else who wanted to adopt them. I kept Alice and Solomon in the bedroom half of my apartment and the kittens in the living room/kitchen half of my apartment. Right before I was going to transport the kittens, I thought I'd check out what the cats would think of the kittens. I opened the bedroom door and let Solomon see one of the kittens a few feet away. He caught sight of it, dropped down low in stalking mode, with this murderous look in his eyes and a guttural sound coming out of his mouth. The kitten frolicked innocently toward him and I scooped the kitten up, realizing that he was going to kill it. I had never had a male cat and didn't realize that some tom cats wish to kill kittens instinctively. I was very disappointed in my baby that day.
Still another story was when Solomon was sitting on my rocking chair about 15 feet away from my other entrance to my apartment. It was an internal stairway. My neighbor came over for a visit, but didn't realize her cat Buddy had followed behind. Buddy immediately began eating Alice and Solomon's food by the door. Meanwhile, Solomon saw Buddy, quietly got down from the rocking chair, crouched down low and went into what I call "choo-choo" mode. He began moving low and rapidly like a train toward the unsuspecting cat. Buddy looked up from crunching on their food and saw this 16 pound cat charging him and ran back down the stairs. To give you an idea of how fast this transpired, it happened in the time it took for my friend to come into my apartment and close the door behind her. Seconds. I'll never forget Buddy's face when he saw my mammoth cat coming toward him. Buddy never showed any interest in coming into the apartment again.
After I graduated from graduate school, I moved into an apartment that was larger so I could have a s
tudio in my home. I lived in this apartment for 8 years, so the bulk of Solomon's history was in this apartment. It is during this period that our bond deepened. We had always had a habit of laying together before going to sleep. We started a ritual of listening to the radio on the computer and laying together before I'd go to sleep at this point in our history. We both got very used to this ritual. Solomon would often go in before me in anticipation of "Solomon time." I would usually lay there and listen to the radio while petting and talking to him. He lived for these moments, and it was a good way to wind down my day. This period in his history was also filled with games of laser light tag, which was his favorite game in his adult life. He would leap and frolic like a kitten even though his giant body and large paws thudded hard against the wood floors. It was an adorable sight. He was also a connoisseur of catnip. He would roll his entire body in it and eat it until he was as high as a kite. He was a true hedonist, which is one of the reasons why I respect cats.
He also had a neurotic quirk that I discovered in this apartment. All of my closet doors were folding doors. He had never liked closed doors, but these were particularly irksome to him. He would bounce his large body against them until they would inch open. Then he would slide his paw under the door to pull it open and go in and investigate. Basically, I'd close all the doors in the morning before I'd leave and all 4 of them would be open by the time I got home. I'd close them before bed and I'd hear him opening them all night. The closed closet doors just really bothered him. All cats are all slightly OCD in their own ways.
One of my favorite photographs of Solomon.I dated quite a bit during this period of our history together. Solomon liked my first boyfriend in Arkansas, but after that ended, he became scrutinizing of future would-be suitors. I was dating this one man and he was intimidated by Solomon's size and Solomon was suspicious as always. Once, the man sat across from me at the kitchen table and Solomon sat between us with his body perpendicular to us. He looked at the man out of the corner of his eye. The man said, "He's checking me out!" I said, "Hey, pretend to attack me. I want to see what Solomon will do. I've always wondered." He said, "Are you kidding?!!! Have you seen the size of this cat?!!! No way!!!" This is just one example of him scrutinizing men that would come into my life.
It was also during this time that I discovered that Solomon just really liked dog people. I have a friend who is a massage therapist who cat-sat for me a couple of times. Solomon had never met her before, but the minute she entered the apartment (anytime), he would act toward her as he did toward Chris in that first apartment. He would frolic and throw himself down and roll and look like he had a smile on his face. The only thing I could determine is that since she owned Great Danes and Chris was a dog person, that he just jived with dog people.
But he wasn't a dog person himself. Whenever Solomon was curious about something outside, he'd disturb the metal window blinds noisily. There was always the constant din of what I called the "chinga-chinga-ching" sound. One night, in the middle of the night, he was frantically going after the blinds in my studio and caterwauling desperately at something outside. I got up to see what the fuss was and I opened the blinds for him and there was a husky dog outside cocking his head to one side while Solomon caterwauled at him outside. The dog was perplexed. Solomon then thrust his entire body against the window so his paws and chest hit the glass with some extreme force. The dog ran off. Solomon always believed he was the owner of all he surveyed and could kick any dog's ass inside or outside of the house.
Getting to know each other: Neither is very sure it will work out.When my husband entered my life, Solomon was suspicious as always, but he was soon charmed by many games of laser light. Solomon had a lot of fun with Jeremiah in the later years of his life, but he would always remain my best friend. Solomon liked my husband very much eventually, but never warmed up to his son. He was terrified of children from very early on. I always wondered if he came from a household of mean little children that made him run away. One time, he heard children talking on the radio and ran off the bed and out of the room. I tried to reassure my husband's son it wasn't personal.
Making friends.In the fall of 2006 we moved to Bella Vista, Arkansas. The backside of the house is almost entirely windows with the view of the forest and some bird feeders and tons of morning sun. I thought this place would be perfect for Jeremiah and I but also a fitting and comfortable retirement for my two elderly cats. I had no idea at this point that I would only have Solomon for just over another year. We kept our nightly ritual up and Jeremiah played laser light with him on a regular basis. Alice still kept warm with him.
In the spring of 2007, a feral cat had her kittens on our property and we decided to keep one to inject some youthful vigor into the house. Samson and Alice were and are at odds with each other--probably because they have similar wills. Samson took to Solomon as a male mentor. Solomon surprisingly had gotten over his bloodlust for kittens. I was pleased and relieved. He took to fathering Samson. He would bathe him and play with him and discipline him, when Alice didn't want anything to do with him.
I didn't see signs of Solomon's illness until 3-4 days before I had to put him to sleep. In hindsight things were recognized, but even if I had discovered his problem months in advance, it would not have been likely that he would have lived much longer. He lived out his last weeks the way he wanted to. I noticed that he was spending a lot of time daydreaming out the bedroom window in the sun. A week and a half or so before he passed, Samson had grown and began to challenge Solomon's dominance. Solomon put him in his place in a fight that seemed to invigorate him. He was suddenly very spry and strong and succeeded in putting Samson in his place. He had a look of joy on his face as he fought and a look of pride when the fight ended. He walked away with a little pep in his step.
One of the last photos of Solomon and Alice
after 12 years together. Alice misses him too.The day before he passed, Samson and Alice were spending a lot of time with him. I had made an appointment for him at the veterinarian for the next day thinking that he just wasn't being himself. When I came home, both of the other cats were wrapped around him in an unusual way on a largely unused chair. That night I went to an event at work and when we got home we noticed that Solomon hadn't been eating or drinking. He would just go over to his food or water and stare at either and walk away. I gave him a can of wet food and he ate that like he was starving so I thought there might be something wrong with his teeth. I had to help him into the bed that night for our ritual. He didn't seem to have much strength. I petted him and talked to him during our one last bedtime ritual. I fell asleep and Jeremiah got me up at midnight and said that Solomon had thrown up what little he ate of the wet food, so we took him to the emergency veterinary clinic. They initially gave us hope and said I could pick him up in the morning, but called the house as soon as we got back and said he was slipping away fast and recommended euthanasia. It was complete kidney failure. He was gone at 4:30 a.m. on November 14, 2007. I thought about writing about his last hours and minutes, but they are not fruitful to repeat and just like in life I want this piece to focus on his life and not his death. Suffice it to say, I was there with him like he had been with me. I told him I loved him over and over and called him by his secret nickname as he slipped away. I know he heard me because he calmed down as I talked to him. He went peacefully as he deserved.
Many stories and anecdotes are missing from this biography of a truly noble cat. He was with me
from the age of 21 to 35 -- through schooling, graduations, art exhibitions, joys, sorrows, and epiphanies. During his life Solomon was playful, had a sense of humor, was manly, tough, sensitive, neurotic, dignified, stoic, loving, affectionate, a great friend and companion, a dog person, and a fighter until the end. He was all the things people can be with the unconditional love only innocence can offer. He will be missed always. He was so beautiful.
Some more photos.
Solomon playing with his laser light.© Stephanie Lewis, 2008
Jonathan Buttall: The Blue Boy (c 1770) 
Sarah Barrett Moulton: Pinkie (1794)
