Farewell, Gim (part 2 of 2)

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Gimmie was one of Jean’s two best friends for more than 15 years, during which they crossed the continent twice and lived for a year in Alaska.

Not like they had a choice. Cats are not typically great travelers, and Gim and Chica were no exceptions.

Dave shared the driving to California when Jean was assigned to Sequoia National Forest. She found a small apartment in Fresno, and the fat gray tabby, Chica, and slim golden-red Gim, amused themselves (read: slept) all day. They were well trained to litter boxes, and Jean let them out for exercise when she got home in the afternoon.

Chica wasn’t that fond of liberty and made it a short outing. Gim would elude capture sometimes overnight by going up on the roof of the one-story apartment.

(By the way, that’s “Gim” with a hard G, as in “gain,” and comes from Lewis Carroll’s poem The Jabberwock: “’Twas brillig, and the slithey toves /Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; /All mimsy were the borogoves /and the mome raths outgrabe.”)

At last Jean got the Forest Service assignment of her dreams, to Juneau, Alaska. When she and her cats and everything she could pack into her VW station wagon headed north, a mammoth blizzard was right behind them. Hers was the last vehicle the Alaska State Highway System accepted before it shut down its ferries for an undetermined time.

The storm kept nipping at their heels, but, incredibly, the ferry pulled ahead under a clear starry sky and the next day was perfectly clear, the sky bright blue.

The ship’s rules say animals must be contained on the car-deck but may be visited, even walked, every so many hours. As ninnies from the Lower 48 would, we worried that the cats could freeze to death on the unheated car-deck, so Jean made elaborate preparations to keep them warm for the three-day cruise.

The temperature below never dropped below 60 degrees.

In Juneau, Jean made her first real estate venture and bought a second-story condo across the channel from Juneau proper, actually on Douglas Island. She had two bedrooms and a tiny balcony off the living room.

Two Gim stories from Juneau. The balcony had a waist-high wooden rail, a plexiglas barricade from the floor to the 2 x 6-inch plank that capped it. If you’re a cat, you have to know what’s beyond there, even if you can just as well see through it. I don’t remember whether Chica got up there, or how, but slithey Gim calculated height and distance as he launched himself to the top rail whenever someone opened the wide patio door.

Honestly, I couldn’t watch. It doesn’t snow a lot in Juneau, but it does rain and it does freeze. How on earth could that cat NOT slide right across that narrow board and flail his way two stories down to the asphalt below?

It never happened.

Jean had a birdfeeder attached to her bedroom window and enjoyed watching the ever-contentious pine siskins feasting there. The cats liked to watch them too.

When she came home from work one evening and found gray feathers from one end of the condo to the other, it didn’t take Jean long to figure out what had happened. She left the bedroom window cracked less than an inch for fresh air, and a very clever cat figured out that while he could not pounce on a bird in the traditional way, he could lie perfectly still with one paw extended until a bird stepped into it.

After Jean met Brian, on-line, then in person, the cats were boxed up again and began the long trek eastward across the United States. All three stayed with a friend of Brian’s from October until their wedding, Jan. 1, 1999.

Brian and his eldest, Abigail, had some serious cat allergies. I’m not sure how and why, but it turns out we did foster the cats for some time. A photo shows Chica on top of our grandfather clock.

I figured that once they got here, they’d be here to stay, but true to her word, Jean retrieved them. Between that time and this, a vigorous regimen of grooming, shampooing (yes, of the cats!), shots for some humans, air filters, and the installation of wooden floors made it possible.

I don’t think Jean and Brian did a pre-nup, but obviously they reached accord: Love me, love (or at least tolerate) my cats.

Chica died first, of old age, presumably. They found her stretched out on the floor one morning a year or so back. Gim alternated feebleness and robust health, and for the first time in his life, came when called and allowed humans to hold him.

When it was obvious that Gim was in pain, the vet said she thought it was a tumor, and malignant or not, the old red cat would not likely survive surgery.

Jean, weeping, had remained in the car, but when Brian came out and gave her the sad news, she ramped up her courage and went into the office. She thought that the least she could do for 15 years of friendship, albeit a chilly friendship, was to hold him at the end.