The last week of 2007…
A neighborhood Fishtown friend ran a kitten rescue out of her home. She had a litter of orange and white cats.
We adopted a male, one that was animated and looked at us often.
At home where we lived in sin, Melissa named him Santucci in about 30 seconds, named after our favorite pizzeria.
“We can call him Tooch.”
I proposed to Melissa days later at the Moshulu on NYE. She said yes.
Tooch’s middle name was Rambo.
He was a true house cat and never tried to sneak out. We put him on a leash in our little yard, just so show him the outside world, but he was more annoyed than anything.
He watched Netflix DVDs with us, sitting on our laps or like a gargoyle on the sofa’s edge.
He played with a turquoise sequin belt and a fluorescent pink scratch pad.
We gave him a bath once and it was the angriest he’d ever been. I swore he’d claw me to pieces.
He wore a collar for a few days, but almost strangled himself trying to get it off.
I was trying to record percussion instruments and he kept jumping up near the microphone. I decided to record his purring and meowing and made “Happy Tooch“.
He had a lot of nicknames: Tooch MaLooch, Tooch Master General, TuLaRooch.
He knocked down a wine bottle one night and bloodied his nose a bit.
His tail was rather long.
He always hid from my parents. I think he was scared of my Dad’s laugh.
He was a scaredy cat of sorts. If you farted, he’d run out of the room, sometimes so fast that his claws couldn’t gain traction.
He slept along our legs in bed and sometimes nibbled on our toes.
He liked to be petted, but not on the stomach. Under his chin was his favorite.
His hunting instincts made him a moth’s worse nightmare. He thrust his body to attack shadows.
He was the homestead captain of the house, always there, ready to lay on laps.
He lost a lot of whiskers once, getting them singed by a candle.
His white hair stuck to my navy pea coat from just walking by him.
Melissa took amazing photos of him jumping in the air and made a t-shirt for me out of an image.
We didn’t know his exact birthday, so we chose Halloween as it was around that time.
I sense he liked holidays and festive wrappings to play with. Santa gave him stocking stuffers and he was included in Melissa’s holiday postcards.
When we moved to Glenside, he stayed in our office for weeks before slowly making his way through the much bigger house.
He scratched up the brown leather sofa pretty bad on one side, but was rather good to our stuff.
He knew what was going on in the basement.
He jumped through swaying plexiglass entry doors.
He only ate hard dry food. He never ate moist food. We gave him grilled branzino from Zahav once and he wouldn’t touch it. Cheese, milk, nothing.
He didn’t like to leave the house. When dropping him off at family or friends for vacation, he usually hid behind major appliances.
He hated going to the vet. If you touched his travel bag, he’d hide in a section that we couldn’t reach in the basement. We had to get him in a room first.
He liked to stick his paws under the bathroom door while you were sitting on the toilet.
If his food bowl was missing just enough to show the bottom, he’d meow until we filled it. We called this the “bald spot”.
He started having issues with going to the bathroom and wasn’t using the box anymore.
He made puddles on our wood burning stove hearth.
He strained and wailed when going. Sometimes he was fine.
Vets recommended Miralax, herbal treatments, organic moist food from Whole Foods, but nothing helped.
It was disgusting but we grew used to it, for almost two years.
He frothed at the mouth and howled one day, clearly in immense pain.
Melissa took him to the vet, just a 5 minute drive away. He didn’t fight it.
He was analyzed and treated for about 6 hours.
Surgery was an option, but not a guaranteed outcome.
We decided that it was best to end the pain and say goodbye.
We sat in a room with him for 20 minutes and talked to him, petted him, while he sat on an ottoman. He was sedated but knew who we were.
He wanted to sit on Melissa’s lap, so she let him.
We told stories of him and teared up.
He was soon put to sleep.
We drove home and put him in his favorite blue chair. It was upright and had a soft velvet feel.
We then all went out to the nearest Santucci’s restaurant for dinner, a surreal day.
The next day, we buried him in the backyard in an area that we planned to have a flower garden.
He brought tremendous joy for over 12 years to our family.
He was the 3rd member, always there to connect eyes and help me relax, always there to jump on my lap and stop be from being frantic, so that I could stay put and watch the birds out the window.