Biscuitmarie 1993? - 2010

I hate to have to break this news, but my cat Biscuit has died.

Over the last year or so, she has shriveled, as cats will. I had been saying she was weighing "as much as a roll of paper towels" for a couple of months and, just last week, this was amended to "as much as some leaves."

I don't need to express that I am shattered and that Biscuit was sort of love incarnate. Actually, shattered is actually too strong a word. She was quite ill and it was probably cruel to have let her dwindle on as she did. But I just couldn't face taking her to the vet and leaving her there.

This morning she looked very weak. I gave her head a rub and went off to work. But as in "A Christmas Memory," I really do think I felt something click in me this afternoon when she went. No shit. I was not shocked to find her lying peacefully on the dining room floor an hour ago.

I will say this: she was the number one rock cat this town has ever known. Ca. 1996, my rock friends and I would have a Christmas party that would have guests numbering over a hundred, and Biscuit (aka Marge, aka 1000+ other nicknames - Muff Sisson Ahrns? Sure, why not?) would sit calmly on the corner of the sofa, greeting all and sundry and oblivious to noise and puffs from "odd" cigarettes. Amps? Forget it. Oblivious. And remember how she was the first to turn up her pretty snout and walk away from Kid A?

This little loaf was with me through brutal drinking, two marriages -- let's see, she lived in...eight different homes, uncomplainingly -- and just years of general chaos. I remember a low-flying jet going over and causing a sonic boom late in the day on September 11, 2001 and Biscuit reacting and flying out through the venetian blinds like broken glass. Now what?

She was just about the most lovely thing that ever lived, I think.

Also, she loved trout. Loved it. Those little cans of Fancy Feast trout? It was very nice, that, even as she was fading away the last couple of weeks, when we busted out her special Thanksgiving trout can, she still bounded to the dish and wolfed that shit down, brother. I hope that some kindhearted publisher will see fit to print a compendium of her old Trout and About seafood-review columns.

I would be remiss if I did not mention this:

From when she was a year old or so, she would lick her belly like a damn fool. We called it chowning. Cortisone shots, allergy meds -- nothing had a lasting effect to stop her from licking herself raw. She might stop for a while after a shot, but eventually one would hear in the night the scritch scritch of a cat tongue going to work.

Eventually, as I got older, drunker and more impatient, I'm ashamed to say I would just say "Fine! Fine! You want to lick? DO IT!" and she would, until her little belly was like a wet piece of roast beef.

When I finally quit drinking, she stopped licking. Cold turkey. All the fur grew back. I think that she had been so stressed by the Sword of Damacles hanging over that she was licking to cope, maybe. Eventually she worked with other cats in similar situations and even a ferret.

Please spare a thought tonight for old Biscuit as she wends her way heavenward. Give your animals some extra love, too.

Maybe some trout.