Her Name Was Meredith…

…but her first owner had named her Satan, which I should have known after our initial meeting at Kitty Cottage. The no-kill shelter was (at that time) located on Route 202 (or as the locals know it DeKalb Pike) in Whitpain Township, PA. We had gone there to adopt a kitty to fill the void in our lives left by Sydney’s departure six months before. As we browsed around the living quarters at several dozen candidates, I noticed Satan/Meredith curled up on a window sill basking in the sunshine of a late summer day.

I offered her my hand and she immediately raised her head and rubbed it against my fingers. We had bonded! Then she rose, climbed up several shelves of a bookcase that went to the ceiling and, along the way, made good on her name by knocking over a small vase which tumbled to the floor where it shattered into oblivion. Now I knew we had to take this troublemaker home, if only to save the other vases in the cottage.

Meredith came home with Kelly, an older male who was the original Grumpy Cat. Kelly was good to both Anne Marie and I, but he couldn’t be bothered playing with the mischievous female who shared his forever home. Meredith would run, jump, make a cooing sound when her feet hit the floor in a sprint and climb to all sorts of heights; Kelly was content just to be a quiet docile feline. If these two had been Marx Brothers, Meredith would definitely have been Harpo to Kelly’s Groucho persona.

One height Meredith liked to climb was the balustrade of our first floor stairwell. She would leap up there before making a nice single jump to the top of the couch three feet away, bounce off the top, a bounce off the couch seat, then land on the floor, and make a hop or two to the sun porch door ten feet away. Impossible for a mere human to do, but Meredith could do it over and over, making her cooing sound with every mark she hit.

Kelly left us too soon, but we brought home Steven (again from Kitty Cottage) who was much more agreeable to sharing his house with this very active female. The two became good friends chasing each other and grooming each other when one or the other’s hair got tousled the wrong way. As Steven’s health slowly declined over the course of two years, Meredith went through a stressful time. She responded to Steven’s health problems by tearing out the hair on her back and sides; she looked like a small lion with a mane reaching to the middle of her spine. 

 

We brought home Nyla (again from Kitty Cottage) when Steven departed. It took awhile (six weeks) for Meredith to get used to Nyla to the point where she could stay in the same room with her for longer than five minutes without hissing. The sisters grew close in time, engaging in social grooming when the need presented itself.

In time Meredith’s hair grew back and she continued to chase her sister, wreak havoc with bell ornaments on our Christmas tree, run upstairs and hide when strangers knocked on the door, and seek shelter whenever we crinkled newspaper. We surmised that her former owner may have smacked her a few times with the print media, and she associated the sound with a stinging posterior.

Meredith became Anne Marie’s cat. They had a morning routine with a few games including “hand monster”.  Anne Marie would move her hand beneath the bed covers and Meredith would obligingly leap on it to subdue it. Then there was ”gnaw and curl”. This time Anne Marie would grasp Meredith by the belly, and our fearless feline would try to kill this attacker by nipping on Anne Marie’s knuckles and violently push against her mommy’s wrist with her back legs.

We brought Meredith to her forever home as a nearly full grown adult. She lasted 13 years, surviving two male cats in the intervening time. In the last few months, she lost most of her weight. Her appetite was still good and she fought against whatever ailment forced her to slowly withdraw from her normal activities.

She left us on Wednesday, January 15. Our grief has been tempered with the knowledge that she is no longer in pain.

Dear Meredith, Mommy and Daddy will miss their first girl, but Nyla will take care of us. Until the day we see you again, run and jump wherever loving cats go to live out eternity.

Thank you for loving us as well as you did.

(Thank you for reading.)