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Callisto Appelcline: 2012-2021
Nov. 24th, 2021 04:27 pmIt would be so easy to look at Callisto's scant years and be bitter; it would be so easy to keep second guessing what was wrong with her, to pick at the ideas for how perhaps she could still have been cured. But she was so sick, so far gone both physically and even neurologically in these last few days that we clearly had no choice.
So instead I choose to remember her as a great cat who brought so much joy to us for the eight and a half years that she was part of our our family.
Callisto came to us as Briana when we adopted her on March 16, 2013. She was ten and a half months old at the time, which was a compromise between Kimberly and myself. She didn't want kittens because they're too stressful, and as I explained I didn't want an older cat because it pushed down the mean time between failures. (Which is to say that losing a cat is horribly traumatic, and I didn't want that to happen any sooner than was necessary, alas.)
She was a lovey from the start. As soon as we opened her cage door, she started bashing her head against our hands. That's exactly how she'd always be, whether we liked it or not.
She was also entirely beautiful in her orange and blackness. We didn't even know the word tortie before we met her, but we saw at once why people loved that.
(We never could imagine how she couldn't have been adopted long before we got to her, with her beauty and her affection, but we quickly decided the rescue agency, Home at Last, probably hadn't been bringing her out to showings, as we couldn't even get them to bring out the cats we told them we wanted to adopt. And eight and a half years later I have to wonder if they exposed her to a coronavirus while she was in their care, which might later have turned to non-effusive FIP, which is one of my guesses as to what happened to our beloved cat. But it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter, and despite everything else they brought that wonderful cat into our lives for the eight and a half years of the nine and a half she got.)
To our visitors, Callisto was the cat that immediately ran over to them and jumped in their lap. It sorta didn't matter who they were, but there were some visitors who she never missed. To my gamers, she was surprise lap cat: one minute there was no cat in the room, the next she was in someone's lap.
She was also one of the clumsiest cats that I've ever met. She'd knock things over, she'd randomly fall over. This didn't go well with her role as surprise lap cat, as it meant that occasionally she'd jump into someone's lap and immediately fall out, with claws going all over.
When sitting in laps, Callisto would often start bathing herself. Vigorously. This often led to her eviction.
Callisto was never the boss of the house: that was also Lucy, though Callisto outweighed Lucy by almost three times. Callisto spent eight and a half years trying to befriend Lucy, which usually went lick-lick-lick from Callisto followed by hiss-swipe from Lucy. That never deterred her. When the paw was on the other foot, and Lucy was looming over Callisto, that usually caused big 'ole Callisto to flinch, which resulted in another hiss-swipe. "Don't flinch," we said. "Fear is the mind killer." She flinched.
Callisto was the most food-motivated cat that I'd ever met, just adoring food and bolting it down like she was starving. In Berkeley, when we started giving the cats wet food to help Lucy get more water into her diet, we had to put Lucy's up on a window sill, which Callisto fortunately didn't try to get up on (c.f. Clumsy Cat). Here in Hawaii, we really didn't have that option, so instead I stood guard over the plates every night when I fed the cats. Callisto would gulp down her food and then go and try and ram her head into Lucy's plate, and I'd drag her away. After just a few weeks, maybe a month or two at most, Callisto had become very polite, sitting and waiting for Lucy, to see if she'd leave any food for her. It was the most precious thing to see, because she was practically vibrating as she sat, because she wanted so much to rush at that food. But she was such a good cat: she waited. Usually.
Here in Hawaii, we've typically fed the cats their wet food right after our own dinner. Callisto would get very antsy (and loud!) if I was gaming or we were otherwise making dinner late, and usually after we ate and I'd come to sit down on the couch to finish whatever TV show we were watching, she'd lay down behind my head and wait, as near me as could be. But, she had an uncanny ability to recognize the end of a TV show, both in Berkeley when she got fed after our evening snack, and here in Hawaii. Often she'd jump down and head to the kitchen, either when the music came on for the climatic scene or when the credits ran.
She was the cat that generated constant shouts of "Don't Eat That" as she'd wander the house, gnawing on everything she could find. I remember the old Tivo Wifi dongle sitting atop the TV was a particular favorite: that's the sort of thing she'd test out her teeth (and gums) on. For a while the hour before we went to bed became Bad Callisto Time when she'd go from one bad thing to another.
She was also was great with food toys. We got her a number over the years. The simple ones, like a vertical maze, she just emptied out and we eventually had to put them away. A Kong, though, was harder to get food out of, but she'd go at it until we took it away. Sometimes she got a *lot* of food on the way.
That food motivation also meant we could teach her tricks. She used to dance on her hind legs to get food and even leap up a foot or two if it was dangled it over her head. She loved her treats. Even in her final days when she couldn't eat them, she'd rub her head against them. I felt like she was telling me that she loved me for bringing her the food, even if she'd decided that she wouldn't be eating them any more.
Callisto would also learn tricks for affection, though. The terrorist head bump, where I'd put out my fist and she'd rear up and bump her head against it only ever earned her skritches. She loved those too.
For the first five years we had her, Callisto had the most horribly stinky breath. It was so bad that we warned friends and family. We eventually learned that her teeth were being absorbed and/or rotting, and so in 2018 she had most of her scant remaining teeth out at Berkeley Dog & Cat. Poor baby! Afterward, her breath was normal cat breath. This also told us how very much she loved food, because it'd been hurting when she was eating for a while, and that never slowed her down.
After that surgery, Callisto's new trick was to rub her gums against us as she climbed all over us. We weren't fond of that one, but it was probably better than toxically stinky breath!
Callisto's favorite toy was a blue ribbon that our friend Donald gave us after his own cat passed. It was a blue cloth ribbon with a plastic rod at the end to flip it around. From a young age, she'd drag it around the house by the ribbon. When she dragged it up the wooden stairs in Berkeley, we'd hear bump-bump-bump as it thumped up the stairs. She'd mostly stopped playing with it in her final years in Berkeley, but we brought it with us to Hawaii, and she seemed to find it a comfort as she acclimated to the foreign house because it went bump-bumping around the house for a month or two.
We also brought her favorite chair: a rocking chair. It was one of the very few pieces of furniture we put on the boat, but we couldn't abandon our cat's favorite chair! (My dad likes it too.)
Somehow, despite being the friendliest cat ever in our house, Callisto was a terror to vets. The people at Paradise Animal Clinic commented on it a few times, and one day even brought her out with a towel over her cage, saying somewhat shaken, "She likes it better that way". And four years ago when she had her oral surgery, the vet commented on her getting "grumpy" and idly mentioned that she'd trimmed all her claws.
At some point after we got Callisto, she became maniacally aggressive toward foreign cats. When Melody's Tai Chi came to visit us in 2015, which was not the first time they met, we swore that Callisto was trying to kill him, and we had to mostly separate them. The next year, I was in New York when Melody needed sitting, and Kimberly wouldn't have been able to prevent felinicide on her own, so we had to end the annual tradition.
Since we moved to Hawaii, we've had a semi-feral neighbor cat that frequently comes to our doors at night, and so we've had to leave the porch lights on for most of the last two years, because when we didn't, the neighbor cat showed up, Callisto went agro, and she attacked Lucy — the only times she wasn't intimidated by our little black cat.
Another of Callisto's Hawaiian tricks? Running to the bed as soon as clothes went out when I was getting dressed, and lying on them within seconds. She had clothing sense.
Callisto was joyfully friendly and affectionate. She was happily gluttonous. She was one of the most friendly and social cats I've ever met and one of the most eagerly and easily trainable if food was on the line. I'm very sad that she never got her time as elder boss cat of the roost, but she got many years as beloved youngster, and she had no doubt that she was loved. And fed.
So instead I choose to remember her as a great cat who brought so much joy to us for the eight and a half years that she was part of our our family.
Callisto came to us as Briana when we adopted her on March 16, 2013. She was ten and a half months old at the time, which was a compromise between Kimberly and myself. She didn't want kittens because they're too stressful, and as I explained I didn't want an older cat because it pushed down the mean time between failures. (Which is to say that losing a cat is horribly traumatic, and I didn't want that to happen any sooner than was necessary, alas.)
She was a lovey from the start. As soon as we opened her cage door, she started bashing her head against our hands. That's exactly how she'd always be, whether we liked it or not.
She was also entirely beautiful in her orange and blackness. We didn't even know the word tortie before we met her, but we saw at once why people loved that.
(We never could imagine how she couldn't have been adopted long before we got to her, with her beauty and her affection, but we quickly decided the rescue agency, Home at Last, probably hadn't been bringing her out to showings, as we couldn't even get them to bring out the cats we told them we wanted to adopt. And eight and a half years later I have to wonder if they exposed her to a coronavirus while she was in their care, which might later have turned to non-effusive FIP, which is one of my guesses as to what happened to our beloved cat. But it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter, and despite everything else they brought that wonderful cat into our lives for the eight and a half years of the nine and a half she got.)
To our visitors, Callisto was the cat that immediately ran over to them and jumped in their lap. It sorta didn't matter who they were, but there were some visitors who she never missed. To my gamers, she was surprise lap cat: one minute there was no cat in the room, the next she was in someone's lap.
She was also one of the clumsiest cats that I've ever met. She'd knock things over, she'd randomly fall over. This didn't go well with her role as surprise lap cat, as it meant that occasionally she'd jump into someone's lap and immediately fall out, with claws going all over.
When sitting in laps, Callisto would often start bathing herself. Vigorously. This often led to her eviction.
Callisto was never the boss of the house: that was also Lucy, though Callisto outweighed Lucy by almost three times. Callisto spent eight and a half years trying to befriend Lucy, which usually went lick-lick-lick from Callisto followed by hiss-swipe from Lucy. That never deterred her. When the paw was on the other foot, and Lucy was looming over Callisto, that usually caused big 'ole Callisto to flinch, which resulted in another hiss-swipe. "Don't flinch," we said. "Fear is the mind killer." She flinched.
Callisto was the most food-motivated cat that I'd ever met, just adoring food and bolting it down like she was starving. In Berkeley, when we started giving the cats wet food to help Lucy get more water into her diet, we had to put Lucy's up on a window sill, which Callisto fortunately didn't try to get up on (c.f. Clumsy Cat). Here in Hawaii, we really didn't have that option, so instead I stood guard over the plates every night when I fed the cats. Callisto would gulp down her food and then go and try and ram her head into Lucy's plate, and I'd drag her away. After just a few weeks, maybe a month or two at most, Callisto had become very polite, sitting and waiting for Lucy, to see if she'd leave any food for her. It was the most precious thing to see, because she was practically vibrating as she sat, because she wanted so much to rush at that food. But she was such a good cat: she waited. Usually.
Here in Hawaii, we've typically fed the cats their wet food right after our own dinner. Callisto would get very antsy (and loud!) if I was gaming or we were otherwise making dinner late, and usually after we ate and I'd come to sit down on the couch to finish whatever TV show we were watching, she'd lay down behind my head and wait, as near me as could be. But, she had an uncanny ability to recognize the end of a TV show, both in Berkeley when she got fed after our evening snack, and here in Hawaii. Often she'd jump down and head to the kitchen, either when the music came on for the climatic scene or when the credits ran.
She was the cat that generated constant shouts of "Don't Eat That" as she'd wander the house, gnawing on everything she could find. I remember the old Tivo Wifi dongle sitting atop the TV was a particular favorite: that's the sort of thing she'd test out her teeth (and gums) on. For a while the hour before we went to bed became Bad Callisto Time when she'd go from one bad thing to another.
She was also was great with food toys. We got her a number over the years. The simple ones, like a vertical maze, she just emptied out and we eventually had to put them away. A Kong, though, was harder to get food out of, but she'd go at it until we took it away. Sometimes she got a *lot* of food on the way.
That food motivation also meant we could teach her tricks. She used to dance on her hind legs to get food and even leap up a foot or two if it was dangled it over her head. She loved her treats. Even in her final days when she couldn't eat them, she'd rub her head against them. I felt like she was telling me that she loved me for bringing her the food, even if she'd decided that she wouldn't be eating them any more.
Callisto would also learn tricks for affection, though. The terrorist head bump, where I'd put out my fist and she'd rear up and bump her head against it only ever earned her skritches. She loved those too.
For the first five years we had her, Callisto had the most horribly stinky breath. It was so bad that we warned friends and family. We eventually learned that her teeth were being absorbed and/or rotting, and so in 2018 she had most of her scant remaining teeth out at Berkeley Dog & Cat. Poor baby! Afterward, her breath was normal cat breath. This also told us how very much she loved food, because it'd been hurting when she was eating for a while, and that never slowed her down.
After that surgery, Callisto's new trick was to rub her gums against us as she climbed all over us. We weren't fond of that one, but it was probably better than toxically stinky breath!
Callisto's favorite toy was a blue ribbon that our friend Donald gave us after his own cat passed. It was a blue cloth ribbon with a plastic rod at the end to flip it around. From a young age, she'd drag it around the house by the ribbon. When she dragged it up the wooden stairs in Berkeley, we'd hear bump-bump-bump as it thumped up the stairs. She'd mostly stopped playing with it in her final years in Berkeley, but we brought it with us to Hawaii, and she seemed to find it a comfort as she acclimated to the foreign house because it went bump-bumping around the house for a month or two.
We also brought her favorite chair: a rocking chair. It was one of the very few pieces of furniture we put on the boat, but we couldn't abandon our cat's favorite chair! (My dad likes it too.)
Somehow, despite being the friendliest cat ever in our house, Callisto was a terror to vets. The people at Paradise Animal Clinic commented on it a few times, and one day even brought her out with a towel over her cage, saying somewhat shaken, "She likes it better that way". And four years ago when she had her oral surgery, the vet commented on her getting "grumpy" and idly mentioned that she'd trimmed all her claws.
At some point after we got Callisto, she became maniacally aggressive toward foreign cats. When Melody's Tai Chi came to visit us in 2015, which was not the first time they met, we swore that Callisto was trying to kill him, and we had to mostly separate them. The next year, I was in New York when Melody needed sitting, and Kimberly wouldn't have been able to prevent felinicide on her own, so we had to end the annual tradition.
Since we moved to Hawaii, we've had a semi-feral neighbor cat that frequently comes to our doors at night, and so we've had to leave the porch lights on for most of the last two years, because when we didn't, the neighbor cat showed up, Callisto went agro, and she attacked Lucy — the only times she wasn't intimidated by our little black cat.
Another of Callisto's Hawaiian tricks? Running to the bed as soon as clothes went out when I was getting dressed, and lying on them within seconds. She had clothing sense.
Callisto was joyfully friendly and affectionate. She was happily gluttonous. She was one of the most friendly and social cats I've ever met and one of the most eagerly and easily trainable if food was on the line. I'm very sad that she never got her time as elder boss cat of the roost, but she got many years as beloved youngster, and she had no doubt that she was loved. And fed.