Tuna for Buttercup

I woke up one night last February and, not finding Buttercup in her usual spot at my feet, I got up to look for her in the living room. I always liked knowing where she was when she wasn't nearby. I stood there for a second in the room, lit up by the porch light. I shook my head, sighed, and went back to bed.

A year ago today we lost Buttercup, the best cat ever. I got her and her brother, Westley, in the summer of 1997 when they were tiny kittens, taken from their hissing, feral mother at the Humane Society. We brought them home and for three days they would neither come near us, nor let us go near them. On the third day I sat down on the couch with a tuna sandwich in front of me and I felt a sensation. The sensation of two desperate eyes staring at me. More precisely, two desperate eyes staring at my tuna sandwich over my shoulder. I offered Buttercup a little bit of the tuna, and in a single moment both our lives changed. She was my girl forever.

Unless there was a beam of sun anywhere inside the house, she was always right near me. A month after she died, we moved to an apartment that tracks the sun all day and I look at the long beams of afternoon sun and smile, imagining how she would be stretched out in front of them if she had lived in this new house with us.

She waited patiently by my shoulder every morning for me to wake up. I would only know she was there because I could hear her subtle purr as she anticipated me waking up to scratch her ears.

Another one of her charms was her Ragdoll genetics, and the way that she went limp when picked up. I often scooped her and settled her on my right shoulder (only the right shoulder, never the left), where she would happily sit for as long as I would hold her, and watch the world from my height. She also had the longest toe hair I've ever seen on a cat.
         

Among her many nicknames, "Tuna Head" was one of the most appropriate. Other nicknames used frequently when addressing her:

• Butterbutt
• Flufferbutt
• Fluffernut
• Butternut
• Butterpants
• Flufferpants
• Fancycat
• Fuzzernut

"Tuna Head" was acted out in a much more dramatic way than any of these other names. She became a bit of a miniature grizzly bear whenever there was human food being prepared, but she would literally scream if she smelled tuna. 

She was diagnosed with kidney disease* in 2008, the same disease that claimed her brother in 2001, and was given six months to live. She ended up living for over three years, becoming healthy and strong again by eating the right food and supplements.

Eventually her kidneys failed, and she spent three days in the ICU, then three days at home with us until we decided it was time to let her go. Even though she's no longer with me, I had her for fourteen years and she was loved extravagantly for every minute of those fourteen years.

I started making Elise's recipe for Pasta with Tuna and Capers in White Wine Sauce about a year ago and it has become a new comfort food for me. Each time I open a can of tuna I expect Buttercup to appear behind me, standing on her back legs, yowling, and waiting for her own little bowl. So this bowl is for her.

*Please carefully consider giving your cats booster vaccinations each year. The vet who attended to Buttercup in the ICU explained to me that a cat owner should never need to give vaccines after the initial ones. Because the vaccines are grown on kidney tissue, cats can develop antibodies against their own kidneys, which explains why kidney disease is so prominent with cats. The vaccines last a lifetime, but the pharmaceutical companies only test them for a year so that's all they will recommend them for. The vet said that she herself would only give her new kittens their first vaccines and never give them again.