Sultana

Adopted 16  March 2001 in Tulsa; died 5 May 2008 in Houston

 A friend of mine, later to be my husband, Chris,  had innocently asked to borrow one of my cats, like one borrows a bike, to keep his teen daughter company during her Spring Break visit. Well … certainly not one of mine, but l had connections – the president of Friends of Felines, who rescued cats from the animal pound and not a few dumpsters around town could help.  I asked her for a “loaner cat” and she produced a six-year old female, “Shadow,” who –you guessed it—was black.  Black cats are rarely adopted before their time is up at kill shelters and, Leslie, had pulled this one out just in time. She didn’t bother to argue the ethics of loaning a living being because this one, clearly, would end up with me.

After the summer gig, which the cat spent crouching under a bed, providing company to no one, she came to live with me.  She slinked out of the carrier like she owned the place, royally dismissing the other animals who approached her. She knew she had arrived.  Confident, feminine, and ebony black, she had to be “Sultana.”  We understood and liked each other right away.

Presumably, every living being can rise to the height of its capabilities in a given circumstance, which most of us never live long enough to test. But Sultana did have her day (actually more than 600 days in a row) to prove her mettle.  I had undertaken the 4^rd edition of a glossary of petroleum industry terms. This project, additional to a full time job and maintenance of house, yard, and 13 pets, proved more than I could graciously manage. Staring at a computer every at night and on weekends was hypnotic. Tedious research, indexing, long hours… my eyelids felt like mini blinds with a faulty cord lock. Sultana did something quite extraordinary.

Every evening, every holiday, she sat by the screen like the Egyptian Bastet by the temple door.  Thus poised, she stared at me for as long as I attempted to work. Any time my eyelids descended, Sultana  gently reach for my face with one of her paws, “Hey, wake up!” This happened whenever I worked on the glossary – which would not have been completed, not under my byline anyway, without Sultana P. Shadow, who is acknowledged in the book, and who actually earned the royalties I receive.

Ingrates we humans are,  I left her behind with her coeval companions Pertinax, Pomponia, Calpurnia, Violeta, Antares, Montecor, and the feral garage cats (Rocky, Minutia, and Simba)  when in December 2005 I went to Saudi Arabia with my new husband.  Lanette, who cared for them, reported that Sultana suffered a paralysis and that the diagnosis was cardiomyopathy, for which she was successfully treated.

Not a moment too soon, in March 2008, Sultana came with us to Houston.  She enjoyed the new house, the old routine, me, but bliss was short-lived. On 5 May her heart became sick again despite the ongoing medication. We rushed her to a veterinary emergency hospital where she received overnight intensive care. There were no signs of improvement in the morning; she was gravely ill and while heroic treatment may have bought some time, at what price?  I asked to be alone with Sultana. She was listless, her inner eyelids visible, but the stare as probing as ever. Ultimately the answer is always in the eyes. I looked into hers like she used to look into mine during our book ordeal.  And I saw that she didn’t want to be poked and hurt by strangers.  “So soon!?”  I protested. “So soon now that we are together again!?” I raged.

 And so, with a heart as sick as hers, I thanked her for being in my life, begged forgiveness for exiting hers during two long years, cried as hard as I ever have … and still her eyes said: “let me go!”