Jojo

Two summers ago my cat Jojo died. He was 19 years old. Despite the fact that Dave had lived with him for 16 years, and my daughters hadn’t known life without him, Jojo was “my” cat. He was the first pet I have ever kept. Not that I didn’t have any contact with animals before. Growing up, my family had an obscene amount of pets: over the years we had 7 dogs (a pair of which produced total of 24 puppies that we didn’t keep), 3 rabbits, 4 hamsters, a pair of parakeets, a chipmunk, a bullfrog tadpole, a tank full of guppies and snails, another tank full of common frog tadpoles, numbers of fighting beetles, and exactly one hundred silkworms. I had fun with all of them and did help with their care, dirty jobs as well as clean ones, but they weren’t my charge entirely. If I forgot to feed them, someone else would notice and fill their bowls. It was sad when they died, of course, especially the dogs, but the sorrow I felt was somewhat detached, about the same intensity for a distant uncle’s death.

Jojo was the first life aside from my own for which I was solely responsible. He came into my life in Tokyo. One day my boss at the ad agency asked me if I couldn’t take care of a kitten for a few days. One of the assistants of our department had found a kitten on a street and taken it home, but she had 9 adult cats in her house already, and they all had gone berserk upon seeing this little thing that’s alive. She had come to my boss to ask if he could take the kitten. He couldn’t, for his family had a pedigree Himalayan, and his wife wouldn’t be happy if he brought home a little mobile home of fleas. The assistant was rather a pushy person and my boss was semi-secretly afraid of her, and so, as usual, she successfully made him promise to find a solution while in fact he had no idea what to do about the situation. He told me it would be just for a few days, only until he found a permanent home for it. I grew up with dogs but never had a cat close by: I didn’t know the first thing about caring for a cat. But I thought I could manage a few days.

The little orange fuzz ball arrived that evening in a small cardboard box. He was so small that he fit on the palm of my hand. He had a pair of huge green eyes that threatened to pop out of his little head with burst of curiosity, and was a bounding embodiment of energy. His tail wasn’t straight: it looked as if it was knotted at the tip, and when I gently touched it I could feel the bones deformed and curled up inside. An image of a cruel boy trying to tie the tail of a helpless tiny kitten and breaking it came to my mind, and I felt sick. But later I found out that it was most likely a birth deformity common among Asian cats. Growing up in a concrete jungle, I had heard cats at night, in heat or in fight, but I hadn’t seen them all that much. I had no idea there was such a trend in Japanese cats’ prenatal development.

about a month after he came into my life

His every movement fascinated me. He sniffed around my apartment, from corner to corner, behind the TV and under the bed, up on the chairs and coffee table, checking out and memorizing, walking and leaping and jumping down in absolute silence. I would have called it graceful if he had been a few months older and his head and ears weren’t comically too big in proportion to his body. He did lose balance occasionally, but for a kitten just a few weeks old, he was very determined and thorough. Once he knew where everything was, he wanted to play. He squat down, his hind side high in the air, shook it a few times, and charged towards me. When I tried to catch him he darted back and started it all over, again and again. I played with him that night until he flopped himself down, exhausted, and went to sleep right in front of my eyes.

It was hard to leave him alone in the apartment next morning. After seriously considering whether it’s a good idea to take him to the office, I let out a big sigh and closed the door in front of his imploring eyes. I could still hear him meowing behind the door, and I felt like crying myself. I thought I could hear him in the elevator, on the street, even on the train. I was in love.

I told my boss that he didn’t have to look for a home for the kitten, for it had found one already. I rather suspect that it was exactly what he had hoped for. It was late August, right after the Obon holiday, during which we had been extremely busy preparing for a presentation one of our clients wanted to see right after he came back from his vacation, but that was over and I had hardly anything to do, so I went home as early as possible, on a train that seemed to have lost interest in moving forward, with all the people getting on and off the train in deliberate slow motion and my feet that suddenly seemed to have lost the ability to walk fast.

When I opened the door, he came running with his eyes still closed. He must have been fast asleep: he came bumping on this wall and that corner, but he couldn’t come fast enough to greet me. Two lovers, reunited. When I picked him up, he licked my hands with his scratchy tongue, as if to shower me with welcome kisses. That became our routine: he would come to the door to greet me with closed eyes, bumping along on the walls, I would pick him up and give him a hug, and he would lick my cheeks and neck. It was such a nice way to come home to after a long day at the office.

I named him Zoffy, after the father of Ultra Man and his ultra brothers, the popular Japanese superheroes. I quickly learned that kittens were very soft and fuzzy but came with really sharp ends, and they didn’t think twice about biting the hand that fed them. My forearms and hands became stripy with occasional dots. Then one night I woke up with tremendous itch on my back. I took off the white T-shirt I was wearing as a pajama top and nearly fainted: it was infested with sesame-seed size black dots. Fleas. I ran to the 24-hour convenient store around the corner in my pajamas. In Japan, you would find those stores on almost every corner, and they are truly convenient as they sell things like flea shampoo for pets as well. I dunked Zoffy in the bathroom sink, held the wriggling, squirming, screaming little thing down, slathered him with the shampoo and saw black sesame seeds starting to float in the water. I knew as much as I wasn’t supposed to squash them, for that would spread the eggs they carried inside. I combed through Zoffy’s fur under water, picked out all the fleas I could find, and left them in the shampoo water. I was totally grossed out at that moment, but the real problem was my bed and carpet and sofa, everything soft and warm and comfortable for the human and the cat and the fleas alike. It took a very long time until I felt sure that all the fleas were gone and my phantom itch disappeared.

One day, I was writing a letter to my friend, and having messed up big time, I tore a sheet of paper, crumpled it up and tossed it toward the garbage can at a corner of my living room. It didn’t go in the can. Zoffy darted for it, dribbled it in front of him in full speed like a soccer player, and disappeared in the hall toward the front door, and I heard a big thud; he must have been unable to stop in time and hit the door. As I looked at the direction in amusement, he came back, carrying the wad of paper in his mouth, and dropped it by my feet. He tentatively tried to nudge it to move. I picked it up and threw it toward the hall. He darted, disappeared, thud, and came back again with the paper ball. Thus I found out that a cat could play fetch, and enjoy it very much, too.

He was a cat of many opinions. He didn’t hesitate to voice his thoughts, regardless of the time of day (especially during the night). He thought the moment the first bird chirped at 5 in the morning was the time to get up for everyone. He hated his carrier. I took him to my parents’ house, an hour away by train, whenever I had to go on a trip longer than 2 nights. The moment I put him in the carrier he started meowing, and he made sure that everybody knew how unhappy he was in there. He got worked up so much that he started sounding more like a coyote than a house cat. Everyone on the train looked at me as if I were a cat murderer, or torturing whatever it was in that carrier that was making that awful sound.

That same summer that I got Zoffy, I also met my future husband. We worked in the same office, in different departments. When Dave’s contract with the Tokyo office expired after 3 years, I decided to move to Germany with him. I couldn’t part with Zoffy, he was my responsibility, so I talked Dave into accepting him along with me. Dave left Japan in March and started looking for an apartment in Hamburg. He told me to wait until he had moved into an apartment and settled a bit, but of course it was too long a wait and I was too impatient. When he called in April that he had found a place, I hopped on a plane while ignoring his warning, “We can’t move in for a few more weeks because they are working on the floor. Nothing had arrived from Tokyo yet, so we have no furniture, nothing. The hotel I’m staying doesn’t allow pets.” I asked my brother, who had just moved from Kyoto to Tokyo and planning to take over my apartment when I was gone, to take care of Zoffy for a few weeks until I sent for him. A month later Dave and I moved into the apartment and I called my brother. Zoffy flew all by himself to Hamburg via Frankfurt. As a cargo, the journey took a lot longer than as a passenger, and from the moment my brother put him in his carrier to when I went to retrieve him at Hamburg Flughafen, Zoffy had spent 40 hours in the cage. He was pretty shaken. He must have meowed as usual non-stop; he didn’t have a voice left when I went to get him. He looked skinnier. I thoroughly regretted my selfishness and irresponsibility.

But Zoffy rebounded nicely and adjusted to the new life in no time. He liked Dave. Dave also had never had much contact with cats before, and treated Zoffy as a dog. He pointed out that the name Zoffy sounded feminine. I explained Zoffy was the father of all Ultras, he was mighty super, but I had to admit it was confusing German people, for in the German language S is pronounced Z and Sophie in German and Zoffy in English sounded the same. Who da thunk that the father of ultra-macho supers had a feminine name? I had sometimes called him Zof-Zof (a pet name for a pet, haha), and that became Jojo, his new name.

in Hamburg

Our Hamburg apartment was a bit like a train, very long from one end to the other, with a long hallway on the side that connected the rooms. The hall had a kink in the middle. Jojo absolutely loved it. He enjoyed the brand new sensation of hardwood floor. He would dash from one end of the hall, try to change direction at the kink but his claws would have no grip on the floor, would just make a lot of noise without moving him much, and he would hit the wall at the kink, THUD! and, having successfully (or not) changed direction, would scurry into one of the rooms. Then he would repeat the same thing from the other end. He started playing fetch with tennis balls as well. He couldn’t bring the ball back in his mouth like a dog would, so he would carefully roll it with his paws. He was a lefty.

reading Sunday paper always ended up this way

Dave started slapping Jojo’s hind side, just as he would do to a bigger dog, and for some strange reason Jojo liked it. It soon evolved into rather vigorous butt slapping. Everyone who saw Dave doing it would say, “Oh, my God!” probably thinking, “He is harassing that cat!” But when they saw Jojo coming back for more with his tail high and hind side up, they would all say, “That’s a weird cat you’ve got there!”

all mine...

aaaahhh...

Then there was his shoe/foot fetish. As I am Japanese, many people who come to visit us courteously take their shoes off, even when I say they don’t have to. Jojo was in heaven when people left their shoes at the front door. He would be right on top of as many shoes as he could possibly cover, with his nose in one of them. When he couldn’t find any shoes lying around, he would come find our socked toes to rub against. He didn’t fully trust human hands, but he would let us pet him with our feet until we get cramps.

We moved to Frankfurt a year and a half later. The new apartment had a big mirror in the foyer that covered one wall. Jojo found another pastime. He would stalk his reflection from one side, and upon seeing himself he would arch his back and side-hop toward it, ears back and chin down, then flee to the other side. He would then turn right back and repeat. He didn’t do it every time he walked by the mirror and caught sight of himself, so I think he knew he was playing with his reflection.

I had framed a big poster, about 4’x 3’, that I made when I was working in advertising. One of my clients was Kodak’s professional film division. The image of the poster, titled by a copywriter as “Forest of Apocalypse,” was taken by a noted photographer, Yoshihiko Ueda, in an ancient forest in Washington State. I loved the deep green and blue and the clarity and depth of the photo. The frame was large and heavy, so I never bothered to hang it. It was leaning against a wall in the corner of the spare bedroom. One afternoon, I found Jojo sitting perfectly still in front of the poster and staring at it. Once I noticed it, I found him doing that rather often. At first I thought he was seeing himself on the glass. But then I realized that he could do that easier in the mirror but he never did. I have to think he was as fascinated by the image as I was. Dave thinks he was imagining himself as a cougar in the wild.

When Dave and I went down to South Africa for several months, a friend of mine in Hamburg took care of Jojo. Then we moved to New York. I made sure that we flew on the same plane this time, and also that the temporary apartment we would be staying was pet-friendly.

A year before my first daughter was born, I started to feel sorry for Jojo that he was left alone in the apartment all the time. I might have been reflecting my own loneliness on him, for that year Dave’s job took him around the world and he was away from home more than ever. I also thought if Jojo had a companion, he might become less dependent on the humans and would be less upset when we went away for vacation. He threw up a lot when he got upset. So, we adopted a little kitten, just rescued from an abandoned building in China Town. We named her Keeffer, in honor of my sister-in-law’s beloved cat, O’Keeffe, who had to be put down shortly prior. We didn’t see Jojo at all for 5 days. I heard him growling and hissing, but there was no visual affirmation of his existence. He must have realized at one point that Keeffer didn’t seem like a temporary inconvenience but was here to stay. He came out grudgingly. It took a good part of that month for him to stop hissing at the sight of her. But soon he started to ignore her, then respond to her playful paws, and then to curl up together on our bed. The number of his throw-ups was reduced in half, and so was his complains when we came home from a vacation.

Jojo took babies in stride. Human babies were a lot easier for him to deal with. We moved 3 more times: to Chicago, and to a suburb to another suburb. All in all, Jojo lived in 11 different places, including temporary housing, in 3 continents. In Japan, they say dogs get attached to the people and cats get attached to the house. They say it’s easier to move with dogs than cats, because cats get depressed in new places and they would sometimes try to run away, to go back to their original houses. It’s a good thing that Jojo loved new places, because if he had tried to find his original house, he would have had to contend with an entire continent or an ocean. That would have been a bit of a damper.

In the new house, Jojo found his singing voice. My house has a tiny breakfast area off the kitchen. The first floor ceiling ends at the edge of the kitchen and the breakfast area has 20-foot ceiling, so to speak, with 5 skylights in the roof. We also have 4 more skylights and therefore more skylight wells upstairs. If you find a right spot, the house gives you very nice echo. Jojo was really good at finding just the spot to maximize his volume, for the listening pleasure of the lowly humans. In fact, he became so good at it, especially during the night, that we had to convert the bathroom in the basement into cats’ bedroom and lock both cats in there for the night, lest no humans could sleep.

Jojo appears everywhere in my house

He was quite healthy and fun-loving, and very opinionated throughout his years. He lectured my father-in-law at every holiday gathering. He lectured me while I cooked. He lectured Dave every occasion he got. Around age 16, he was getting a bit boney on the spine and his paws looked a little arthritic, but he was still very much Jojo.

At about age 18 and a half, however, I started to notice something different. He used to sit on the corner of the rug while we ate our dinner, facing outward, as if to protect us from harm, but he stopped doing that. He stopped coming when I called. He used to come running whenever I called him, wherever he was, without fail. I couldn’t tell if he could hear well any longer. His singing and opining started to sound more like demented, out-of-control scream. Then he started to exhibit a zoo animal behavior that I hate most. He started to walk around the house in a set pattern. He would walk from the kitchen to the dining room, to the family room back to the kitchen, round and round, following almost exact path, exact line, as if he was on a rail like those Disneyland rides. At first I could snap him out of it, by stroking him gently or calling him and getting his attention, but as the weeks passed, he went deeper and deeper into his own world, leaving us completely behind.

Then one night, while Jojo was doing his nth round of the evening, Keeffer came down and plopped herself on top of Jojo’s invisible line. Jojo came back and just stopped where Keeffer was. He wasn’t seeing her, there was nothing in his eyes. He just stood there, devoid of any reaction. I waited for him to recognize something, see something, and go around Keeffer, but that didn’t happen. After a few minutes I nudged Keeffer to move, and immediately Jojo started walking on his line again, as if nothing had interrupted him. At that moment I knew Jojo was gone.

6 months passed. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Jojo didn’t miraculously start acting young again. His routine became more and more mindless and profoundly robotic. His motions became slower and slower. He didn’t react to anything anymore. He slept most of the day, and ate little and walked little. He was living very little. In August (or maybe his birthday was in late July; I will never know for sure), when he turned 19, I called the vet. She listened to my description and told me to bring him in. She said it might be his time.

We said goodbye to him the day before the appointment, just in case. Well, I knew that he would be put to sleep if we took him to the vet’s. Dave let him walk in our backyard for the first time. Jojo had never been an outdoorsy type. He had enjoyed balconies of our German apartments, but that was the total extent of his adventures outside. Dave thought Jojo couldn’t go without knowing how the grass felt under his paws. If we did that when he was younger, he would have been thoroughly freaked out and climbed on my back. That day, as Dave gently set him on the grass, and as all the birds and squirrels, after a moment of complete motionless silence, screamed in alarm, with so much commotion and noise in the air, Jojo just did his routine walk in slow motion, without stopping to smell, without feeling the grass, without hearing the noise.

On August 5, 2008, all of us accompanied Jojo to the vet’s office. I didn’t even bother putting him in his carrier, because I knew he had no strength left to be unmanageable. I put him in his fluffy bed and carried him in it. He started meowing. I hadn’t heard him meow like a normal cat like that for a long time. Oh, please Jojo, don’t do this to me now… The vet said she could run bunch of tests and determine what was wrong with him, but then he would have to be put under and that would be a tremendous stress for an old cat like him. Jojo continued to meow, while the vet stroked him and said, “I really don’t see a reason for doing tests. He is old, and looking at his paws, he is arthritic, he is probably in a lot of pain, too. If you think he is not enjoying life anymore, I think it’s time.”

Jojo meowed and meowed and looked at me. He looked at me. His eyes had been so empty for so long that I thought he was totally blind. My head started to spin really fast that everything became a blur. Should we take him home? Then what, wait till his body stops working altogether? He is not enjoying his life at all. He might be in a lot of pain. He is my cat, he is my responsibility, he is my first baby. He had been there for me through some of the toughest times of my life, always loving me unconditionally. Either way I decided, it seemed utterly selfish on my part. I didn’t want to see him empty and doing the rounds anymore. But what if his body was meant to live for another year or two? I didn’t want to cut his natural time in this world short unnecessarily. But if he was indeed in pain, I didn’t want him to suffer, just because I couldn’t let him go. Dave said, “Tomo, I think it’s time.” And I nodded through my tears.

I couldn’t bear to see him off. I took my daughters out of the examining room and sat in the waiting room, all three of us crying our eyes out, while Dave stayed with Jojo until his last breath. Dave was crying, too, when he came out and said it was very peaceful. We went home with the empty cat bed.

Dave’s sister said we should break Jojo’s dish so he could carry some food with him to the spirit world. As I learn philosophical Buddhism anew, I’m getting more and more skeptical about the existence of spirit or soul or afterworld, but when Jojo was gone it felt comforting to think he was bounding somewhere, chasing balls, free of pain, and when I die maybe I could see him again. I broke one of his dishes. I felt the consoling pull of rituals. I found two tufts of orange fur in Jojo’s bed, and arranged them so they shaped a heart.

It hurt so very much to lose a pet. I cannot imagine how it might be to lose a child.

I find myself telling my daughters about Jojo quite often, and Dave chimes right in, too, when he hears me talking about him. Jojo the Cat the girls knew was somewhat old already (by the time my older daughter was 2, Jojo was 10); they didn’t see much of the vibrant and full-of-life Jojo, the funny, quirky Jojo. A few months after Jojo died, urged by my daughters’ constant pleading, I went to a cat-only no-kill shelter with them to get one kitten, preferably an orange male. We came home with a pair of brother and sister tuxedo kittens. All 3 cats with us now are very sweet and I love them all, but none is as weird… I mean, as unique as Jojo was. He left so many albums in our minds, from which we can pull out memories of him to look at. We laugh, we cry, and we still love him dearly.

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