Ode to a Queen

About two decades ago, a litter of kittens was born on Red Hill, Sharpsburg’s only ‘mountain’, at a log cabin overlooking the valley. The cabin belonged to the Bell family, where Lynda Bell taught a wild bunch of homeschoolers science and music. Lynda Bell, a NASA scientist, had created the Log Cabin Science School and it was a noisy, creative, glorious place to be.

So thought the mommacat, Maz, a semi-feral who found the cabin a soft place to land and have her babies. The litter, known as the Mazlets, quickly found homes among the kids whom Lynda taught. Two of them, Ivy and Luna, stayed with the Bells.

Don’t have a picture of the babies. Believe it or not, that was before cellphone cameras were widespread.

Here’s one of the oldest pics I can find of her, buried in the ivy and grapevine on our deck.

All the Mazlets were eligible for the title, but when anyone referred to THE Mazlet, it was Ivy.

When the Bells split up, Lynda had to find somewhere to house herself, her three boys, their two dogs and the cats. We agreed to take Ivy, since we knew and loved her. She was a year or two then, I think, no one can quite remember when the Mazlets were born.

Foo was our only cat at that time and he liked it that way. I thought he’d be pissed at having another cat move in, and that Ivy, after her busy, noisy, populated start in life, would be lonely living with a curmudgeon like Foo. I kicked him out while Ivy explored the breezeway, to give her an hour to acclimate before dealing with him. (Today I’d have extended that to a few days, but this was decades ago.)

How surprised I was when Foo, catching sight of the calico beauty from the other side of the patio door, began pawing frantically to get inside and take a closer gander. Ivy took one look at him, swelled up to twice her already considerable size, and hissed like a furious dragon.

She did that pretty much every time she saw Foo for the rest of their years together. He was a tough little guy, snotty and cocky, and he didn’t back down from her.

Didn’t challenge her either. Not many challenged Ivy in her long, glorious prime.

Lounging in the yard with Jasmine and Bo, not long before we lost Bo. She had zero fear of horses.

She and Foo got into something, about 8 or 9 years ago. Foo had already come in a year before with a swollen head, having encountered something as mean as he was. We were shocked when they BOTH came in with head and face injuries. The vet said they looked like defensive injuries, the cats facing something they didn’t dare turn their backs on. We’ll never know just what happened, and it’s possible they fought each other. The antagonism was certainly there for it. But it’s odd that in all their years together, it never went beyond hissing and swatting, not where we could see. I like to think that they briefly banded together to face down a mutual threat.

She tolerated a lot from us. I think she kinda grooved on it. Sometimes when she complained the loudest she was also purring madly.

Helping Daddy read the paper was one of her principal jobs. And she shredded it helpfully when she was done sitting on it. She really seemed to hate the NYT crossword, to my frustration.

She loved few things more than shoes. The smellier the better. The only way to improve on smelly shoes for Ivy was to sprinkle catnip in them.

When Ben Bell came to live with us, he brought Ivy’s sister Luna. We were so excited. We all anticipated the happy reunion of the Log Cabin Mountain Mazlets. It was gonna be so great.

It went like this.

The two most people-oriented cats I’ve ever known hated each other’s guts. More even than Ivy hated Foo. After one screaming fight in the basement there were blood spatters. Zero tolerance.

When Ben left, Luna stayed with us until my son Dylan moved out and took her with him. My husband suggested she stay with us. For being known as ‘the sensible one’, when it comes to cats he’s a warm marshmallow.

The day Ben left we all cried, but no one was sadder than poor Luna.

Seeing her grieving on his bed still makes me tear up. I wasn’t sure she’d recover, but Dylan loved her through it.

Luna loved being an indoor/outdoor cat, but was so oriented to humans that she adjusted to being an inside cat in a house full of college students, a hedgehog, and a neurotic beagle to bully. She left us a couple of years ago, after being pampered and adored by Dylan and his cat-crazy wife, Kailee, for the rest of her life.

Ivy loved all humans too, and assumed mostly correctly that they all loved her back. But she had a very special soft spot for my older son, Brian.

He used to get her to yodel. It was awesome. Wish I could find the video.

She also loved it when Ben came back to visit.

Then we really farked up her world. We brought home a kitten. OMG, Ivy felt SOO betrayed. I put tiny Marley Maia in Ben’s old room so Ivy wouldn’t kill her, but Ivy smelled her and followed me around screaming irately for what felt like two days. SCREAMING. Livid. Furious. I slept with the kitten for two nights, not only to keep her company but to soothe her when the terrible growls and yowls started up outside the door.

Ivy never hurt her, but she never liked her either. Poor little Marley came from a big litter, in a big cat household of cats and cat-crazy people, to Moonshadow where neither of the other cats did anything but hiss and swat at her. Fortunately she too is people-oriented and adjusted quickly.

This was about as close as Marley could get to Ivy. Please note the vast expanse of pure white, cloud-soft belly. That is some primo belly. Ivy’s belly was heaven, and she was so generous with it. I’ll miss that belly every day of the rest of my life.

Eventually there was armed neutrality.

I thought when this happened that we’d made progress. It wasn’t so, but look at my Ivy. Look at the magnificent bulk of her. The sheer gargantuan voluptuous mass.

What a cat.

She LOVED to sleep in this chimnea. I had to evict a black widow as neither of them would quit the place.

She lost her mind when there was digging going on. She loved new trees, but I think it was really the turned earth that got her. She was a gardening cat. For all of her bristling vitality, she had a cthonic side.

Always so helpful.

Twilight brings all the girls to the yard.

She nursed Daddy through back spasms.

And helped him lift weights.

And supervised doggy belly rubs.

She was convinced that she had total camouflage.

She did have a lot to manage.

But she dealt with all of her many duties with style and poise.

And I cannot tell you how many times I had to scour the whole farm to find her for a vet visit, only to discover her up in the hayloft. Ever try to climb down a ladder with one arm full of squirming howling 13lbs of indignant calico? I don’t recommend it.

Surveying her realm through those oddly cold gold eyes. For all that she was pure love and snuggle, her eyes almost never warmed.

A good roll in the catnip should never be passed up.

This is probably my favorite picture ever taken of her, just a few months ago, by my brother Keith.

During the last couple of years, Ivy shrunk from her Jabba the Hut 13lbs to barely 6. She quit hunting, to everyone’s relief. She was a champion mouser in her prime, and my barn was mouse-free during the Foo and Ivy years. But she also loved nothing better than a baby rabbit. We knew spring had sprung when Ivy began disemboweling them slowly on the patio, with screaming and trauma all round. I’m dumbfounded at how stupid mama rabbits are. Like, maybe hide them? Just a little?

This summer I’d still find her in the barn sometimes, or wandering in the locust grove or the faery garden or the orchard. But mostly ‘going outside’ for her meant heading to her favorite spot under the table on the deck, or in the sun on the patio. When it started to get chilly, she opted for the sunspot inside the dining room. It’s all the aminerds’ favorite cold weather spot, but we saw to it that she always had first dibs.

She liked just about everybody, but in addition to Brian and my husband, she had a few favorites. She and my MIL were besties, Ivy bullying Ma into getting the right blanket, the right treats and the right positions for long happy afternoons watching The Crown.

Her Herculean appetite had shrunk, and for several weeks we’d been giving her half a teaspoon of canned food whenever she yelled for it (about 20 times a day, no lie), as she couldn’t keep down any more than that. And she liked her water cup to be held for her. Still made it to the litter box like the champion she was. Puked a fair bit, but no accidents. Lots and lots of sleeping in the sun spot, or her heated bed, or a lap if she could get one.

Her last day was so good. It was cool but not cold, with golden sunshine and no wind. She ventured outside and sampled one of the few surviving sprigs of catnip. Then she made her way onto the bench in the sun. I brought her blanket out for her, and she stayed there for hours. She was there when Dr. Lori came to set her free, and she went out of this world sitting on my lap in the sun. She flinched a little at the sedative, then fell immediately to sleep. I swear that as the euthanasia drugs went in I could feel her little body vibrating just a little, a whisper of the monster purr of her youth. She had barely been able to purr for weeks. But she did as she left.

When Foo died, I found a mouse outside the garage. No wounds or signs of any trauma, just a nice fat dead mouse. I put it in his grave with him.

As I was getting out the shovel for Ivy’s, in almost the exact same spot there was one of Artemis the Kitten’s green toy mousies, tattered and torn. Ivy didn’t like toys, but this one went with her into the good earth. Maybe it was a last gift- or a welcome- from Foo.

Foo is an elusive ghost, never coming when I call. He slips through and around the shadows, gray and stripey and glimmering. I doubt he and Ivy will hang much in the next world either, but I hope I can still perceive her, roaming this sacred space with the rest of our beloved departed, keeping an eye on us, knowing that she’s loved for as long as we’re here.